Visceral forces: the noise of brightness and darkness in Oklahoma! and This Is How We Die

ABSTRACT

In this article I explore the visceral affectivity of shifts between extreme brightness and darkness through the lens of noise. While noise is commonly considered a sonic phenomenon, in this article I draw on Marie Thompson's notion of noise as affect to examine how extreme lighting shifts operate as noise, creating interruptions, generating powerful experiential change and foregrounding the capacity for light to work upon bodies. I examine my phenomenological experience of light in Daniel Fish and Jordan Fein's production of Oklahoma! (2022) and Christopher Brett Bailey's This Is How We Die (2014) from the perspectives of an audience member and performer, to explore how these lighting shifts operated as noise. I propose that a consideration of light as noise and the application of primarily sonic theories and vocabularies can be valuable in analysing the experience of light in performance, arguing for the productive value of interdisciplinary languages. The noise of light I put forth brings to the forefront our immediate, embodied being-in-the-world in the experience of performance.

Disclosure statement

The author reports there are no competing interests to declare.

Notes

1 For examples of other light and scenography theatre and performance scholars who discuss or incorporate phenomenology as a methodology, see Garner (1994, 2018), Graham (2018), Home-Cook (2015), Welton (2012), Di Benedetto (2011), Palmer (2013), McKinney and Butterworth (2009).

2 While I focus on the human body in this article, Marie Thompson’s reference to the ‘body’ is not limited to the individual human body, but draws on Spinoza’s thesis in which ‘a body may be the human body, or an animal-body, but it may also be a social-body, a sound-body, or a linguistic-body’ (see 2012, 20–22).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alicia Jane Turner

Alicia Jane Turner is a composer, sound designer and performer working across contemporary theatre, live art and experimental music. Their work in theatre has toured internationally and across the UK, they have performed at venues including the Barbican, Southbank Centre, The Almeida, Schaubühne (Berlin), Carriageworks (Sydney) and at Dark Mofo Festival (Tasmania), and they have been commissioned by organisations including the London Sinfonietta, Philharmonia Orchestra and Spitalfields Music. They were a Bang on a Can (New York) Composer Fellow in 2018, and a London Sinfonietta Writing the Future Composer from 2020 to 2022. They are a PhD candidate at Queen Mary University of London, researching the affective, atmospheric and immersive potentials of sound and light in performance.