This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Brian Sedita: Hey everyone, welcome to Page to Stage.

[0:03] Mary Dina: A conversation with theater makers.

[0:04] Brian Sedita: We're your hosts.

[0:05] Mary Dina: That's Brian.

[0:06] Brian Sedita: And that's Mary.

[0:07] Mary Dina: This episode is part of our series on A Beautiful Noise, the Neil Diamond Musical.

[0:11] Brian Sedita: In this series, we're looking at how certain design elements shape the creative process of a new musical, particularly one based on a true story.

[0:19] Mary Dina: We hope you enjoyed this episode.

[0:26] Kevin Adams: Hi, my name is Kevin Adams, and I'm a lighting designer.

[0:31] Brian Sedita: Nice welcome.

[0:33] Kevin Adams: Lighting design for all of our listeners who've been with us since the beginning. Lighting design is one of the only major design components that we haven't spoken to anyone on Page to Stage with in the past three plus years. So we're thrilled to have you on. I guess let's kick it off by asking what is it about lighting that gives you the passion to keep at it?

[0:56] Kevin Adams: It's an interesting craft. You know, I studied to be a set designer. I'd never had any interest in the lighting. And I went to school for six years, and then I worked in Hollywood as a set designer and art director, but I just fell into lighting. I like that it's still live theater making and live show making. And you know, with designing scenery, you would do so much work up front, and then you get into the theater and it's a lot of sitting around. I like that lighting is like when I'm in the theater, all I'm doing is working, and it's high pressure, and I really have to think of a lot of ideas very quickly. And I like all that, and it's still picture making in the same way that set design was. So I like all that. And it's such a fun, it's such a quickly evolving industry now because of energy changes, and I don't know, it's interesting.

[1:49] Brian Sedita: Have you noticed a difference as technology has developed over the last couple of decades and what that can do for your process?

[1:57] Kevin Adams: Yeah, you know, I started out as like the low tech person because I started lighting my own sets using things I found in hardware stores like light bulbs and fluorescent tubes and stuff like that that I was seeing in the work of artists and that I used in my own home in different ways. I started putting that into shows, and the phone—this was in LA—and the phone just started ringing with all these really interesting artists saying, "Come light my work." So for years, because that's the work I was doing, and I wasn't assisting, and I wasn't doing like car shows or anything. For years I came out very low tech, and I wasn't using all the other higher tech stuff. It wasn't really until I got to New York and worked for quite a few years, and then in Spring Awakening that I started using moving lights and more complicated technology. It's changed so much. It's changed as much as your laptop has changed, or the lighting or all the electronics in your home has changed, and it's really been remarkable how much it's changed.

[3:04] Brian Sedita: And does that change the process?

[3:05] Kevin Adams: I'm still kind of the low-tech person, and I hire—I have young bright-eyed associates around me that understand a lot of those things. I call myself more of like a folk artist, like Grandma Moses. So I'm just sort of in charge of like where the lights point and what color they are and what levels they're at and how much they flash, and the people around me understand how all that stuff works because I don't so much.

[3:33] Brian Sedita: Now you said you have worked with Michael Mayer with Spring Awakening, and you've actually worked with him on quite a number of his shows over the years, and so I'm curious as to how the collaboration has progressed. You know, I'm sure there's been a shorthand that's been developed since the first time working with him. And like what has that done? Have you been able to elevate the work you're able to do because of the shorthand? So I would love to hear a little bit about that.

[3:58] Kevin Adams: Yeah, we met like 30 years ago. We're around the same age, we have a lot of the same cultural interests in art and movies and things like that. So we have a lot in common to refer to. And it took quite a few shows before we kind of like—I used to work with him like every two or three years, and I wasn't quite ready to do the things he was doing, like 30 Modern Millie, and I wasn't quite ready for things like that. But we were doing other kinds of shows, and then since Spring Awakening, we've kind of been together ever since, mostly. It's great. You know, part of a musical, a new musical, directors have so many things to worry about, like the writing of the piece and the songs is so much of it, and then it goes on from there, and like way at the bottom of all that is them worrying about the lighting.

And most directors hire me, they know my work, they know I'll have a smart reaction to the staging and the piece and the design, the set design, and mostly they just leave me alone to do my thing, and I leave them alone. So he'll say to me, I remember on Head Over Heels, the first preview. I was like, "Oh, I want to do this and that and that." And he's like, "The lighting is the least of my concerns, it's looking great, it's gonna look great. I know what you're gonna do, I know you're gonna work hard on it, and it's gonna be great." So it's kind of like that.

