Projection — if there is one word that sums up the future of theatrical design, it has to be “projection.” It's a brave new world where projections are moving off the screen to add a new layer of interest on the entire stage, and images of actors are being projected from remote locations, mixing live performers with their digital counterparts or replacing live actors altogether. What does this mean for all the designers of today not just in projection, but also set, lighting, and sound, and those of tomorrow? Will we exist in an entirely digital world?

“I think that we've already come close to an all-digital scenic design on Broadway,” says lighting designer Donald Holder, who lists recent productions of The Woman In White and Ring of Fire as examples that relied heavily on digital video to create the impression of three-dimensional “scenery.” Yet Holder thinks the jury is still out on how successful digital scenery can be as a stand-alone idea. “In my opinion, pure video as scenery, despite the huge advances in image quality, still tends to look flat and two-dimensional,” he says. “Only when a video image is broken up onto multiple surfaces arranged in three dimensions and/or integrated as part of a three-dimensional composition does it become interesting.”

A good example of this is the Los Angeles Opera/Lincoln Center Festival production of Grendel, for which Holder designed the lighting and director/designer Julie Taymor conceived digitally generated imagery as one of the many layers in Grendel's visual landscape. “By projecting video onto scrims through which highly kinetic three-dimensional objects were revealed, the video took on a more magical and floating quality and added greatly to the depth and mystery of the stage pictures,” notes Holder.

As for live actors onstage with their projected peers, “When done properly, the results are breathtaking,” says Holder. “I think the juxtaposition of something real and an identical video image in the same stage picture can be incredibly useful in very specific situations. With careful lighting of the video image versus the real actor, it's difficult as an audience member to determine which image is real and which is projected. This technology makes the role of lighting designer more multi-layered since he/she must also be intimately involved with the creation of offline video sequences so that the light onstage matches the recorded event.”

“It appears that theatrical design is continuing to evolve into a medium that's much more abstract and minimalist than ornamental and detailed, operating increasingly on a metaphoric rather than a realistic level,” Holder adds. “Much of this evolution can be attributed to the plays that are being written today and the issues that these works explore. More and more, I see design work that is original and bold enough to become the signature of the production, not in a self-indulgent way, but by providing a unique window into a dramatic world that's exciting and completely unexpected.”

Holder has also been teaching lighting design at CalArts, a process that opened his eyes to the way emerging young artists are thinking and where these future innovators will be leading us. “The juxtaposition of video, LEDs and other new technologies with more conventional scenic elements is causing an exponential expansion of the theatrical vocabulary and, in my opinion, is a reflection of the huge transitions that are taking place in our world today,” he says.