The art behind the scene
I started with my love for the performing arts pretty young. I have always enjoyed watching theater since I was a kid. I’m from Concordia, Entre Ríos. Vacations in Buenos Aires were an opportunity to go to the theater. At eighteen, I moved and started studying Medicine, but I quit after three months. I found a career no one knew about a Bachelor’s degree in Design and Stage Lighting. Some inner desire led me there, and I didn’t care much about what might happen; I felt that was what I wanted to do. That’s where I met Eli Sirlin, a great lighting designer and teacher who is now also the program director. Parallel to my studies, I started working with her as an assistant. The childhood dream began to materialize very early.
My family often traveled to Buenos Aires, so I knew the city. But when I came to study, it was a gateway to freedom. Many aspects of my personal life – not just artistic – suddenly became possible to inhabit. Living that freedom in my own body was incredible. Migrations, whether within a country or worldwide, are sometimes a quest for more rights, more significant margins, or spaces where one can feel better and realize oneself in whatever aspect. I couldn’t have worked as a stage designer if I had stayed in Concordia. I still feel like I’m living in a dream place. I am fortunate to combine what I love – because I love doing lighting – with the opportunity to make a living from it. It takes work to turn our craft into a profitable job in our regions.
Some naming conventions have become outdated, such as distinguishing between technique and creativity or technique and artistry. It’s like thinking that dancers or actors have no method or that lighting designers have no art. Both technique and artistic expressions are initially indistinguishable. The technique is essential in training, but I find it hard to think that every person who works behind the scenes should be understood solely within the realm of technique while those on stage, such as directors and choreographers, fall under the artistic category.
We need to rethink the hierarchy in the creative process, revisiting the idea that things have a top-down structure. When there’s porosity and sensitivity, the creatives involved in a project can mutually enrich each other and open up their work to others. Sometimes, ideas are a germ, and among everyone, it will become clear who takes the lead for a particular moment. The same can be said for costume design, lighting, dance, text, video, set design, or any scenic language. Energy mustn’t just flow downward, upward, and sideways, so the flow of ideas is more porous among different areas.
Choreographers and directors need to learn about the stage’s visual arts, communicate with a dancer and a lighting designer, and speak with a musician as fluently as a choreographer or set designer. In the performing arts, languages work together. We should encourage cross-disciplinary collaboration and, from the beginning of their studies, provide students with a broader understanding of what’s happening around them, keeping an open perspective on what they are coexisting with.
How to narrate through light
How to name, write, and speak about something as immaterial, elusive, and invisible as light? And how do we narrate through light? I am revisiting this topic in the writing of my thesis at UNA. Having a language related to light implies the possibility of conveying an idea to a director or the ability to translate that idea onto the stage. Materializing ideas is necessary to prevent them from remaining solely in emotion. There are three functions for light in the scene: light can be transparent, visible, or resonant.
Transparent light occurs when one cannot discern what is light from the rest of the scene because nothing mainly draws attention to it. In this case, light functions transparently by telling the story without expressing an opinion, participating, or separating itself from the whole – it’s like thinking of an actor who does not overact. It exists in the background, sustaining without taking the forefront, which is significant because it makes things exist, for example, light serving as the floor – nobody sees the light. Still, with it, people would be able to stand there. I learned a lot about this function in “Campo minado”: I initially made theatrical proposals too dramatic. The images were already in what the actors were narrating, so if we focused on them, we would see what they brought. It was fantastic to discover that this absolute transparency gave it more power.
Visible light is the most scenographic type of light. In this case, it begins to have a visual aspect, and one can find a boundary between the light and the rest of the elements on stage. As for resonant light, I cannot explain it because I am still researching it, but it has to do with a mixture where light doesn’t necessarily illuminate what is happening on stage but something that may be underlying in the scene, something with a certain kind of energy.
