White Light in good spirits for Ghost Stories
- Details
Written by Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman, Ghost Stories has been terrifying theatregoers for over a decade. The show invites audience members to enter a nightmarish world, full of thrilling twists and turns, where their deepest fears and most disturbing thoughts are imagined live on stage.
The lighting designer for the show is James Farncombe, who comments: “What was clear from the outset was that the design needed to be as much about the absence of light as much as anything else. I really like this idea that it’s more of a darkness design and that, due to the nature of the staging and the various tricks therein, I had to hide as much as I revealed. Ultimately it’s all about creating that atmosphere for an audience.”
Farncombe continues: “The lighting works in tandem with Nick Manning's extraordinary sound design. There is a slow, shadowy build-up of tension. then each jump moment is part release, part punchline, and all very much in the spirit of a B movie. To a large extent, Ghost Stories is about the anticipation of what might happen next, what might be lurking in the shadows.
“When the show is firing on all cylinders, it really creeps up on the audience. You could draw a parallel with Hitchcock’s idea that the suggestion of things left unseen is far more potent than anything we can reveal on stage or screen. The scariest possible thing is always very particular to an individual so, to a large extent, we expect the audience to populate the shadows with their own fears.”
James has worked on the show since it first started life at the Liverpool Playhouse in 2010. And whilst there have been significant advances in lighting since them, James has found himself drawing on more conventional fixtures ever since that initial run. He comments: “As the show is now a decade old, it actually predates my first encounter with LED fixtures such as Lustrs etc. Instead, the rig is actually made up on conventional units with no scrollers and no moving heads yet this is something that works to great effect.
“We spent a lot of time managing spill and flare, so Source Fours became essential for precise focussing, and they make up the bulk of the rig. In terms of other fixtures, there are a number of birdies hidden in the set, a series of little LED strips, a few practical lamps and three pinspots. Everything needed to be small as there is very little room in the fly plot, or in the nooks and crannies of the set pieces, so size was a big consideration.”
This marks the first time that Ghost Stories has embarked on a UK tour. As such, James had to ensure his rig was completely tourable. He comments: “With the show going up in two days in most venues, we have made a few nips and tucks here and there. That said, it’s still more or less the same lighting rig as was featured in last year’s Ambassadors run; largely thanks to Andy Taylor doing an amazing job of making the impossible possible. That said, the show has gone through almost 10 years of slight development and distillation and we are now at a point where we know the most effective set-up in which to scare our audience members night after night.”
Ghost Stories began its tour at the Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham and is currently playing at the Grand Opera House, York. It will continue to tour across the UK before concluding at the Nuffield Theatre, Southampton in May 2020.
(Jim Evans)
