ACT 1 BEGINNERS PLEASE !
But wait!
-where are the lights? We often take lighting for granted but the more you know about lighting the more you can engage your audience and impress them with a memorable experience. Learning about stage lighting sometimes seems a mystery to those of us who Tread the Boards, so to speak. Lighting design and technology can seem like black magic with all its strange terminology and jargon.
As a Drama Group, we were very fortunate to obtain a grant, which we used to purchase our own lighting rig and kit. Knowing what was required was beyond our knowledge and we only knew what to purchase because a young man of fourteen advised us!
Who is the young man you ask?
His name is Tom Mulliner and we at Abbey Foregate (SURC) Drama Group were very fortunate to obtain Tom’s expertise in lighting. He had always been involved in lighting school musicals and offered to work with us on our productions. A young man with such talent was always going far in his chosen profession and after lighting approximately eight plays Tom was off to college to gain more knowledge.
He is now based in Ipswich and working professionally as a lighting programmer. Tom’s work takes him far and wide to many venues around the world and to date he has worked in over 130 theatres! The more recent productions he has worked on are Tell Me On a Sunday (UK Tour), Be More Chill (West end), &Juliet (West end), Leopoldstadt (West end), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Sao Paulo) and Titanic (UK Tour).
Catching up with Tom, he informed me that the past fifteen months have been very quiet in terms of theatre work. It is now starting to pick up again and he is currently working on ANYTHING GOES at the Barbican, which opened on Friday 23rd July 2021.
Tom was so pleased that we have productions in the pipeline for the future and” hopes they go well and the group go back to doing what they do best!”
As I mentioned before a young man with such talent was always going to go far in his chosen profession and that is what has happened to Tom. We are so proud that in his early days he worked with us on our productions and send him all our thanks and best wishes for the future.