A single amber special and eleven minutes of near-total darkness. The hardest thing we have been asked to light.
The middle movement is played in the dark. Not a stage blackout with the usual leakage — actual dark, with the exit signs the brightest thing in the room, for eleven minutes.
Getting a public building to that state is mostly paperwork. The rest is judgement: how far can you take an audience down before they stop listening and start worrying?
A single amber special on the leader’s music stand, at four percent. It exists so that people can find something to look at if they need to. Perhaps a third of the audience does. The remainder close their eyes, which is the point.
The fade into it runs ninety seconds. Anything faster and the room feels like it has failed rather than chosen.
Side light only, for fifty minutes. No front, no down, no cyc. Six booms and a great deal of argument.
A pub in the west of Ireland, lit as though the only sources were the ones on stage. Practical-led, and almost nothing above.
Sixteen years pass in one cue. The first half is lit almost entirely from behind and above; the second admits front light for the first time.
That is genuinely enough to start a conversation. Dates and budget help, but they are not the first question — the first question is what the room is being asked to do.