Fefu & Her Friends | CalArts | 2024

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When Fefu and her friends gather at her home to organize an education fundraiser, secrets and conflicts reveal the gender dynamics that shape their daily lives. The house becomes the 9th character, through which public and private spheres collide with unexpected and tragic results. Written in 1977, María Irene Fornés' feminist avant-garde work continues to provoke thought and challenge societal norms, raising timeless questions about women's psyche and identity.

My lighting goals for the production were to create distinct spaces for the characters in Fefu's world to exist in. For Part I, the goal was to create a sense of warmth and invite the audience in from the outside. For Part II, the goal was to have the spaces speak for themselves and represent the mental state of their inhabitants. For Part III, the goal was for the house to illuminate itself from the inside.

To achieve this, I developed a plot that allowed for both internal and external sources of light. We could then shift between these to change the audience's perception of the space. For all of the individual rooms, I created vignettes that reflected each character's internal struggle. This gave the performers room to interact with the space around them and infuse breath into the fabric of the house.