If you hope either to learn or to improve your craft as a lighting designer, if you hope to elevate your work to the level of art, or if you yearn for recognition of your work
then you should pay close attention to everything Dennis Parichy shares with you in this remarkable book.
- Marshall W. Mason
In writing this book and so sharing his rich experience and thoughts about lighting design, Dennis has discharged a huge obligation to colleagues and future designers. I believe they will all end up as indebted to him and his creativity as I am.
- Athol Fugard
In Illuminating the Play multiple Tony Award - nominee Dennis Parichy shares the personal and technical experience of transforming the pages of a script into a fully textured lighting design that frames and reveals the world of the play.
All lighting design must support a play's artistry while working within the limitations of space, set, time, and budget. In taking you through the design process for lighting four plays (Talley's Folley; Ashes; Six Characters in Search of an Author; and String of Pearls), Parichy shows how he struggled artistically and technically with the peculiarities and conditions of each. He describes how he wrestled with each design, how he established goals for it, and, finally, how he turned it into workable plots and hookups. He further illustrates his thinking with an indispensible treasury of nearly 250 sketches, notes, photos, and diagrams on an accompanying CD.
Illuminating the Play buzzes with a theatre's hectic energy, flows with the collaborative spirit, and brims with discussions of technique and technology. Read it and take forty years of top-notch lighting experience into your next production.
