Allen Hahn

Nick Kaye: How do you deal with the colour of the video, because the lighting must affect the perception of colour of the video.

Allen Hahn: Yeah well its interesting there is always a lot of back and forth initially about ‘that’s not the colour, everything looks too cool’ or ‘that looks to warm’ - to finding the right balance between the colour of the video and the colour of the light. It seems to me - you would have to ask James Gibbs about this - that the video we were working with in the family scenes at the beginning of rehearsal was quite a bit warmer than it ended up being, as was the colour in the light Jennifer Tipton and I had initially chosen. It was apparent almost immediately that that the color in the light wasn’t going to work. So, both video and light went through various color iterations before the right balance was achieved between the video background and to the performers in the family scenes. And, of course, brightness comes into play here too, because as the brightness of the lights changes, so does their color.

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Allen Hahn: Having worked on all but two of the projects that the company has done, I think it is part of a progression about learning how use video to greatest effect. The first thing I did - the first thing the company did – was MASTER BUILDER (1994) but that was a horse of a different colour anyway. The project we did after that was JUMP CUT (FAUST) (1997), where there was a very large video screen over the stage and a lot of close-up live camera work - and to me the most successful presentation of that piece was in a tiny little space that doesn’t exist anymore on Lower Broadway called Threadwaxing Space, because when you got into a bigger space with that show - in filling a very tight frame on camera – an actor would turn his head to speak to the other character and there was a great rush of light ten feet tall above the stage pulling your eye away from the live actors on the stage where you almost couldn't perceive the turn of the head in comparison. So by being in the small space on Lower Broadway there was much more parity between the close-up camera image and the size of the actor and I think that was kind of a discovery we all made, although I never remember speaking to anyone about it. It seems to me that that balance has become much stronger between the physical space and the projected world in each of the subsequent pieces. So maybe, now, this is laying the groundwork for a way through the neutrality of some of the earlier works – I don’t know.

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Nick Kaye: It was very interesting talking to Peter Flaherty, because he was very clear about video in theatrical context – about thinking in a theatrical context.

Allen Hahn: On a technical level it goes back to what I said before - I have seen full stage projection used by other companies in a way that then requires the performers to be in extremely dim light and I rather wonder what the point is. I imagine that there are companies out there who got a grant where there is a little money behind them, perhaps for the first time, that are doing these experiments with video, where video appears above the title of the piece, if you will.

see also: playing to camera | projection |

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