- Sun
Narrative description: Adrienne Kennedy’s Play Sun is a poem-play with one character (Man) and an environment that is at once responsive to and triggered by his emotional states. Of the objects in this environment, the main elements are the namesake suns: a red, orange, and yellow sun. In the script, they seem without unique identities– though they seem to respond to unique triggers, they also often act in simultaneity. The participant will effectively operate in the space as Man, surrounded by orbs of light that will illuminate both independently and with them.
Sun is one of three Adrienne Kennedy plays I’ve been designing for this year, and it has been by far the most puzzling to our team. The suns and everything else in this environment are assigned incredibly specific stage directions, implying their importance and uniqueness in the play, yet despite months of collaborative dissecting of the script and dramaturgical research, our team never reached a discovery about what they actually represent, both as unique parts and a whole. It’s an abstract projection of a nonspecific person’s mind– an environment without simplistic organization or logic. We accepted this and moved forward, but as a personal project, I’d like to dive deeper and invent a system of logic for these suns, with their actions dictated by participants.
Necessary materials:
- Cylindrical encasing, either:
- Blackout curtains at least 7’ long + circular rod (probably sourced online)
- Lauan lid: no more than 4’ in diameter; CMU scenic shop scrap or Home Depot)
- (3) spherical lamps
- (3) light sources to be embedded in lamps
- 1 speaker
2. Additive color mixing
Because additive color mixing with light is less intuitive to our eyes compared to subtractive mixing with pigment, I find that no matter how many times I learn the science, there’s something magical about how it works. Using the logic of
Necessary materials:
- 3 light sources, RGB, either:
- 3 color changing LED lightbulbs (Drama lighting dpt.)
- 3 white light fixtures with red, green, and blue gels (Drama lighting dpt.)
- shadow surface, like a projection screen (Drama VMD dpt.?)
