For the past several months, Studio 54 has been Heather 吉尔伯特’s office. The famous nightclub-turned-theater recently opened its doors for 内心的声音, one of Broadway’s newest plays, with 吉尔伯特 ’92 serving as the production’s lighting designer.
The play stars Mary-Louise Parker—known for roles on hit shows like Weeds 和 The West Wing—as an Ivy League professor caught up in a suspenseful dilemma.
吉尔伯特 works to create the characters’ world through a strategic deployment of lights, 她选择了哪个, 还有定时转换. Each decision takes into consideration how the actors operate within their realm, 吉尔伯特说,, 和 aids in fostering the right atmosphere onstage.
“演戏是世界上最难的事情, 和 so I still think it’s magical when I watch these people,吉尔伯特说。. “我有一份最好的工作, because I go to work every day 和 people get in front of me 和 they tell stories.”
While some may imagine her job to be immensely technical, 吉尔伯特说, what’s more important is knowing how to research 和 underst和 the world the characters live in. That means spending quality time with the script 和 learning about the motivations of the actors. It also involves a lot of collaboration with the playwright, director, 和 her fellow designers.
她刚出道的时候, 例如, 吉尔伯特说, there was no such thing as light-emitting diodes, 或发光二极管, 现在已经很普遍了(有led吗, but they weren’t used in theater lighting instruments). The technology involved with theater lighting is developing so rapidly, 她说, that the ability to continually learn is critical to her work.
Although she’s now a highly successful lighting designer, 吉尔伯特 didn’t come to 赌博娱乐平台网址大全 thinking she would pursue a theater career. 来自休斯顿, 吉尔伯特 enrolled in an introduction to theater course, 她形容这“令人难以置信”,” that opened her eyes to the various elements of a production that must all come together to make it work.
蒂姆·弗朗西斯, technical director in 赌博娱乐平台网址大全’s human communication 和 theatre department, 是吉尔伯特的导师吗, who recalls his patience as she grilled him during office hours on the ins 和 outs of lighting. Francis taught her to focus a light with all of the other lights on—normally done with those lights off—a talent that still distinguishes her skillset to this day.
“It makes me so much more attuned to light,吉尔伯特说。. “That’s what makes it so much easier for other people to work with me, because if automation needs to fix something 和 they cannot turn all of the lights off, 我仍然可以继续和大家一起工作.”
A major in theatre also gave 吉尔伯特 some of her closest friends from 赌博娱乐平台网址大全, classmates that she still texts 和 emails with on a regular basis. She’s even made road trips back to 圣安东尼奥 for Fiesta or when she was named a Stieren guest artist back in 2004.
吉尔伯特, 谁又机智又会笑, says her liberal arts education informs her work each day, whether it is from a research background or a grounding in history, 心理学, 社会学, 甚至是科学和数学. She says that no matter what career someone pursues, 他们应该在赌博娱乐平台网址大全上戏剧课, in no small part because of faculty like Francis or Steve Gilliam.
除了她的时间 内心的声音, 吉尔伯特—who calls Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood home—has also worked on productions such as Ms. 布莱克竞选总统 和 舞蹈的国家他们都是Steppenwolf剧团的成员， 的细节 作家剧场，还有 洗尸者，如何保护自己， 和 我们开始相信，全部由路易斯维尔演员剧院提供.
吉尔伯特, who’s lived in Chicago for the majority of her adult life, holds an MFA from the Theatre School at DePaul University, 和 she now teaches at Columbia College Chicago. 她不工作的时候, 吉尔伯特正在研究她的下一个假期, preferably it if involves sunsets (she once went all the way to Sagres, 葡萄牙, 接纳他们).
In particular, 吉尔伯特 loves Chicago’s theater scene because of its unpretentious nature. She says while it’s definitely difficult to reach the city’s top echelons, no one in Chicago’s theater network begrudges someone else for going back 和 doing a production, 例如, 在一个没有钱的小店面里. 对吉尔伯特, what is more important than the prestige 和 glamour of Broadway is the artistry 和 integrity of a project.
Still, even she admits Broadway holds a certain allure.
“就是在这些时刻，我想, ‘哇, 21岁的希瑟, 坐在科茨的赌博娱乐平台网址大全, 或者在露丝·泰勒的院子里,’ 和 I totally dreamed that I would work on Broadway one day, 所有的事情都会发生,吉尔伯特说。. 它确实做到了.”
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