[5:26] Kevin Adams: We spend a lot of time together, however, because we're doing so many projects together. Also, I'm a little unusual in that I spend weeks in rehearsal. I love being in rehearsal. I find it really interesting. And this is for musicals, not so much plays and operas. But I sit behind him or whoever the director is for like three to four weeks of rehearsal. And so we talk about all kinds of things, you know. I have a lot to say about the set and the staging and how the set works with the staging and the music department and the choreography. And so we talk more about all that stuff than lighting. I don't talk so much to him about lighting, but I will occasionally say, like, "Hey, I thought this scene could be like this," just to sort of keep him interested and give him an indication of kind of where I'm generally headed, and he'll say, like, "Oh, that's great." But most directors, whatever you say, they'll be like, "Well, that's great, but just show me what you mean when we get to the theater."

[6:28] Brian Sedita: Yeah, I'm sure a lot of it's visual.

[6:30] Kevin Adams: Yeah, yeah. They don't really—words are great, but they don't really understand all the words until they actually see the thing. Then they can say, like, "Oh yeah, it's great."

[6:40] Brian Sedita: So at what point are you brought onto a new project? And I guess specifically, let's use A Beautiful Noise as an example. At what point did—I'm sure Michael came to you and said, "I've got this new show I'm working on," and how did that unfold?

[7:21] Kevin Adams: It's usually about a year before we do our first performance. A lot of these things we do first out of town or off Broadway. Shows like Funny Girl, Clear Day, for me, Hair. I did those on Broadway, and I didn't do them anywhere else before. And that's kind of a hard thing to do. But all the other shows we do and that I do with other people, we have done them somewhere else. Anyway, that's about a year before. And for most of those shows, I'm there from the very first meeting with the director and the designers, sometimes the clothes designer, sometimes the choreographer, sometimes a writer, sometimes a producer. And then a lot of those first meetings are like writers' rooms, frankly. They're not so much about the design yet, they're more about the writing of the piece.

And eventually we kind of get around to constructing a piece that's able to go onto a stage, you know, where something might have had like 85 scenes at one point, now it will have like 42, and it's just an easier thing to design that we can start to wrap our heads around. And perhaps it's a better written piece. I'm not saying A Beautiful Noise was that way, but a lot of shows are anyway. It's about a year before, and then the set's designed and bid, and then I start with a plot, and then we bid that, and then right around that time I go into rehearsal for, like I said, like three to four weeks.

[8:24] Brian Sedita: Your plot that you're coming up with, are you given a sense of the space that you're gonna be in first, and then a sense of the scenic design, so that then you can figure out what you're gonna need to put in the package?

[8:38] Kevin Adams: Yeah, usually what happens is the set is designed, it's put onto paper, it's not bid yet. My associate comes on the clock then, and my associates are usually people I've worked with a lot. They have very good eyes and they understand technical things and they keep everything sort of in the lighting department moving along. Anyway, they go through all the set designs and do specs, electrical specs for the so that the set can be bid. Then the set is bid, but they'll work with me on those things. Like I have ideas about those things, and sometimes they'll say, like, "Hey, have you tried this? This is new, this is kind of cool." Anyway, we bid the set, there's some cutting and changing, and once that lands and the bid is awarded to a shop, then the associate and I will start on the plot.

So I completely understand by that time what the set is and how it changes, and how that fits with whatever text there is and songs, and there's a bit of a guessing in all of it, but you know, we have so many moving lights and things that have a lot of options that we don't get too boxed in with what our guesses are going to be.

[9:57] Brian Sedita: And can you walk us through just assembling your team? So you mentioned at that point you're bringing on your associate, and then how many others and what kind of positions are they in?

[10:07] Kevin Adams: Yeah, so that person that's the first person to come on, and they're all the way through the end, they're kind of in charge every day once we get in the theater. I will actually say, like, what I mean. I have things I want to do, but I like to even say, "You're in charge of me, what do I need to do today?" But I mean, there's clearly things I do too. But they come on. Once we get to load in in the theater, the assistant comes on and they report to that associate. They do paperwork, the plots, the show's loading in, they're overseeing that. At some point, they focus the show because I don't do that anymore. And then eventually the assistant is the follow spot person. I will do a pass-through of a script with all my ideas for follow spots, which for a Broadway musical is usually three, sometimes two, sometimes it's four.

