Output details

Author: “The Operator Connects” Website

The theatre lighting operator is conventionally located in a control room at the rear of the auditorium, out of view and disconnected from the stage action. There is little expectation that the operator will be creatively involved in the moment of performance. Hunt’s multimedia website articulates his research into the role of the operator, and how that role might be re-formed to engage the operator with the creative realisation of the performance event. Hunt’s research comprised historical primary source-based research into the changing spatial position of the operator in the theatre at different periods, a theorisation of the ‘circuit of energy’ between audience and performers, and a practical investigation of the impact of placing the creatively-active lighting operator so as to be seen by both audience and actors.

The practice-research performance, Passages, was a devised work directed by Chris Goode that took as its starting point the life, works and death story of Walter Benjamin. In his role as the lighting operator-performer (‘lighting artist’) Hunt was located in the performance space where he could see and be seen by the audience and the actors – a strategy conceptualised as connecting the lighting artist into the ‘circuit of energy’ between audience and performers. In this position, his role in the making of the performance event was made overt, with consequences for both actors’ and audiences’ understanding of the contribution to their experience not only of the lighting artist but also of light itself.

The Passages performance project was devised to facilitate simultaneous enquiry into two distinct research questions. The outputs related to each of these questions have been submitted to the REF 2014. Output 3 relates to an investigation into the ramifications of a revised lighting control interface. Output 4 articulates Hunt’s research into the spatial position of the lighting operator.