LUCE estratti LUCE 324 _ Calafiore _ Cristian Zucaro | Page 7
The harmony
of light on stage
A conversation with Cristian Zucaro
W
hat facts and circumstances led to your
entrance in the theatre world?
My interest in dramatic art began when I was a
child. As a teenager it was a game of relations
with the world around me. During military
service, to escape from that world that was so
far from me, I took acting classes when I was off
duty; a creative group was formed in that
context, and I started to follow that path. When
the military service was over, I joined the
theatre company Laboratorio Teatro Settimo
directed by Gabriele Vacis. Thanks to the cultural
policies of the times, in the early Nineties, it
was easy to join a company, where one could
work and train professionally, and it was there,
as I explored the different jobs in the theatre
world, that “I saw the light”. Again, I must refer to Laboratorio Teatro Settimo,
as we met there in ‘95. A few years later, we
had each followed our own path after our
experience with Vacis, and we met by chance in
the street in Santarcangelo. She was working on
the play Mpalermu, which later won the
Scenario prize in 2001, and she needed a
lighting technician. And from that moment
onwards, we both found an excellent harmony,
which has grown over the years. I must say that
in plays like Vita mia (My life) or, more recently,
Le Sorelle Macaluso (The Macaluso sisters), and
generally in all the shows Emma puts on stage,
composing very powerful images, starting from
the rehearsals she often stimulates an
immediate input in me, to find the light for her
theatrical sequence.
Who were your teachers, your points of
reference?
Initially the theatre group at Laboratorio Teatro
Settimo, and after that there have been a
number of masters that I have met and that I
continue to meet – the theatre world is a great
resource where there are teachers everywhere –,
some lighting designers I have worked with or
who I have spied on, and also some stage
electricians and other workers specialized in
theatre and shows; Goya and Caravaggio, and
also my daughters’ drawings. I believe that if
you pay attention, in every moment of our life
we can come across teachings, we may be
taught lessons; I feel that if we are permeable
we can follow a path that we can customize,
thus creating our own personal vision of the
world. It may seem inappropriate to speak of theatre
lights in a place that was born for shows en
plain air, but actually the theatre is the first
place where man has searched, created and
elaborated an aesthetic and symbolic value of
light, starting from the Hellenistic age. What
type of reaction did this element create in your
view of Heracles?
I had a strong reaction when I visited the Greek
theatre in Siracusa about fifteen years ago. I was
a visitor and while I was there, the trilogy
Prometeo incatenato (Prometheus Bound), Le
Rane (The frogs) and Le Baccanti (The Bacchae)
directed by Ronconi, was being set up. It made
me travel back in time, I was fascinated by that
experience, I saw the thread that connected
3,000 years of history of mankind in that
theatre, a sensation that is still vivid in my mind
today.
How have you worked with Emma Dante in the
How was your long collaboration with Emma
Dante born, and how was it consolidated?
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direction, the scenography and, last but not
least, in the theatre-architecture and the
ancient archaeo-natural scenario of the Greek
theatre? Can you reveal some of the pivotal
points of the last show you set up?
As usual, Emma gave me a great amount of
freedom to interpret her directing choices with
my lighting. Obviously, since the show begins at
the end of the day in a theatre as unique as
this, I abandoned myself in contemplation of
the place, of the natural light, the sunsets, the
twilight. I tried to follow the nature of the
events, searching for a light that could support
the natural light almost without being seen and
at the same time that could accompany the
specific moments of the tragedy, searching for a
balance, and also bearing in mind that each day
is a new day, spring is progressing, summer
draws near and the light changes. The initial
idea was to create a sort of back-up natural
light, an illusion that would prolong the day
time, the sunset, and the twilight a little longer,
up to darkness.
What are the requirements, from the point of
view of lighting design, of working in a
scenario in which everything (or almost
everything) can be seen? The stage of the Greek
theatre in Siracusa, I imagine, requires a
strongly site specific approach! A fascinating
and unique creative challenge!
This aspect strengthened my decision to discard
easy illusions, and to work in harmony with the
space, using very few lighting fixtures, each
chosen for a specific purpose.
What are the first steps and processes that you
follow when a director offers you a
collaboration? On what inputs/outputs is the
collaboration with the director, the
scenographer and the actors based on?
There can be different approaches to a new
theatre performance. I usually start from the
text, and I start to find the sense of the play in
my mind. We then sit down and discuss the
play, and analyse suggestions that are shared
with the creative group, the project guidelines.
Generally during rehearsals, I dedicate time to
listening, to perceiving what reaches me, and
abandoning the logic, and at times even the
sight, and trying to find a sort of music; in this
way I see the images that clearly need to be
translated with regard to the stage, the
costumes and the sound.
Lighting in your shows often has very strong
contrasts, and at the same time it is clear, often
it is single-directional. What creative and
technical processes do you use to focus your
language, your visual sign?
I do not know if I can explain this. It is a process
that is constantly underway and I try not to stop
too long with findings and things that I know
how to do. I try to trick myself, inventing
obstacles even though apparently there aren’t
any. I do not recognize my visual sign because I
try to evolve around it, and move ahead so to
say; I can say that I search for a light that is
organic, with the scene, with the actors, and
that has a soul.
In the past years we have seen a growing
dissolution of the scenography on stage, and
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