I will give that to the assistant, and then it becomes a sort of proactive design job to design the follow spots. I will tell the director, like, "Hi, this is Vicky, she's doing follow spots. You can talk directly to her." I can usually hear those conversations. Michael's very used to doing that now. So he'll instead of going through me because I'm so busy with my programmer over here, he'll just talk directly to that person. I also bring on a production electrician, which are people I usually have long relationships with. The fellow I used to work with for years just retired, but he had started—the first show he did was Dancing in 1979. He ran the console for it. Those guys have amazing stories from years and years and years of shows.

So I bring him on, he mostly deals with the associate, and then I find a programmer that hopefully I've had a relationship with. So programmer, associate, and this—I'm going to where we all sit in the theater here. Programmer, me, associate, and assistant, and then lurking around is a production electrician. And then everyone else they hire or the electrician, there's a house electrician, they're responsible for. I think they decide who the follow spot operators are. So, anyway, those are all people I mostly know. An entry-level position is often the assistant. Sometimes that's a person who doesn't have a lot of experience. Like for Funny Girl, this fellow who just came out of NYU worked on it because it's not a super busy follow spot show, and I thought he would be great. But for A Beautiful Noise, it's this person, this lady who's done a ton of follow spot shows because it's a much more busy show.

[12:48] Brian Sedita: So I'd love to actually just talk a little bit about the process of when you were in Boston. So A Beautiful Noise just me, but at the point of where when we're recording this, of course, it closed earlier this month in August and is now making preparations for Broadway later this fall. So what was the process like for going up to Boston and lighting using that space? Had you been in that space before? Were you—I did, like, full disclosure, I had I saw it in Boston. It's a beautiful, huge theater, but I'm not sure of like what the stage, like how big the stage really was in comparison to Broadway. So I'm curious if you had more space, less space, what that was like for you.

[13:26] Kevin Adams: The Colonial is very similar in period and layout to most Broadway theaters. It's a little larger than most Broadway theaters because it seats more in the space around the orchestra and the house is just a little larger. Otherwise, the stage is pretty much—we did a footprint that's the same footprint of the Broadhurst, so that when we went to the Broadhurst, it wouldn't be any different.

[13:54] Kevin Adams: So that's pretty much we're just lifting it out and setting it into the Broadhurst because we knew where we were going.

[14:00] Brian Sedita: And is that typical for you know most of these out of towns that you do?

[14:03] Kevin Adams: At least when you know what theater you're going into next. It's rare that you do like SpongeBob, Share. We had no idea where or even if that would be, you know. SpongeBob was like a year and a half before we got the palace. Share. We might have known, but it's not usually very typical. You usually don't know where you're gonna go. So you just sort of cross your fingers and hope that, uh, like well, we hope this fits. Then you have to make some changes, and that's usually more in scenery than in, um, than in lighting. We're a little more flexible. And that's such a beautiful theater. But that theater is very much like working in a Broadway theater in its layout and positions. I'm in rehearsal a lot, and then I went up to like the last week I left New York and went to Boston and I had a ton of, no, I make a ton of notations and drawings and stuff in my script in another, uh, folder and they had focused the show and I got there and situated and then I just started writing cues.

Um, I try to get everything written before actors hit the stage because it takes forever to write cues that have moving lights. And I do not want people sitting around on stage waiting for lighting because that's a lot of money being spent.

[15:30] Brian Sedita: When you say writing cues, do you mean like physically handwriting cues out, or do you mean like putting them into a computer of some sort?

[15:35] Kevin Adams: They're being programmed. So I sit next to a programmer and we start with Q1 and I'll say, "All right, let's look at this page here." So I think these and these and these are gonna point this way, and they're gonna be purple and they're gonna flash and they're gonna do this. And we'll, he'll write, we'll just go through every cue and write, you know, start writing. Um, I had about three full days there. We didn't have many dry tech days. I had three full days that I wrote, uh, I think I got act one written. Now that's written under work lights with load-in still kind of happening. Um, the set that I'm lighting is not there. And somehow you just do it, and I go, I spend a lot of time like on my feet. Like, I'll go up on stage and look at the light with an associate and come back and back and forth. And so I try to get the quality of the light looking nice. It's some miracle, it's some weird miracle that I've learned how to do over doing these shows.

