“A suitable environment to tell a story. The rest is just spotlights and gimmicks”. Juan Gómez-Cornejo Sánchez.
We had the privilege of attending the rehearsal of “La vida es sueño” by Calderón de la Barca, staged by Helena Pimenta in front of the C.N.T.C., last March 18th 2014 at the Pavón Theatre. Once again a “Gathering of Light” organized by AAI began. This time there was something special and it was palpable in the atmosphere created among the attendees. On this occasion, it was our colleague and president of the association Juan Gómez-Cornejo, who was going to introduce us and talk about his work.
Juan is an artist well known for his enormous work in the theatre: as well as lighting designer, technical director in the now defunct Sala Olimpia (former headquarters of the Centro Cultural La Corrala, C.N.N.T.E. and later CDN) and later in the Teatro Central in Seville during the run-up to Expo 92. Later he focused his work as a lighting designer. He has collaborated with the most prestigious directors and set designers, as well as in the major public and private production centres. He has won three Max awards, three others from the ADE, Ceres Theatre Award, Gregorio Prieto Fine Arts Medal and in 2012 the National Theatre Award, being the first person dedicated to lighting design to obtain it. He dedicates his art mainly to the field of Theatre, Opera, Dance, Music and Zarzuela.
Excited by the wonder of his creation of light for Calderón’s play, we were eager to attend the explanations he was going to give us. And this happened in the best possible place: at the foot of the stage, facing the disturbing and beautiful scenography of Alejandro Andújar. In that space we gathered, listened to the master’s words and saw the many images with which he illustrated his talk. Not only illuminators, but also a good number of students of scenography invited by Professor Cayetano Astiaso, a colleague of AAI, as well as other people close to this world of light and theatre were present.
In this splendid atmosphere, Gómez-Cornejo gave us a simple presentation and shortly gave way to the design that was the focus of his presentation. He spoke to us at length about the set design, its complexities, the difficulties it presented for the lighting, how he had to “negotiate” details with the set designer Alejandro Andújar. A closed box: a clean, forceful space, closed yes, but with openings that play without stopping during the course of the performance. Powerful architectural details on the walls, with baroque and mannerist reminiscences, cold textures, old and damp wood, full of hollows of all sizes: monumental hollows, small portholes, even getting through cracks just for interviews. All these holes were traversed by light. The illuminator needed a few more inputs, in such a “text” theatre the faces must be seen well: spaces were opened, these invisible to the spectator, between beams and vaults to be able to “throw light” from them.
The great challenge was to accomplish a very complex dramaturgy in a single physical space. A central axis – hatch, skylight – as an “Axis mundi” that unites the underworld of the cave with the sky of the palace, the world of shadows and the world of light, a hollow at the back from which “they enter” or behind which the great events take place, the hollows on the left lead us to the outside, those on the right to the palace interior and everything comes together in the space that the spectator sees. Gómez-Cornejo worked almost exclusively with color temperatures: cold or warm “white” lights achieved through corrective filters, or different light sources: tungsten (with its correctors), HMI, and light touches of fluorescence. To emphasize the two powerful luminaries (fresnel with HMI lamp that offered the plenisolar light), the VL 3500 throwing us in dive from the skylight the jet of cold light that filled the gauze tube, the masterful use of PAR 64 spotlights giving us very cold effect thanks to the L200 corrector placed in fan in tips of rod in mouth scene, sizing the actor at the same time that was followed by the frontal cannon, those same PARs also with L200 arranged on both sides flush with the background beams, the use of the lowering of the colour temperature of the tungsten when lowering the intensity, in PAR spotlights without filtering in the hatch, the small PAR 16 to obtain very sharp shadows, the contrast of the warm or cold correction according to the interior or exterior origin. The very important games of shadows: projected by the scenography or produced on the ceiling from the skylight… and so many things that I would like to go on explaining and of which the master gave precious and pleasant explanations. He showed us other works of his, such as the recent one on “La verdad sospechosa” by Alarcón, in a totally different aesthetic, peaked space, smooth walls in continuous transformation by means of hollows and pure colours.
We talk and share. At the end, after the presentation of the AAI souvenir to the speaker, there was an emotional moment when he and Cayetano Astiaso (Tano) remembered their meeting in the Sala Olimpia 35 years ago and the organization of the course “The magic of light”.
And magic presided over this 5th Gathering of Light.
Full video of the meeting, recorded and edited by the students of CIFP Jose Luis Garci (AAI collaborating partner)
