Checking Out: Kathy Pryzgoda

You began your career in theatrical lighting and then traveled throughout Europe, designing lighting for operas and rock concerts. What came next?
By the end of my theatrical years, I called upon a friend who worked in television. He gave me an opportunity to work on a high school kids’ news show called Channel One News and hired me as the lighting director; I had done very little, if any, lighting for television.

Was it hard adapting to something so new?
Because television is so detail-oriented, I was looking at a face instead of a stage, and the talking head was my new stage. There are different techniques of lighting in television than there are in theater, but what makes lighting “good” is the same.

What about retail?
Retail is where I feel like it’s all come together. Like the idea of theater, retail’s a place I can be more theatrical. I think of the product as an actor on the stage; how do we really make that product look fabulous?

What makes good lighting?
[When teaching at UCLA,] I emphasize how lighting can create contrast, both good and bad … using layers of light to create drama in a space – but there are times when you can have too much contrast and that will hurt a space.

And how can retail designers take advantage of contrast?
Lighting the vertical. It’s about what we see when we come into a space. And if we’re not lighting on that vertical plane, we’re not really taking advantage of lighting the way it should really help bring you in.

Do you ever apply the lessons you learned in theater and television to your current work?
Absolutely. I think of all the years I sat in the empty audience [seats] in the dark when setting up [a theater] stage for a show. That’s how I look at my architectural projects. I’m always pulling myself back and thinking: “How does the whole piece look?”

How do you handle rejection?
There are times when people shoot things down and it’s hard to take. I think the biggest thing is to just not take it so hard and remember that things can be lit in different ways. I know the right way and the wrong way, but there’s a lot of in-between.

Smoke Signals
Pryzgoda lit the stage for a Depeche Mode opener during an 80s tour. Smoke machines were a hot commodity for the small band:

“I thought, ‘Here’s my chance to smoke the stage.’ I got on my headset and said, ‘Can you start by smoking the stage?’ We wanted it to get smoky first and then I would call the lights.

The band started and I said, “You can stop the smoke,” thinking it would go away … And the [tech] said, ‘It stopped.’ I said, ‘Seriously, stop the smoke!’ The lead vocalist started singing and I told the [tech] to pick up the lead vocalist [on the mic] and he said, ‘We can’t see the lead vocalist!’ We’d never used smoke machines of that intensity before.”