[16:35] Kevin Adams: It's that funny girl said yeah, yeah, yeah. For funny girl, I had six days, and the deck was covered in brown paper, and my programmer and I like if there'd be lumber and a traffic cone, and we'd say, "Well, the traffic cone's looking pretty good," and that little tiny white tag, and oh, there's someone just crossed, and the light on their forearm looks pretty good, so it's looking pretty good. And that was like six days of on brown paper again with like the set loading in. So somehow you do it. There's dry tech, and then we start tech and we turn the lights off, and it's amazing how good it looks already. It ain't done because there's a lot of massaging and adding and changing, but I've got a lot done.

And then I, in the mornings, I have mornings to continue writing cues so I can catch up so that the where we are on stage will never catch up with me. I can always stay ahead of it. Uh, so it's like that. Sometimes, uh, when we get to a number in tech, I'll say to Stephen Hoggett, who I've worked done a lot of shows with, like, I can kind of guess what we're gonna do at this point. Like, do you want to mark through this slowly? And he'll say yes. But sometimes I'll say, like, hey, you know, should we just run this? Because I can kind of guess like it's something they could just run. And he's like, "Yeah, should we do that?" And it's really cool because we run the number with the lights that no one has ever seen or knows nothing about.

And we did that once or twice with, um, Beautiful Noise. And it just makes everyone so excited because it's such an amazing surprise to them. And those two numbers happen to have really great design, lighting design in them, or, uh, really exciting lighting design, I should say.

[18:24] Brian Sedita: So do you remember which songs that you did that with for Beautiful Noise?

[18:29] Kevin Adams: So the two numbers I know Hollyhoe, the last number, Holly Holy, we just ran it with lighting, and I remember Steven was just so like turned on, and it's so fun to I think he's so smart and so talented. It's so fun to turn those people on with like fun ideas and see them excited by it. Uh, I don't recall, I think another one was an, oh that might have been crunchy granola sweet, and I'm pretty sure it was, which is just a remarkable piece of music. I'm wondering, just in terms of your process, I guess vision-wise, I mean that might be a little bit of a heady word, but how do you kind of think about what ideas you're gonna come up with for each scene for your design for colors, how it's going to mesh well with the vision of what Michael wants and what all the other designers have planned?

[19:18] Kevin Adams: Yeah, it's all the design itself, it's in the staging, it's certainly in the space that's being made by scenery. Um, it's in the text. Most of it lives in the text and in the music. You know, is it a scene for one person or thirty people? Is it a scene at the beginning of the show, near the end of the show because there are different tensions and in that arc? Uh, and then as you get to the song and there's so much information in the song about again how many people are there and what's the attitude of it and what kind of music is it? Is it small or big or up tempo or ballad or, um, and I just go from there. I love color. That's what's always made me a little unique when I got to New York City in ninety-six is I was not only the light bulb guy, but I was the color guy.

And I love color, so I'll just lay and lay and lay in color for, uh, for music. But I often predetermine those palettes on paper and then write them in the cues. That's all in the text and in the music. From the production photos that we've seen alone, I mean the color is so evident and so strong, and it just like immediately gives you, um, some sort of emotion just from looking at those photos, like you know the energy, you know exactly like probably I'm sure some of Neil Diamond's fans could maybe even guess what number they are singing just from the photos. Um, I was gonna ask, so with the Beautiful Noise, you know, you have the story aspect that is, you know, of telling Neil's story, um, in two different circles, I would argue.

And then you also have like the concert, you know, scenes, um, where it's really just like a rock show. And so I'm wondering from a lighting standpoint, um, obviously there were those, um, I don't know the terminology, so I apologize, but there were lights on the structure of the set that you can see in the pr some of the production photos, even that obviously emulate more of a concert feel, but were there other techniques or were there other things that you were trying to, um, use, um, for those scenes that would be different and maybe you wouldn't use for the normal, you know, some of the regular scenes between Neil and the doctors, the chatty scenes?

