Tony Award-Winning GREAT COMET Lighting Designer, Bradley King, on His New Gig, HADESTOWN

Bradley King, the Tony-award winning lighting designer for the Broadway hit Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, is a long-time collaborator of director Rachel Chavkin. They've teamed up again for Hadestown, with King working on the Off-Broadway New York Theatre Workshop production in 2016 and the current sizing-up of the show in Edmonton at the Citadel Theatre.

As Hadestown gets ready for its Canadian Premiere November 11 to December 3, the Citadel's Sydnee Bryant spoke with King about the inspiration behind his lighting design for Hadestown, his working relationship with Chavkin, and the thousands of hours that go into preparing for a show.

Citadel Theatre: When did you first become involved with Hadestown?

Bradley King: I joined the production when it was at New York Theatre Workshop, back in May of 2016. Director Rachel [Chavkin] had been developing it with Anaïs Mitchell previous to that but I came on board for New York.

CT: On a show such as Hadestown, how much time goes into creating the lighting design?

BK: Thousands of hours. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of design meetings, tossing ideas in and out over drinks at a bar, months in advance. Rachel [Chavkin] and [set designer] Rachel Hauck and myself have been meeting on and off for the past year, looking at models and research, discussing how we want the world to feel, the visual language and what the vocabulary of the world is. And that all sort of transitions into drawings and equipment choices and thoughts about how the show is going to be cued. That's really the meat of my job, which started back in May [2017].

CT: What other special equipment is being used for the show?

BK: We're bringing in a lot of moving lights, which are becoming very common on places like Broadway but not so common in regional theatre. But Rachel and I have a very kinetic lighting vocabulary. We like movement in our light; we like a lot of colour changes; cues set to music, so that's all equipment that we've brought in. We have a New York programmer with us, in addition to the Edmonton programmer, so I've got a really great team here - follow spots, my assistant - everyone's top-notch. It's great.

CT: When you say 'moving lights,' is that the robot equipment I've been hearing about?

BK: Yeah, there's a lot of moving stuff in this show in general. There's moving scenery, the moving turntable - I hope I'm not giving anything away. There are things that track on and off that are all automated, and our lights are all automated, as well, so they move, they change colour and texture.

CT: How many lights are being used?

BK: Somewhere around 400, I think, which is actually not all that many in the grand scheme of things. This is probably a medium-sized show.

CT: How many would have been used on a show like Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, which you also designed the lighting for?

BK: We were close to 1,000 lights on The Great Comet.

CT: Is the lighting for this production quite different than the lighting for the NYTW production of Hadestown?

BK: It's different in execution. NYTW was in-the-round and it was a much smaller space that only sat 199 people and here we have almost 700 and we're on a proscenium stage, so it's a much more traditional set-up than at NYTW. I think a lot of our colour vocabulary is going to be the same, a lot of the cueing is going to be the same and how the light moves throughout the piece - we started to develop that in New York and we're going to continue to develop that here. The DNA of the show has a lot from the New York production in it, and we're going to find some new stuff while we're here, too.

CT: How do you decide what the lighting should be like for a particular show? What ideas or inspirations are behind the lighting for Hadestown?

BK: We looked at a lot of pictures of Dust Bowl-era photography. We looked at research of Industrial Revolution-era machinery - forges, assembly lines, and mining equipment. And some of these research pictures had amazing light treatments. Lights coming in through windows in factories, the way the sun sets on the Dust Bowl of Oklahoma - that was all in the back of my head when we started putting the show together and that's informing my colour choices, where the lights are, what the angle of the light is when it hits somebody.

CT: When doing the lighting design for a show, what are the basic steps you take from conception to finished production?

BK: So, there's a way you should do this, which is not always the way I do it. Generally, I have these meetings, I look at this research and that turns into a list of ideas - say, I know I want a big sunset coming from up left. There's a lot of dance in the show, so I know I want low dance-style lighting. That turns into an ideas list. That list becomes, 'Okay, what are the pieces of equipment I need to execute these ideas'? That list becomes the light plot, where all the lights get drawn. And the light plot gets cued into a show.

CT: How does the lighting design enhance the music and story in Hadestown?

BK: I always think of lighting design as visual music composition. In the same way that you have an orchestra with your brass section, string section, percussion, I have colour, different types of equipment that all have their own different tombers, and then I'm sort of composing visually music along with the music of the show. So we're inextricably linked, when all is said and done, in a really satisfying way.

CT: You previously worked with Rachel Chavkin on The Great Comet, and won a Tony award for your lighting design. What's it like working with Rachel?

BK: I love working with Rachel Chavkin. I don't know how many shows we've done now together, probably over a dozen. I've known her since I was 18 and she was 22. She was the directing teaching assistant in my undergraduate directing class, so we have a long history together. We grew up in the same downtown aesthetic and then came of age in commercial theatre at the same time, so we bring a lot of that downtown grit and sweat to our work that I really appreciate. And, we work really well together, as it turns out.

CT: Has any of the work you did on The Great Comet found its way into the lighting for this production of Hadestown?

BK: Possibly. I'm not going to give too much away though. But I think there will be some recognizable things from Comet in Hadestown. But only if necessary - only if it makes sense for the show. But I think it does.

CT: You went to grad school for design for stage and film but your undergraduate degree is in theatre directing. What made you switch?

BK: I didn't like having all the answers or having to have all the answers as a director! As part of my undergraduate studies, I got to direct one show but I also had 13 classmates that were directing shows who all needed designers. I did lights for a couple of shows and I became known as the student who knew how to design lights, so I ended up designing lights for seven or eight shows the year I was directing. I found I really enjoyed it, and it turned out to be a viable career option, so I went from a directing student to a design student to a couple of internships, including one at Seattle Repertory Theatre - which is a fantastic theatre down in Seattle - and turned that into a freelance design career, and here I am.

CT: About how many shows do you work on each season?

BK: It used to be over 20. Now that I have a family, I try to cut back on that; I'm a little choosier in the work that I do. But it's usually between 12 and 15 a year.

Hadestown runs November 11 to December 3, 2017, at the Citadel Theatre. For more information or to purchase tickets, call 780.425.1820 or visit www.citadeltheatre.com.