David Walters (Interview 27)

I’m conscious that this interview has been quite a while in the write-up. Of course, I have no one to blame but myself and the busy-ness of life since I sat down to talk with David Walters beside a cosy fire after a delicious dinner on the last day of July. However, I’m also going to blame him (at least in part) for the vast amount of fascinating material I’ve had to sift through; I recorded our chat and took copious notes that night.

David Walters is a softly-spoken, articulate, and passionate raconteur. He is also particularly modest about his own achievements and I had to probe to find out more about his work. That night he was genuinely enthusiastic in sharing his vast knowledge on the subject of light itself, something that clearly engages him. What I had thought would be a simple chat about his work as a lighting designer and the challenges of Water Wars – the show we were both then working on – became a wonderfully rich tutorial for me on the philosophy of light, technology, art, and sustainability.

I feel privileged to be where I am right now. I have at my disposal ways of creating light no one else has ever had.

As we get started, David sets the scene like an expert tale-teller. He riffs on the philosophy of light as a metaphor for goodness and knowledge, and moves on to the social history of light creation.

In order to light cities some species of whales were hunted to extinction for their oil, and I learn that the probably well-lit streets of Denmark in the 16-17 centuries were fragrant with the smell of cod-liver oil! Candles were once a marker of wealth – ‘Staying up all night was very fashionable in the 18th century,’ he tells me, ‘if you could afford it.’ Such conspicuous consumption means that one night’s revelling could burn up the equivalent of a worker’s annual salary. However, this form of lighting was also a sustainable product. ‘People ate their tallow candles when times got hard.’ We head then towards the introduction of gas lighting, and I find out why ‘limelight‘ got its name. We move right along in lighting history to the coming of the incandescent bulb and the invention of whole new kinds of light throughout the 20th century. This culminated in the development of the LED (light-emitting diode) which, David tells me, has been around for a while, at least since the 1990s. ‘We’ve learned how to mix white via the RGB spectrum but,’ he notes, ‘LEDs were not very powerful or useful.’ Apparently it just took a bit longer to learn how to ‘cajole more light from them using chemical elements.’ At the mention of physics, my eyes may well have glazed over, so David moved on swiftly to art history. Continue reading “David Walters (Interview 27)”

Greenroom’s Top Posts in 2011

If ever we were in doubt – and we’re not – that reviews are the hottest posts here, the stats for the most-read articles on Greenroom in the past 12 months prove the case.

Apart from the home page – which would have included reviews plus latest posts – here are the  top 5 individual post-reads in 2011:

 

Review: Edward Gant’s Amazing Feats of Loneliness – La Boite & Sydney Theatre Company @ The Roundhouse 1,403
Review: Julius Caesar – La Boite Theatre 1,222
Review: Faustus – Queensland Theatre Company & Bell Shakespeare @ Brisbane Powerhouse 1,059
Review: boy girl wall – La Boite Theatre & The Escapists 1,017
Review: The Removalists – Queensland Theatre Company at Bille Brown Studio 1,017

 

Can we just add a ‘thank-you’ for your reading loyalty. We look forward to growing Greenroom’s readership in what will be our third year of operation in 2012.

Who’s Who on Greenroom?

a phone / telephone book / directory
Image via Wikipedia

Greenroom exists to curate and converse on professional theatre in Queensland. As part of our curating ‘service’ we list companies, organisations and other theatre agencies on our Companies and other groups page.

Some groups have asked to be listed here. Others are just there because we think it’s a good thing to have a comprehensive directory on the site.

We’re currently doing an audit of this page.  If you have changed your site details or now have a new or updated Facebook page, please let us know via the Contact link, and we’ll fix things. We can also put a link to your Twitter page if you’d like that as well.

What we’d like in return is a link from your place to Greenroom or to our Facebook page where you could even like us. That would be sweet.

By the way, just a tip – if you have several Facebook presences – you might want to redirect your former followers and friends to your current page – if you haven’t already.

Thanks.