[20:55] Kevin Adams: Oh, just when people are talking, right? Yeah, so like the scenes of like, you know, at the in the recording studio at the desk, you know, with Neil and the doctor compared to those numbers in act two. Yeah, you know, you just have to make in a musical you have to make everything dynamic and a little different looking each time and always sort of interesting to the eye and so that as everything moves along it keeps you engaged. Um, you just figure out a way to light those scenes that makes them look unique to the scene and the where they are in the arc of the piece and all of that. It ain't easy you know I'm saying it so simply but it's that's kind of where when I talk to college classes a lot and I tell them how I design and then I say but what is this design and I that's why I kind of say it's a little bit every man for himself in that part you know like you can either figure all that out or you can't you know I'm self-taught with lighting and my first 10 years were just about learning equipment and how to get a show up and learning to work with people because I'm an only child and then it's like I gotta show up then lighting then it's like oh my god there's a story I have to support so every 10 years I can kind of feel myself moving to a new place and and the craft of all this it's definitely a lot to learn working with people is a thing to learn. Learning all that equipment's a thing to learn. Storytelling is a thing that you just keep learning and learning how to do.

[22:53] Brian Sedita: We spoke with Kathy Fabian in our last episode, and she described the fact that there were, uh, in one of the scenes, or maybe multiple, I haven't seen it yet. A ton of lamps that she and her team had to actually get, and then your team had to light. So can you just describe the process of that collaborative junction point between the two departments?

[23:15] Kevin Adams: Those kinds of things come from different places. And this show the idea for all that happened to come from David Rockwell, the set designer. He had an idea to put all these, I believe he did, to put all these different kinds of, uh, practicals in. Um, yeah, then we just figure out what's gonna go in them, and then it's simple-ish, like when they're gonna be on, and all of that. I mean, he sort of decides what the configuration of them is going to be and, um, where they are, and fine-tunes the composition of them. I guess from a technical perspective, when you're using practical lights on the stage, part of the scenery in the set, are they getting light bulbs that are just standard household light bulbs that I can go get at Home Depot? Or are these special?

[24:02] Kevin Adams: I love that light bulb aisle on at Home Depot and Lowe's. There's a lot of bulbs in that aisle. Um, a lot of those, uh, are, um, more and more is going more and more is turning into, uh, into LED, but a lot of those in the practicals are incandescent, which are being phased out. But they're just regular light bulbs of different shapes and sizes. There used to be these amazing light bulb stores all over New York City. They're slowly disappearing. Uh, and you could find all kinds of cool bulbs. They're all made in China. All kinds of cool bulbs at these stores, but, um, now it's kind of big box stores or online. They're just regular bulbs that anyone could find online.

[24:45] Brian Sedita: Because the actual piece can't handle something of the intensity that a theatrical light would have, right?

[24:51] Kevin Adams: Right, right. These are regular light bulbs that might be some of them might be hundred watt instead of 25 watt. You know, I don't know if you've seen Funny Girl, but we have all of these portals with light bulbs in them, and all those light bulbs are LED, they're not incandescent, and they're only because they're squeezed into these tight spaces, so all this heat would build up if they were incandescent. And these LED bulbs make very little heat, and they look fan, they look like incandescent bulbs from the 1930s. Uh, it's very impressive.

[25:19] Brian Sedita: Are you using that more, using LED lights more? Because I have heard that that obviously they don't heat up and that it's, I mean, it might be more expensive. I'm not sure about, you know, now as compared to 10 years ago, even.

[25:27] Kevin Adams: Well, all this other stuff is being phased out, and, uh, incandescents are being phased out. A lot of theatrical equipment that we used to use just two years ago is no longer made so that we can use LED things. Like there's a thing called scroller, which is a gel string that goes onto a light and color will go by. Those, this is the first year they've stopped renting those. That they stopped making them a few years ago and they were just too hard to repair, and they finally threw all the pieces out. The shop did, all the parts and pieces. So now we're in a post-scroller age. That sounds boring to say, but that was a huge thing in theater for 20 years or so. Now we're in a period after that where it's been replaced by LED, different kinds of LED fixtures.

Ultimately, we don't have a choice. We have a few choices, but ultimately just things are being phased out, and you won't be able to find or use them anymore. Which is all exactly what's happening in residential lighting. Like all the stuff we used to use in our home eight years ago, you know, forget 15 or 20, it's disappearing. You can't buy that stuff anymore. And they want us, the government wants us to use LED bulbs. And they're great. They look great now.

[26:43] Brian Sedita: I mean, I'm sure in your circles it's probably of conversation, but I'm just wondering what happens to all these long-running shows that have designs where, for example, scrollers are in place. Do they have to go in and revamp?

[26:59] Kevin Adams: They do. I don't, uh, I've not had a long-running show like that. Okay, I hope you're happy.

