House of Yes

Ending

Under General Lighting

House of Yes Lighting Plot

After Power Outage

Jackie's Breakdown

Sex Scene/Assasination Scene

Bedroom 3

Bedroom 2

Complete Set Photo

The House of Yes by Wendy Macleod was the first theatrical production I ever designed for. I had the pleasure of working as assistant lighting designer to Wenting Chang. This project took about 6 weeks to design and implement. Along the way, I learned the basics of lighting design, attended a lighting load in and worked with a master electrician, learned to program on the ETC ION console, and taught myself how to use Vectorworks software to do basic set modeling and lighting plots.

This play is about a rich Virginia family, the Pascal's, that gets stuck inside during a hurricane. There are many elements of dark humor interspersed with very tense moments that create an eerie atmosphere for the audience.

The world of House of Yes is very far-removed form our own: one where incest between twins Marty and Jackie is shoved under the rug by Mrs. Pascal, and where Marty's fiancee cheating on him with his own brother is not a wedge in their relationship. To convey this, Wenting and I decided to use very saturated, unnatural lighting. The set was built to appear as if a flashlight was being shown into the house, and we supplemented that by choosing colors reminiscent of filament flashlights and masking the set to the best of our ability.

Masking was difficult due to the construction of the set and the amount of space we had to work with, since the tension grid holding our lights was very close to the set.

I had the pleasure of working with a master electrician to hang and focus lights. She taught me the basics of DMX chaining and power chaining, as well as focusing methods and parts of a light. Wenting taught me the basics of ION console programming, and I took it upon myself to learn some more advanced techniques using effects and color palettes.

Overall, this experience taught me the workflow for a theater production, beginning with initial creative meetings, interspersed with design preview deadlines, and ending with operating a show. I was board operator for this show, so I also learned the process of putting on a show for a live audience.