2011 Groundlings: categories sorted …

Firstly, thanks to those who wrote, tweeted or talked about the categories for the 2011 Groundling Awards and sent in their suggestions.

If you’re a regular here you will recall that we asked for suggestions for 2011. As a result, we have tweaked one existing category, added 5 and lost 3. There are now 14 categories instead of 12 as in 2010.

Here are the new categories:
  • Outstanding contribution by an Actress
  • Outstanding contribution to Multimedia Design
  • Outstanding Contribution to Innovative Theatre Practice
  • Best Musical Theatre Production
  • Outstanding Contribution to Queensland theatre
We tweaked the sound design category to read
  • Outstanding Contribution to Sound Design and/or Composition (makes sense – thanks Sydney Theatre Awards)
And took out
  • Best Community Outreach Program by any Company or Group (confusion from some: What did it mean?)
  • Best Use of Social Media by any theatre or group (everyone is getting good at this. Hoorah!)
  • Outstanding Contribution to the Independent Theatre Sector (why separate the indies from the others … on reflection it seemed a bit patronising)

Notice there is no discrimination between the independent sector and the full-time/subsidised companies – what some persist in calling mainstage for some odd reason, but we’ll go with the flow. It’s everyone and all in. By the way, ‘Outstanding contribution to … ‘ can relate to a single project/performance, or be for a body of work across the year.

So, here are the categories for the 2011 Groundling Awards.

2011 Groundling Awards’ Categories:

  • Outstanding Contribution by an Actor
  • Outstanding Contribution by an Actress
  • Outstanding Contribution by a Director
  • Outstanding Contribution to Set Design
  • Outstanding Contribution to Costume Design
  • Outstanding Contribution to Lighting Design
  • Outstanding Contribution to Sound Design or Composition
  • Outstanding Contribution to Multimedia Design
  • Outstanding Contribution to Innovative Theatre Practice
  • Best New Play in an Inaugural Queensland Season
  • Best Production 
  • Best Musical Theatre Production 
  • Best Co-Production
  • Outstanding Contribution to Queensland theatre

You can nominate up to three of your favourites in one or more of the above categories starting on 1st January.

Look for this button which will appear on Greenroom on 1st January. It will be hot linked to the nominations page and be ready to go. The nomination and voting procedure will also be outlined. So start getting your lists together.

 

 

Image: State Library of Queensland Commons Collection

2011 Groundling Awards – categories please

Last year around about now we launched nominations for the inaugural theatre-lovers’ choice Groundling Awards for the year. You responded en masse back then, but some of you came up with some suggestions for categories which were really excellent e.g., one we recall was for digital design and innovation in production. At the time we said we’d give consideration further along the track, and here we are.

Here’s what we’d really appreciate from our loyal readership: check over the categories we used for 2010 (below) and make any further suggestions of categories you’d like to see in the Comments pane. Having said that, we feel that fewer categories are more meaningful. For example, no distinction is made between work from the independent sector or from the main houses in town when considering acting, direction, design and so on – the boundaries between them are porous anyway, and artists travel between the indies and the main houses with ease. However, should there be separate awards for male and female actors do you think?

So, over to you. The Groundlings cover professional and/or independent theatre in Queensland. They do not consider work in community or amateur theatre.

We will accept your suggestions for categories up to Friday, December 16 and start the nominations process on 1st January. Nominations will close on 31 January, so there will be plenty of time to get your nominations in. Voting will commence on 1st February, with the winners announced, as last year, on 14th February. More details to come in time, of course!

Thanks!

2010 Categories:

  • Outstanding Contribution by an Actor
  • Outstanding Contribution by a Director
  • Outstanding Contribution to Set Design
  • Outstanding Contribution to Costume Design
  • Outstanding Contribution to Lighting Design
  • Outstanding Contribution to Sound Design
  • Best New Play in an Inaugural Queensland Season
  • Best Production by a Queensland Independent or Subsidised Company
  • Best Co-Production
  • Best Community Outreach Program by any Company or Group
  • Best Use of Social Media by any theatre or group
  • Outstanding Contribution to the Independent Theatre Sector