[27:04] Kevin Adams: No, but I do know, like, I do know like, uh, Lion King, they've made over the years every few years, uh, what does a few mean? Six or seven or eight years. This is a guess, but they all go through and overhaul things to switch to LED or different kinds of things. I know they just did another some more overhauling with more LED going into the show. Phantom, you know, Phantom of the Opera, which was like from 1985. That was another century of theater craft.

[27:34] Kevin Adams: And that show has, uh, I think had a few upgrades in the kind of equipment that's in there. I remember looking at Miss Saigon near the end of its run, and someone took me up to look at stuff, and there were lamps that had been there covered in dust from another period that had been there for years and years and years, like, oh my god, you're still using this, you know. So those shows are completely changed. Most of the shows I do are sort of pop rock spectacle. So I love the rock parts and just like so get into the rock parts of the Neil Diamond show because it's just so much fun to do, pushing light back at the audience in different ways. But headway, I mean, uh, you know, Passing Strange and Extra Normal and Headwing, Spring Awakening, all that stuff had light that in different ways, yeah, yeah, that pushes back at the audience. So I love that.

[28:28] Brian Sedita: Well, I was actually gonna ask though, so obviously knowing that Neil Diamond is a real person and he had concerts. Was there any kind of inspiration that you were drawing from the lighting maybe from his concerts that you were trying to, um, take inspiration from, or maybe even try to like emulate for some of those scenes in act two?

[28:46] Kevin Adams: No, no, it's fine. I mean, I was just curious. I wouldn't know, but I'm just curious. It's hard because equipment's so contemporary and bright now, it's hard. Like when I did Hair, it's just hard to recreate lighting. You can recreate a, uh, evoke, like, uh, you know, some style, but to recreate the lighting of those periods, our lighting is so different and so much brighter now, and so contemporary that looks so different. When I did the sheriff show, I did look at 10 years of, um, on YouTube a variety shows, and that was very interesting too. That I kind of was able to set through light bulbs and things into that period, but it's really hard to recreate the 70s and lighting and the 80s and lighting.

[29:32] Mary Dina: Yeah, I mean, especially since I feel like a lot of the stages that Neil was performing on that I've even just from the some of the videos that I've seen are so long, the stages are so wide in comparison to the Broadway theater stage. So they have more to play with. I guess maybe the light could come in the different angles than they could at a Broadway stage.

[29:49] Kevin Adams: Correct, yes, all true. What's your favorite part of the process?

[29:54] Kevin Adams: Oh my god. Uh, when I'm doing a commercial production, like, you know, non-profit is like public and places where people buy subscriptions, and sometimes they show up and they've bought a subscription, uh, pr subscription, and like, oh, what's this show gonna be? This is one of the show, this is not the show they really wanted to see, and they bring their husband, husband doesn't want to bring their. So that's all like a little like, uh, commercial shows on Broadway are so cool because you open the doors, and all these people have made an effort to buy a ticket to come see this show, and with them they bring this energy in. They're a kind of makeup, like what's this audience? What are their ages gonna be like?

Who are they? Where are they from? What kind of energy are they bringing in? What are their expectations? What energy are they coming with? I love seeing who comes in the door, and then I love watching them watch the show. I find it so interesting. And I'll go back and often check in on a show just to see like who's there and how many people are there and who are they, and what ages are they, and where are they from? And are they excited about this still, or what are they responding to? And I find that part just so cool, so exciting. I'm excited to see how the audience responds to. I mean, they in Boston they were singing along the whole time. I mean, Boston is like the place to have a Neil Diamond musical, so I'm excited to see what the New York audience does. We'll see, we'll see.

[31:21] Brian Sedita: And I'm just curious, one more final question before we go into lightning round. Do you have any specific takeaways from the Boston out of town that you'd like to implement, uh, looking forward to Broadway? And, uh, I guess what stage are you in now preparing for Broadway?

[31:38] Kevin Adams: We're layering in some more audience, different kinds of audience blinders around the proscenium. We're adding in more layers of, um, uh, confetti, different kinds of confetti haze. We have several different kinds of haze we're adding. Uh, so effects, we're gonna add more effects to the show. And then, you know, we shut down because of COVID after like five previews, and the show looked good, but I had so much more I wanted to detail and work on, so I have a lot of show to work on still. So we're adding a lot of things to it. There's a lot of rewriting going on. There's some new songs being set in different ways. Um, it's gonna be interesting. It's gonna be a much stronger show. I thought the show was pretty exciting before, but, um, it's gonna be a much better show.