Light mediates between what exists and how it reaches the eyes. The narrative works in this mediation. Sometimes, light can have its own story, but unleashing its full potential is optional. Sometimes, the best thing light can do for the production is to step back. A code can be built where light ends up having its corporality and materiality – that would be the extreme of light operating autonomously. I don’t believe that the more prominent the light is, the more valuable it is to the story or the project. Light has gradients, one of which is the level of expression it can achieve. Sometimes, the highest level of expression is the lowest level of visibility. It’s like saying that without silence, there is no music. If light constantly expresses opinions or interferes on stage, my perception is that, rather than benefiting, it can harm the overall production.
The discoveries in the process
I’m working on a project with Mariano Pensotti in a play where we are dealing with five layers of theatricality, a matryoshka that unfolds. In this case, the light has to make it as straightforward as possible which layer we are on. But there are no set recipes to follow. Only afterward can I think about how the light worked. In creating discoveries, encounters, accidents, events, things happen right at the intersections. Sometimes, ideas are more prosperous when they don’t have a form and can be shared with a creative team before solidifying. You can bring a fully formed idea or a potential idea to a technical rehearsal. For an idea to have permeability, the conditions must be suitable for it to engage with other languages truly.
The experience of working with Eleonora Comelli, the director of “El Porvenir“, was exciting. She gathered a group of people and laid out her initial intentions. The first meeting was at my house, with twelve of us. I wanted to know what would happen in each scene with the set design, the lighting, the video, and the music. The group was very diverse. There were no predetermined solutions, and Eleonora had an open ear for all proposals: those coming from video, set design, lighting, and music. We all had an equal voice and an equal vote. That made the visual aspect of the play as important as the dance. Choreography was just another creative point, another language. Sometimes, some spaces or institutions create a rigidity that prevents new ways of thinking about dance from emerging. What was revolutionary about “El Porvenir” was that dance wasn’t a central point with other languages orbiting around it like satellites; instead, each language had its axis while coexisting with the others.
Light becomes more interesting when it can connect you to things when it can link you to music, movement, and text. It can even connect you to a transcendent idea beyond a specific image that relates to the totality of what is being conveyed.
Becoming attuned to the real
With the pandemic, everyone stopped working, and the opportunity arose to invest time and effort into the association. That is how ADEA (Association of Scenic Designers of Argentina) gained importance and visibility, bringing together all the visual languages of the stage. Like any struggle and activism, it requires small steps; it’s the work of ants. Significant movements can only be made with that consistency. It’s different to envision yourself in ten years alone than in ten years with an institution or association supporting you.
There are still many rights to acquire, such as the fundamental, minimal right of copyright. Nobody hesitates to register a work with Argentores, but what about the lighting design? All public theaters in Argentina claim the rights of the designers. The designs are our creations, and yet theaters can reproduce them as often as they want, with or without the presence of the lighting designers.
The association is nationwide and is very aware of the work concentration for the set, lighting, costume, and video designers in the City of Buenos Aires. Something interesting during the pandemic is the emergence of new communication channels, like Zoom, which didn’t exist two years ago. Previously, meetings were held in person, and it was unlikely that someone from Tucumán could afford the time and money to participate. Today that is possible, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that artistic and cultural production has become decentralized.
We were all somewhat hesitant to understand the loss that occurred when theaters closed when the culture was postponed due to isolation. More theaters closed than shopping centers. Those of us who work in culture have to find a way to continue economically and emotionally. Only in retrospect can one truly grasp the extent of what was suffered. It’s tough to understand what’s happening when you’re in the midst of grief. But it was also during that time that there was a willingness – not just a readiness because the enthusiasm was always there – to come together in ADEA alongside other lighting designers, costume designers, set designers, video designers, and videographers. The pandemic made me see what I’m passionate about and the level of love and commitment I have for my work. I appreciate my decision at eighteen to follow the path of desire. The lighting design seemed marvelous to me, and it still does. I can’t imagine doing anything else.