Because the Night is an immersive theatre show that takes place across more than 30 custom-built rooms in the Malthouse building in Southbank. Because the Night draws inspiration from the story of Hamlet and is re-imagined in a new play, set in a fictional 1980s logging town called Elsinore. During the show, audiences can freely explore the world as the performance unfolds around them.
Director and creator Matt Lutton has conceived of Elsinore as a place where everything is in flux; the ruling family is cracking, the timber workers are revolting and the forest is fighting back. Lighting designer Amelia Lever-Davidson’s ambition for the lighting is that it would act as a central dramaturgical device in the work, and she wanted the space to be as much of a character in the piece as the performers.
Every room has different needs and functionality; some rooms are experienced more as installations while others are important locations for the characters. Amelia wanted audiences to experience each room as a fully realised location, where each room provides a small narrative fragment of the town of Elsinore.
Because the Night was dreamed up during Melbourne’s second lockdown with the creative and production team beginning working on the project in mid-September. Because the Night came with all the challenges we became familiar with in 2020 such as collaborating remotely, limited workforce numbers on-site, and commutate while wearing facemasks.
“Malthouse Theatre has been incredibly ambitious in making this project, and successfully navigated all of the challenges of returning to work throughout Victoria’s slow recovery to a “Covid normal”,” commented Amelia. “It has been incredibly inspiring to watch their production team create a show of this scale in just six months.
“Because the Night is the biggest theatre production I’ve worked on and the realising of the design required making use of the skills I’d developed from my experiences in other fields such as architectural lighting, film, television and events.”
Unlike most theatre shows where a lighting rig is created using standard theatre fixtures, almost all of the lighting is being generated from practical lamps and hidden sources. The project worked in reverse from the usual process you have as a lighting designer, with the initial decisions being based around cabling infrastructure. Most of the lighting is installed in ceilings and walls so the cabling needed to be decided first, always keeping in mind what would be installed later.
“The show has a roaming audience, which means there is no fixed viewpoint,” said Amelia. “As the actors are speaking text, we had to find a balance between lighting the performer from multiple angles while maintaining the dark aesthetic we were working within.”
Because the Night differs from most theatre productions as the bulk of the lighting is made up of practical fixtures. The interior design on the show is incredibly detailed so the lighting fixtures had to closely align with the room’s particular aesthetic.
“There is a wonderful proximity of audience and lighting, which allowed us to embrace being quite limiting with the number of fixtures and much darker visual environment,” added Amelia. “Intelligent lighting has been used sparingly, and only used as required.”
The show is set in the 80s which created a significant challenge for the lighting team because it was difficult to source light fittings from that era as most of the lighting technology is no longer available.
“We wanted to embrace an incandescent/early LED aesthetic, and the level of detail for the practical fittings was unlike anything I’ve done before,” remarked Amelia. “We were incredibly specific with our decisions on bulb style, wattage, questions around whether could modern halogen bulbs were appropriate or would only incandescent be possible?
“The bulk of the lighting is made up of incandescent wall and ceiling fittings, fluorescent battens, custom units retrofitted with LEDs and a handful of theatre lights purchased from Clearlight. Most of the fixtures are sourced through Gumtree, Facebook Marketplace and other theatre companies. I wanted to prioritise reusing second-hand lights for environmental reasons, and often fixture types and quantities per room had to be determined by what we could source. We were fortunate that 1980s style wall sconces are currently in fashion, as one of our biggest purchases was over 40 fixtures that fitted within the maze of passageways in the space.”
The show spans two theatre venues, loading docks, car parks and other buildings outside of the theatre, so the production team had to establish a lighting and audio system that could split the programming workload across multiple zones. Each area is divided into a zone with an ETC ION console and QLab computer per area. All of the lighting is triggered via QLab, which added additional complexity to plotting and technical rehearsals.
“The biggest challenging was tracking what lighting events were happening across all of the rooms at once, and ensuring there was dialogue with one another,” explained Amelia. “Often the lighting is guiding audience members to performance events, so if a scene were taking place in one room, we would often consider reducing the adjacent rooms to guide the audience there. While we never dictate the experience of the audience, we do provide subtle clues.
“I created detailed paperwork to track the lighting as a timeline across the 33 spaces. Each room is numbered individually, which then refers to the cue list number and the channelling in the room. Cue numbers relate to scenes rather than advancing numerically through the cue list, which allowed us to track lighting events per room more easily.”
With the proximity to the fixtures, the level of detail in the plotting of the lights was often just changing things by two or four per cent. The show required quite intimate knowledge about what each fixture was fitted with and how it would respond to the slightest change in level. Amelia often refers to the output from the lighting console while plotting and it was a challenge for her to adapt to programming without one.
“The show differs in its operation, from a standard theatre show, as it is not a called show,” she said. “It was decided early in the process that the performers needed to have ownership over their own timing, and as a result, they cue most of the lighting and sound themselves.”
As Because the Night is set in the 80s the AV and sound technology are mostly played back through VHS and cassette tapes. Surveillance footage appears frequently in the show, and most of the videos have been recorded onto and played back via VHS tapes.
Amelia is currently working on multiple projects for RISING and Dark MOFO. Later in the year, she’ll be working on SYSTEM ERROR for ChamberMade, Hydra (Double Water Sign) and Julius Caesar for the Sydney Theatre Company.
“We’ve been so fortunate in Australia and I often have to remind myself what a privilege it is to open a show when so many of the theatres around the world remain dark,” she added. “I felt such a sense of pride being able to make theatre in Melbourne again. The arts community here took a huge hit last year, and I am very proud to have been part of a production that shows what remarkable work our artists are capable of. Malthouse Theatre has risen to the challenge of making a show that will excite audiences and bring people back into the theatre.”
Photos: Pia Johnson