[32:29] Mary Dina: Actually, I just had another question, just thinking since you were talking about the space of the Broadhurst. So when we've spoken with, um, folks who work in the sound departments of various shows, they talk about how necessary it is for them to be in the space, um, to understand how a sound, you know, is affected just in the physical space, because it's obviously gonna be different from theater to theater, even on the same, you know, on the same street. What is it like for you? I mean, is it obviously you, um, you know the Broadhurst has been around for a while, so you may have been in there at one point or another, but do you make a point to try to get into the space before load in at any point to understand the space, or is it really just kind of like every space is, uh, you know, the same thing?

[33:12] Kevin Adams: Yeah, I don't really. They're all a little similar. Uh, my associate will go to most of them I've worked in. I haven't happened, I haven't happened to do a show at the Broadhurst. Um, but they're all kind of similar in the same positions and the relationship of where they are, and, uh, I haven't really done that because I've been busy with Funny Girl and Beautiful Noise Out of Town. They're not that different these theaters. Until you go to like theater and the one that's in the round and I'm sure, you mean it definitely makes more sense that your instruments would be more affected by costumes, by the people, by the sets that are on the physical stage, which yeah, but also when I get into the space, you know, I'm there like 10 to 14 hours a day for how long am I there? Uh, two and a half months. So I got a lot of time to respond to the room and figure things out. And you know, I'm gonna be there a lot at some point.

[34:06] Brian Sedita: Amazing. I am ready to go into that.

[34:09] Mary Dina: Sure. Um, what is one thing in the theater industry that confuses you?

[34:14] Kevin Adams: Oh, that confuses me. You know, Funny Girl, from our very first performance, the audiences were insane for her on stage. Like they were just booming with roaring applause. I'm not blind, I could see with my own eyes people who weren't convinced. But, uh, to have a show like so thoroughly hated, I've never done a show that's been so hated by press and online and just people I know, and but then the reaction is so different. Every single show. I saw like 30 performances with her, and they just like the audiences went crazy, and it wasn't those stupid woo-hoo girls. These were like people who I watched them. These were like women who were sobbing and who were just sitting on the edge of their chairs, like so engaged in what she and the show was doing.

So I can't, you know, the biggest mystery to me is that like the machine that is reaction to a show, and you know, I've done shows that have gotten great reviews. We can't find an audience, and there's certainly shows running that got not very good reviews that have audiences, and that is still a, um, mystery to me, and I've stopped guessing.

[35:21] Brian Sedita: That's great.

[35:23] Mary Dina: Um, what are three adjectives that describe your ideal working environment?

[35:28] Kevin Adams: Oh, I, I like a lot. I'm very aspergery. I like a lot of calm and quiet around me, like no pins clicking or change. I really like a lot of quiet around me. Um, what's that? Quiet? That guy is that an adjective? Yeah, quiet. Yeah. Uh, what else? A calm, and you know, it's not calm, but, uh, and just like not too intense. Those aren't really adjectives, but you know, Michael sort of keeps things light in a really nice way, and he's always very optimistic, and those are very good traits of his.

[36:01] Mary Dina: Amazing.

[36:01] Kevin Adams: Um, is there something in your process as a lighting designer that you find unique to you?

[36:06] Kevin Adams: Yeah, no one I, no one is spending as much, I don't think, as much time in rehearsal as I am because most people are doing a lot of shows at once, and I don't think they find the work that interesting, maybe. Uh, I really like spending that much time in rehearsal, three to four weeks. And often when if I'm working with a new director, like, what are you doing here every day? It's like I like being here. This is so interesting to me. And then they start to see, like, oh, he's got things to say about all this stuff, maybe. Um, I believe that's unique to me. Maybe, you know.

[36:42] Mary Dina: Do you have any books, resources, podcasts that you find helpful to you in your process as a lighting designer?

[36:49] Kevin Adams: Well, I'm always, uh, I go to museums a lot. I look at a lot of wall art. Uh, I go to, uh, museums in New York or wherever I am, and I go to galleries. I live near, uh, Chelsea gallery area. Uh, I'm looking at stuff all the time, and I'm looking at, uh, I watch films, uh, a lot, movies, and read about them, and, um, I look at visual things a lot. Uh, to have ideas for things I'm not working on yet, and maybe to have ideas for the thing I'm working on, uh, or just to expand my mind with a palette idea or whatever. Uh, I spend a lot of time looking at those things. Books, eh, not so much anymore.

