Kathmandu:

When we go to watch a play, we do not realise it but lights (and shadows) play a huge role in the stage makeup and affect the overall effect a play will have on its audience.

Unlike in the cinema where the audience’s eyes are manipulated by the camera, light is the controlling agent in a play. It is lighting that directs the audience’s attention to an area of the stage or distracts them from another in a given frame or parameter. The role of light is to create the mood, set the tone of the scene, give the location and time of the day, make the characters visible on stage and altogether create an audible rhythm.

“It is the camera of theatrical performance making it possible to change focus, manipulate meaning and create the ‘make belief,’” said Helene D Sunde, who was here in the Capital recently conducting a combined workshop with Marianne Thallang Wedset.

Sunde is trained as sets designer in England, and has been working in theatre as a freelancer since 1991 — both as sets and costume designer, and has also worked in television. Wedset has been handling lights for the stage since the late seventies as a freelancer and this has made it possible for her to tour the world. Wedset conducted the workshop on lighting technique (and also a year ago on the basics of light plan).

The combined workshop for two weeks was held at Gurukul for Gurukul actors and participants from nine theatre groups from Kathmandu and outside the Valley.

Gurukul has a partnership with the National Theatre in Oslo under which three programmes are held every year. Workshop on Marketing and Art Management and Acting and Direction has already been conducted this year. As a part of the exchange programme, Rajan Khatiwada will go to Norway to receive training on set design this year. Gurukul has also been receiving lights and lights operating instruments as donation from Norway.

This being her first time in Nepal, it was a totally different experience for Sunde and she believes she got the opportunity to see more of the inside than what tourists normally see.

As lighting and set designing are closely linked with each other it was not out of the ordinary for these two women from Norway to hold a combined workshop. The twenty-six participants were divided into eight groups, and each group created a story folder each, apt set design and light plots for the story taking into careful consideration the use of materials, fabrics, and colours.

“Understanding the feeling and essence of the play, developing the tools to build this, idea of breaking down the plot and the careful use of the fabrics and colour are very important, because they tell something on stage,” said Wedset.

The participants were instructed on how to proceed with the lights and sets designing. They received training on painting on canvas and on two and three-dimensional surfaces, how to make depths in colour, layers of different shades to create a vibrating surface.

“They received practical techniques on the different effects produced by light when it strikes different fabrics, and how even the use of simple materials can have a wonderful effect that can be described like something magical,” said Sunde.

“In Europe and America, theatre workers are specialised in lights, sets and costume designing separately. And the director is the conceptual centre and different designers do their art,” informed Wedset.

However, the scene is totally different in Nepal. “In Aarohan’s productions, it is mostly me conceptualising the lights, design, while sometimes Raj Kumar Pudasaini, who has received a month-long training from Norway, looks after it,” said Sunil Pokharel, director, Aarohan Theatre Group.

Summing up their workshop experience, both ladies believe the participants have done an incredible work, and that it was pleasant to be around these people. They found the participants to be good at their work, eager to learn, interesting, focused, who came up with interesting questions, and demonstrated enormous energy and patience. “It was a big treat to be here,” said Wedset.