Posted March 31, 2023
My theater director and playwright friend, Art Feinglass, asked me to come down to the Central District and photograph a staged readthrough of his new play. I did so, and though a busy schedule kept me from editing the pics for a whole week, I finally went through them this morning in Lightroom and was able to send them off to him.
This was a challenging event to shoot in a number of ways, and, amateur as I am, I came out the back side crossing my fingers that I got maybe one good shot. As it turned out, out of 281 photos 63 were deemed good enough to edit, and in a flurry of satisfaction I sent all 63 to Art. Was that too many? He probably needs only one or two for his promotional purposes. But at least he has a good pile to choose from, and the upside is I have enough with which to make a blog post! Don’t worry, I won’t dump all 63 in here.
A little backstory. Art runs a shoestring operation called The Seattle Jewish Theater Company, which stages a Jewish-themed play every year, using amateur actors, rehearsing wherever someone volunteers a space, performing across a catch-as-catch-can series of willing venues for maybe two weeks. Yours truly has been in a couple of them (as have many of his other friends), and for the last couple of years Art has called on me to photograph them.
The new play is called “Mississippi Summer” and deals with the alliance between Jews and Blacks as activists in the 1960s civil rights era. The readthrough, with seven actors, was by way of an audition: he’s hoping to stage it at the Langston Hughes Performance Center this fall, and was demo’ing it there for an audience of its managers, mostly black, who will make the call. In short, he’s hoping for a new alliance.
On to the photography. Several difficulties presented themselves.
The first was framing. The play featured up to four actors on stage at once, standing behind a row of music stands well-spaced enough that to get all four in a shot required being so far back as to be doing full-body shots. I wound up taking some of these and cropping later to 16x9 to restore recognizable faces. Mostly, though, I restricted my shots to “action” between three or two characters, which let me shoot closer.
The second was the event itself. I actually love staged play readings with good actors; they’re fully compelling, like radio plays with the benefit of expressions and gestures. Being a reading, however, for 90% of the show the actors’ eyes were all downcast at their scripts! To get a shot with eyes showing I had to pounce on the rare moments when an actor looked up to project an emotion or make a flourish. I got good at it, but there were a lot of shutter clicks the instant after the eyes had returned to the music stand.
My final challenge is one that will be immediately apparent when you see the pics: white balance. I shot the event in color, and the light, while bright, was tricky – the location was a big room like a gym, with fluorescent lights, plus natural light from big windows that changed as the evening progressed, making a single white balance solution unworkable. Plus, I’m simply not good at editing a color photo set. I’m prone to falling in love with each photo as I’m editing it and wildly experimenting until I get the color balance that solves it – regardless of its relation to the rest.
I tried, in the editing, to stick with a single white balance, and would succeed for a couple of pics in a row, but then…well, you’ll see.
On with the show!
Art Feinglass, Director & Playwright
Randy Alvarenga & Fox Matthews
Randy Alvarenga, Fox Matthews, and Juliette Jones
Madison McVeigh, Randy Alvaregna, Fox Matthews & Juliette Jones
Mark Abel and Jim Quatier
Randy Alvaregna & Jim Quatier
Juliette Jones & Fox Matthews
Sandry Abreu & Randy Alvaregna
Randy Alvaregna & Fox Matthews
The Cast & Crew
I should also mention that I don’t have a zoom lens. I’m used to swapping primes, but it’s annoying for a photographer to do that during a performance. Solution – I brought two cameras. On my E-M1 II I had the Panasonic 20mm f1.7 for wide shots, and on my E-PL8 I had the Olympus 75 f1.8 for closeups.
The 75 f1.8 is my all-time favorite lens, and the minute I started shooting with it my “close-ups” became candid portraits. In fact I was specifically after those, and had snuck around before the show snapping pics of the actors, as well as Art and his stage manager Lauren, as they hung out together. To me candid portraits are the essence of event photography, and whether or not Art finds these useful to represent his play, they’re some of my favorites.
Lauren Marshall
Art
Madison
Madison
Madison
Randy
Randy
Juliette
Juliette
Mark
Mark
Jim
Jim
Fox
Fox
Update: The Performance Center people liked Art's play and he will be able to stage it there in October!