"Life begins again with summer", wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald. Perhaps that’s why, in this season of sunny days and endless nights, everything seems possible—especially for the young.
Memories of those summer dreams continue to burn brightly in our hearts, even as time fades them—just like it did for the Mundy sisters in the fictional Ballybeg, Ireland, in Brian Friel’s award-winning play Dancing at Lughnasa, which won a Tony Award in 1990. Told through the eyes of the sisters’ brother, Michael, as he recalls an August summer in 1936 when they shared a country cottage, the play revisits the often-bittersweet events that have shaped the family’s life since that distant summer.
In a recent staging of the play at Rutgers’ Mason Gross Performing Arts, the evocative and emotional visual backdrop was created by a richly textured lighting design from Maya Strauss, who relied on the color rendering power of the COLORado Solo Bar 4 by CHAUVET Professional.
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Working with director William Carden, scenic designer Louis Meagher-DiEllo, and assistant lighting designer Kai Williams, Strauss achieved a beautifully balanced mix of color, shadows, darkness, and light angles that evoked mid-20th-century rural Ireland, while highlighting a wide range of emotions—from joy to sorrow.
The play revolves around a family trying to survive in rural Ireland, which is why the cyclorama became a key element of the scenic design, representing the Irish sky as a constant, evocative backdrop. But since the story is also told as a memory, the cyclorama took on an even more significant role: it helped convey the emotional depth of the narrative and created an abstract and infinite atmosphere, explained Strauss.
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“The cyclorama was essential for creating the atmosphere and energy of the show, so the production wouldn’t have been possible without the COLORado Solo Bars”, Strauss continued. “These fixtures were powerful—when they turned on, they brought the space to life in a way other lights couldn’t. The diffusion was excellent too: with the right filter for half-cyc, the Solo Bars lit the full height of the cyclorama with minimal drop-off. I was also impressed by their color rendering capabilities. They could produce vivid oranges and reds, while still delivering rich blues without losing intensity, allowing us to represent the characteristic Irish light with depth and nuance”.
There were many emotional moments in this production of Dancing at Lughnasa. One of the most memorable for Strauss came near the end of the play, when the family gathers one last time before their lives begin to fall apart.
It’s a beautiful and heartbreaking moment—everyone together as the narrator watches with nostalgia, unable to change the past. They are silhouetted in a gorgeous golden glow, bathed in the last sunset of summer, said Strauss.