[37:32] Mary Dina: That makes sense for from a lighting perspective. It's more visual, it's more hands-on. Is there one job in the theater industry that you would trade jobs with for one week?

[37:41] Kevin Adams: Oh, one job. I've had to go, I've had to stay, I've had to choreograph numbers because there's no one around to choreograph a number. Like the director, a director is a play director, and the choreographer is like never around. This was a show that came to Broadway. And I kept saying nicely every day, like, you know, that they really should move around when they see that boy and that girl sing that song, and day three, they really should move around. And day five was like, you know, I look around the room, there's no one, so I was like, all right, can I go on stage and help them like find some choreography for this, please? Because they can't just stand there and sing this song to each other. Uh, so you know, you do a lot of helping each other make a show.

[38:26] Brian Sedita: Yeah, wow, right?

[38:28] Kevin Adams: Yes, I've, we've not heard that before.

[38:31] Brian Sedita: Yeah, the things you do to help each other make a show.

[38:34] Kevin Adams: We've got a new choreographer when we came in, Sergio did it, and I told him, like, we really need your help, and especially that you're gonna see that boy and the girl do that thing, and I actually staged that, so please help us. That's where we are now.

[38:52] Mary Dina: Uh, what's a hobby that you have outside of theater?

[38:54] Kevin Adams: Oh, I collect things. Uh, what else do I do? I have a house and I work, I'm the groundskeeper in my yard. Uh, I go to the gym. What do I do? I go see movies a lot. Uh, hobby, I guess probably my yard in the summer. I'm gonna start telling people that I'm the groundskeeper to my house.

[39:10] Brian Sedita: Yeah.

[39:11] Kevin Adams: I like that.

[39:12] Brian Sedita: Yeah, I'm like the yard.

[39:13] Kevin Adams: Well, that if you say garden, everyone's like, do you grow tomatoes and pair? It's like no? I grow flowering perennials and trees and shrubs and bushes. I do that in the summer. I go to the gym. It's kind of boring. I don't know. I go to museums a lot. That's a hobby. I could, I also buy a lot of, I may, I'm always making things like t-shirts or photos or I'm always got some funny project going.

[39:40] Mary Dina: All very creative.

[39:41] Kevin Adams: I wear outfits too. Like, okay, this is what's unique about me is when I go to work is I'm kind of known for wearing outfits, which I like about Broadway is you can really wear whatever you want to work. Whatever you want to wear, you just have to.

[39:53] Mary Dina: Describe such outfits.

[39:55] Kevin Adams: Oh, um, it's a combination. I wear come to go song mixed with like Salvation Army and Adidas and Nike and sports gear and, uh, just funny things, funny t-shirts and pants and shoes. People love my Nike shoes and just the whole combination of it all for a six 60-year-old man. People are like, wow, okay. I mean, people on the street talk to me about my outfits all the time. Kids.

[40:21] Mary Dina: I love it.

[40:22] Kevin Adams: Oh yeah, yeah.

[40:23] Mary Dina: Okay, so for our last question, um, we would love to know what is the last great piece of theater that you've seen.

[40:29] Kevin Adams: Uh, I don't really go very much because it's so expensive and I probably watch more movies now than I see of, uh, live shows.

[40:38] Mary Dina: Cool.

[40:39] Brian Sedita: Well, thank you so much for, for, uh, being our first lighting guest on the podcast. It was a pleasure having you and, uh, can't wait to see Beautiful Noise for myself. I'm getting so jealous of, uh, Mary having seen it already.

[40:51] Kevin Adams: Awesome. It's fun. There's a lot of great stuff in it.

[40:53] Brian Sedita: Thanks guys.

[40:55] Kevin Adams: Thanks everyone for listening to this episode of Page to Stage.

[40:58] Mary Dina: To keep up with us, you can find us on Instagram and Facebook at Page to Stage Podcast.

[41:02] Brian Sedita: And if you're enjoying these conversations, we would really appreciate it if you could take a couple minutes to rate and review us wherever you're listening to this podcast.

[41:10] Mary Dina: Until next time.

[41:11] Brian Sedita: That's Brian.

[41:12] Mary Dina: That's Mary.

[41:13] Brian Sedita: We'll see you later.

[41:14] Mary Dina: Bye.