I researched and compared lighting in naturalism and lighting in postmodernism and decided to combine the two to create a balance – it is naturalism lighting with a postmodernism element.

Naturalism strives to create an illusion of reality, whereas postmodernism is a reaction against modernism and chooses to attempt to make the audience ask questions instead of giving out answers. When putting this into lighting, there are many directions in which you could take, which is why I chose to balance them as I thought other lighting designers for Caryl Churchill’s work had also chosen to do. It creates a sense of reality but also has the audience questioning things, because although it’s set in a real place the dialogue of Heart’s Desire isn’t natural, with the unrealistic interruptions and the constant resets – the dialogue makes the audience ask questions that aren’t going to get any real answers, so I felt like my lighting should also reflect that. It looks realistic but at the same time it isn’t. Although where the lights are placed are predominantly what you would find in an actual room, the colours are not, and although I hadn’t totally decided on what I wanted, I knew I wanted blue light and probably a different colour light for the interruptions as they are the biggest mood changes in the entire piece.