White Light Pays a Visit to 71 Coltman Street

Located in Kingston Upon Hull, Hull Truck Theatre is dedicated to producing high quality theatre of intimate and epic scales, reaching diverse audiences including those encountering theatre for the first time. The iconic venue recently launched its 50th anniversary season, with the opening production being 71 Coltman Street, written by internationally-acclaimed playwright Richard Bean. The show features a lighting design by Charlie Morgan Jones, who approached White Light to supplying the lighting equipment.

 

 

 

 

 

Set in 1971, 71 Coltman Street tells the story of Hull Truck’s origins and how founding artistic director Mike Bradwell put together a motley crew of unemployed actors to improvise a play with no name, no plot, no budget and no bookings. Describing the production, Charlie comments: “This has everything you’d expect from a Richard Bean play: hilarious, irreverent comedy balanced with real heart and emotion. It’s a roaring combination of comedy, cabaret, farce and drama which takes modern day audiences right back to ‘where it all began’.

 

 

 

 

 

As a lighting designer renowned for his work on West End and international musicals and operas, 71 Coltman Street required a slightly different approach for Charlie, given its staging: “I think this might be the first time in my life I’ve lit a ‘one room’ play. As a creative team, we really wanted it to feel naturalistic but then also have those moments of heightened reality during the musical numbers, given it is a play which features songs, written by Jerry Springer the Opera’s Richard Thomas. I really wanted to emphasise the heightened elements, as seen by the strip of light we forced down one wall which made audiences question just what this was and why it was there… Equally, I’m not a fan of wide general covers and wanted to avoid falling into these so ensured that at every appropriate opportunity we closed down and really focused on the action”.

 

 

 

 

 

For the rehearsals, Charlie was actually able to be in the room with the director Mark Babych and managed to play an active role in the process. He explains: “For me, it’s so important to be in the room whilst the show’s being created, built and rehearsed. It’s truly the only way you get a proper feel for the piece, and it means you can stick your oar in whenever and chip in with how bits might look!”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once Charlie had seen how the play would be staged, he was then able to create his design and decide which fixtures he should draw on. He states: “Asides from using every single one of Hull Truck’s 142 fixtures, I knew I would require some additional flexibility from the rig.  With that in mind, I turned to WL to provide us with several Martin Mac TW1s. Some shows feel like LED Profile shows, some feel like Par Can shows… but this FELT like a TW1 show; especially given the period and feel we were trying to create. It’s an old school unit, but still looks great when it’s not breaking down – I see a lot of myself in it!”

 

 

 

 

 

He continues: “I knew that I wanted to close down every area in which the actors had particularly poignant moment or one which was vital in the story of the play. Normally, this would have required double the fixtures already in the rig, but with just a couple of TDubz up there, we had the flexibility. It also meant that if the director saw the piece in the space after the studio runs and wanted to change things, he could, and we could make these changes fairly rapidly”.

 

 

 

 

 

Following a tech run in which the team worked tirelessly to adapt to new re-writes, something which Charlie calls “a necessity whenever working with a new piece”, the play eventually opened last week and has received great reviews from audiences and critics alike. The show will now run until Saturday 12 March.

 

 

 

 

 

Charlie concludes: “I’ve wanted to work at Hull Truck for years, and it was such a pleasure to finally do so with an amazing team, including Production Manager Ollie Brown, who was the lighting programmer on my first design out of drama school 11 years ago! I’d also like to thank my amazing Associate LD and Programmer Jessie Addinall, as well as the team at WL for their support once again”.

 

 

 

 

 

Photos courtesy of Ian Hodgson.

 

 

 

The post White Light Pays a Visit to 71 Coltman Street appeared first on White Light.

 

 

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Theatre