Jamison "JAK" Kissh

As many of you know I’m a lighting design student at Boston University and have a general background in technical theater. A few weeks back I went to see Avenue Q at the New World Stages in New York. After waiting an hour to get tickets at TKTS in Times Square I and a friend of mine were very excited to go see the show that we’ve heard so much about. Going into the show my head immediately pivoted upward to see what was in the air. It was a fairly small plot conventional wise however there was a heavier than expected moving light plot (some sort of VariLite). I nearly immediately noticed that only two of them were marked in a position other than their home position. As soon as what I assume was cue 2 was taken mostly all of the movers immediately moved into their marks for their first cue. After that I noticed that they were poorly marked throughout the show and even had a few live moves which to me felt like lazy programming.

Moving on to the conventionals with scrollers I was pretty happy with their marking and moves (slow and deliberate) however during intermission they randomly moved, LIVE! Which I felt was unnecessary and very poor planning, not to mention strange.

The lighting in general though was also quite interesting to me. For this show being Howell Binkley’s fourth Broadway show and sixth major design in his career the lighting seemed very random and at many times I felt as though it wasn’t really aiding the story, or what was happening on stage. I nearly felt a disconnect at some times, it was kind of dissapointing for a designer to went on to become a Tony Award winner, however I guess everyone needs to do at least one “bad” design in their career.

Either way, I really enjoyed the show and would absolutely see it again at some point. Later to come, my thoughts on the performance. Stay tuned!

PS. For the first time in my time in a theater I witnessed an HPL “catastrophically fail” and seemingly shatter a Source Four lens.