Drawing on lighting fixtures supplied by White Light, Jai Morjaria’s lighting design for Wuthering Heights in the Lyttleton Theatre at London’s National Theatre brings some order and beauty to a production which is largely focused on the messiness of humanity, while also enhancing Vicki Mortimer’s evocative but tricky set design and Simon Baker’s haunting projections. 

Morjaria, who won the Association of Lighting Designer’s ETC Award in 2016, effortlessly handles the play-with-songs genre, seamlessly creating the excitement of full-throated ensemble numbers and then shrinking the audience’s attention to Lucy McCormick’s mentally unstable Catherine Earnshaw with clinical precision.   

Morjaria creates opportunities for special moments in the production design. He uses Mortimer’s choice to create single seats out of multiple chairs stacked in precarious sculptures to cast awkward cage-like shadows, appropriate for the lead characters who are trapped in isolation out on the moors. The chair sculptures signal that the home has physical comforts, but they are denied to both visitors and residents, who live cold, ascetic lives. Morjaria’s lighting highlights this vision of the cruelty and isolation of Wuthering Heights and the richness of the disturbed Catherine and Heathcliff, who carry color and warmth with them. The design also accommodates a large projection screen which forms a full-size backdrop to the production, reinforcing the oppressive conditions with screen and sound designer Simon Baker’s moody views of glowering northern skies, and occasionally startling the audience with a sudden flight of crows signifying a character’s death. 

Below is a Q&A with Jai about his design and the influences behind it:

What attracted you to this project? 

Jai Morjaria: Wuthering Heights has a complex narrative and what attracted me most was the ambitious concept behind the text as to how we, as creatives, were going to help bring clarity to the story. The team behind Wise Children shows was also a huge draw for me. Even through the interview process and meeting the team it became so apparent that they are a nice group of people who are making gripping and innovative theatre.

What gear were you eager to use and why?

JM: For the project I was really torn about what kit to use. The beautiful design by Vicki Mortimer gave us an open stage floor with a large screen for Simon Baker’s projection design, along with an exposed rig and minimal masking, so not only did the fixtures have to have enough oomph to fill the space but also added aesthetic value when used. Once I realized exactly what I needed and what the balance of profile to wash should be, the choices became more apparent. When you see the show, you’ll notice it’s very gobo heavy and so a good output on a sharp gobo was important. We ended up with an overhead rig of Martin Mac Encore Cold Profiles, with custom gobos, and Viper Wash DXs. Each boom was filled with ETC Lustr 2s and generic par 64s. The visible trusses which were part of the set design had Martin Mac Aura XBs and generic par 64s.

Due to the openness of the space and the projection screen, the majority of the show needed to be lit by only side and back light, as well as a minimal front of house rig of some Martin Encore Warm Profiles and a couple of Martin Mac Aura XBs. The show was programmed by the incredible Victoria Brennan on an ETC Gio.

I believe the production transferred to the National from the Bristol Old Vic, did you change much?

JM: We did quite a lot to refresh the look of the show. It’s very rare that you get a chance to properly revisit and tweak productions that you work on, so I wanted to make the most of it. We were bringing it into such a great space at the National and I wanted to take full advantage of showing off the venue and the scale of the space we were now filling. We also had the challenge of the expanding and retracting set, dependent on the venue during the tour, so this was the first time we did the production in its largest format.

The set seems very cold and almost industrial but the presence of the moors hangs over everything. How did you work the two together?

JM: I wouldn’t say it was industrial, but I definitely tried to give the lighting the feeling of it being more expansive than the containment of the scenes. This highlighted the vastness of the ruthless moors. The set had four pieces of scenery that would truck on and off which gave me the opportunity to use lighting to really build the worlds around them. It’s a very dense and hard story to follow so I really tried to get the lighting to tell a story that complimented the emotional journey behind the text. If you look carefully, even though the play moves fast between locations, there is always a key light the same when we revisit a location.

What was the main challenge and how did you overcome it?

JM: The main challenge for this show was finding a way to do some epic and grand lighting with a set that changes size between venues as well as all the lighting fixtures being exposed at all times. This took a lot of planning and research into new types of rigging I wouldn’t normally use for a theatre show and making a rig more flexible than for a normal touring production.

What are some of your favourite aspects of the design?

JM: This is a tough one. Obviously, I really like the whole thing but I’m particularly fond of the musical moments within The Moor’s chorus. I really enjoy the music, the vision and depth of storytelling within these sections. These moments aren’t classically musical, but still made for exciting opportunities of lighting, allowing me to play with angles and gobos to create a sense of euphoria.

I’m not usually a fan of green light but it does make a statement in this show, it amplifies the themes and atmosphere we were looking to capture. I also loved that the whole design of the show is really fluid, but each state is clear and defined both in location and emotion. I had a lot of creative license to define the parameters of the aesthetic, and this pushed me to be bolder with those choices.

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