Schedule

Behind the Scenes

The Author and Playwright

Kids Corner

Lights

In Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse lighting is used to create setting as well as mood and to distinguish between reality and Lilly's fantasy world. The lighting is blended with the sets and costumes to create a world of innocent truth and vivid imagination for young Lilly and her many companions.

From the very beginning of the play, the audience discovers that colors of light indicate different places during the play. For example, the inside of Lilly's house is a soft pink color and her school is a bright, inspiring yellow.

During technical runs of the show and during dress rehearsals, the lighting designer and the director decide on colors and patterns in order to create a fantastical world on stage. Thin sheets of colored plastic called "gel" are used to make the colors of light that you see. To create the leafy patterns on the frames and on the floor, a thin sheet of metal with a pattern cut out of it is slipped in the actual lighting unit. This sheet of metal is called a "gobo" because it "goes between" the light and the stage.

The flashing light effects seen on Lilly in the purse dance and the spotlight on Lilly while she is in the uncooperative chair are created by an attachment on the front of the light called a "color scroller". This attachment includes a sheet of various colored gels, which is either passed across the front of the light quickly to give the changing color effect, or changed and stopped on one color for a moment to project as a spotlight before moving on to another color for a different color spotlight.

Lighting designer Ayun Fedorcha focuses lights with the help of Theater Lab technicians Greta Daughtrey and Greg Goldsmith.