Lighting design in theatre is an amazing thing. The lights can convey as much information and add as much to a play as music can, if done correctly. Different lighting effects can be used to establish the setting, emotion and main points of a scene. They can add humor or point things out to the audience that the average person might not notice without the help of a lighting designer highlighting it.
One of a lighting designer’s jobs is to do just that: highlight. Light is something that people naturally look toward, so by lighting something insignificant, the lighting designer might be able to trick the audience into believing that it is something important (which, admittedly, would be really funny).
Sorry, let’s refocus.
People look to light. When you’re in a house, and only one light is on, that is where you will probably go. We all mock the little bugs that all just go toward the light, even though their lives may be at stake, but, honestly, who hasn’t tried to “get a seven on the sun stare?” We are drawn toward light.
Let’s go metaphoric now.
Why do so many people wander in darkness, when light is what we so clearly desire? Some of them are in darkness because fate dealt them a lousy hand this time around, but some of them are there because they chose to be.
The way I see it, there is little we can do to actually help those who choose to be in darkness. When you’re in a dark room and someone turns on a light, you are probably not very happy with that person. If someone is in darkness in his or her life, and someone tries to force light onto them, there is going to be some bad stuff happening, maybe a shoe-throwing fight or something, I don’t know. Consider, however, just letting your light be it’s natural brightness. You aren’t forcing anyone to stare at it, but they will end up being drawn to it eventually. And if they lose you, they will remember that light, and how much easier it made their lives, and they will eventually seek to find their way out of the darkness. Forcing anything onto anyone will only result in calamity, but by merely being who you are—or better yet: who you hope to become—you will be infinitely helpful in their lives and you can know that you helped them find their own light.
Now, the people who are in darkness just because they know nothing else, that’s a whole different problem. Their eyes have gotten used to the darkness, because there is simply no light around them. They do not know what they’re missing, because they’ve never seen anything besides darkness. Again, we cannot just show up in their lives and force light on them. Their eyes that are so accustomed to the dark will not respond kindly to that. All we can do is hope that a little glimmer of the light that we have will be bright enough that when we pass by them from a distance, they will notice that something is different. We just have to hope that they recognize that they want to reach that light and happiness, and then do everything in their power to reach for it until someone who has it is able to help them establish their own light so that it will be able to grow and light their way and the paths of others’.
I don’t know where exactly this came from. My brain was just thinking about stage lighting and how cool it is that most people look exactly where they're supposed to be looking based on what part of the stage is the most lit. Then this happened. I don’t know if it is coherent, and I haven’t proofread it at all, but I think I need to go to bed, since Ryan is going to be awake soon and he’s going to pester me about being up too late.
Maybe I’ll edit it later. Maybe not. Probably not. We’ll see though. Goodnight!
