This year, OSC’s senior production is A Midsummer- Night’s Dream. The play is a comedy written by William Shakespeare. It portrays the events surrounding the marriage of Theseus, the Duke of Athens, to Hippolyta, the former queen of the Amazons.
My role in this year’s production is the master of lights. My passion for technology drives me to support as many parts of the school I can through my experience in the field. Last year, although I was not officially the master of lights, I took charge of them for the Spring Gala while Hazeem Azhar (the official master of lights) had to go for track practices. Within this time, I had learnt how to use the lighting board, control subsets and set scene from scratch. Hazeem had left OSC at the end of last year, and he had insisted that I took his place for all the performing art events for the upcoming 2 years. At first, I was very indecisive of this decision, as I knew it would have been a very big responsibility, and I was unsure of how it would have affected my work and extra-curricular schedule. However, no events clashed and Ms. Jackson (The Director) was very flexible with timings, so I decided to take on this role.
November 12th was my first rehearsal, it was very relaxed and straight forward as my main priority was to understand the play clearly and pay attention to potential lighting cues. I only received my lighting cues a day before production, which was very nerve wrecking for me. Mr. Trae Hicks (Co-Director) and Mr. Lakshita (Head of Technical Support for The Performing Arts) had already decided exactly what type of lighting each scene needed, which made my job far easier.
On the 29th of November, we had an all-day rehearsal where we spent roughly about 9-hours focused on the cues and two run-throughs, and this was the first time I had ever seen the lighting cues. We made changes throughout the rehearsal, however, by the end of the day, I was confident with my cues. I split half the cues with my partner Oliver Smith, where I did the entirety of the first act and the final scene of the production while he did majority of the second act. I had to work very collaboratively with Oliver as we would remind each other when cues were about to come up and prepare sets together when the cue was complicated. I found that this experience prior to the production was quite challenging, as I had to learn all my cues within a day before the performance nights. However, I think of this experience as a strength, as I will have to face or be put in similar positions later on in my life, and I believe this is a skill worth developing now rather than later on.
During the production, I found that there was an additional level of pressure on me, but I did not let it affect me during the show. Showtime started at 7:30, however, the rest of the tech crew and I had to be at school by 6:15. During pre-show we did a lights run-through and checked in with Mr. Trae that all our cues were scripted as he intended. When the show finally started, I was prepared and ready to begin. Overall, the two nights went quite well and as planned. I had a lot of fun working with Mr. Lakshitha and the rest of the tech crew, as always. The performance was conclusively a very big success, when considering, lights, sound, acting, cues, etc. and I cannot wait to do lights for the winter Gala (the next arts event I will be doing technical work for).
Tan in her zone hahah :’) Good Job!!