Week 6: In the spirit of

This evening I was looking at the jack-o-lanterns my friends and I made and I was intrigued by the lighting they produced. What I found myself thinking about was the flickering of a candle light. For some reason, the varied rhythm of a flame is nostalgic and homely feeling. I was trying to figure out if there is a way to make that on stage without fire. How far can you abstract a flame before it is unrecognizable? The other thing I liked that is particular to pumpkin carvings is the ability to have such sharp stark images through a very warm light source. It was interesting to me that the starkness almost overtakes the warm glow of the light. Does shape do this often when you manipulate it in a similar way? I know that in stage lighting there are gobos that do this type of work but I was wondering if there was a way to shape light on a larger scale that would be visible to an audience.