Interview | Lighting Designer, Ben Cracknell.

When we think about theatre, there are many incredible people who help to make it happen. In a quest to continue talking about theatre until it reopens again, I wanted to reach out to those people in the theatre industry and gain an insight into their great careers. With that in mind, I begin with my first feature with none other than Lighting Designer, Ben Cracknell.

Ben Cracknell is an award winning Lighting Designer. Since his training at Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama, Ben has gone onto carving an amazing career across the UK and internationally. He’s also an Associate Artist of Curve in Leicester and recently worked on the thrilling production of Sunset Boulevard in Concert at Home. It’s also just been announced Cracknell will be involved with Curve’s production of The Color Purple at Home at the end of February.

What is a lighting designer?

Ben Cracknell’s job as Lighting Designer means he is “in charge of deciding what lights and colours to use. I suppose to a certain extent, there’s quite a lot of control in lighting because ultimately lighting is like the lens that you see a show through. Also I have a role in the editorial nature because I help the audience know where to look, but also use the light to create mood and atmosphere. I help with the storytelling of the show.”

Cracknell has had an interest in theatre since he was very young. He was taken to the theatre at a young age and remembers his trips to the pantomime. “I can remember being amazed by this kind of bonkers thing I was watching. Things I saw in shows then have stuck with me all these years later.” Through school he wasn’t in the technical side of it at all, “I was in the school musicals, so in the very thick of the performing side. It was only when I was in the last year of secondary school that my interest really developed.”

Ben Cracknell was fortunate enough to do some exceptional work experience, “I worked on the original production of Miss Saigon at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane“. During this placement, Cracknell spent a day exploring each of the departments in a theatre from the box office to experiencing how the scenery moves”. Seeing what it was like to work behind a huge musical “really inspired me and from then it sort of set me on a trajectory to wanting to be more interested in designing stuff.” He studied Theatre Studies, English Literature and Psychology in his A-Levels “I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to do but I knew it was theatre.”

Ben Cracknell was Lighting Designer on Chess in Tokyo in 2020.

This was a really exciting time for Ben Cracknell’s developing career as he was given fantastic opportunities through his A-Level Theatre Studies teacher, Tricia Etherton. She gave me lots of opportunities to “work with light”. He went onto study a formal degree in Lighting Design at Bruford College of Speech and Drama before embarking on small jobs in theatres, including working back at Miss Saigon at Drury Lane and at the Cambridge Theatre as stage crew for the show Grease which was on at the time. Cracknell started to get small design jobs and it continued from there on!

Ben Cracknell has certainly carved a fantastic career in Lighting Design over the years. He seems to be growing in popularity for his skills and flare in bringing stories to life with light on the stage, including his work on the hit musical Heathers in 2018. “Last year I was out working in Tokyo where I did a production of Chess with Nick Winston. It was amazing, like the most fun. It was this time last year before we knew anything about coronavirus and all of this. And it was a great experience. Then of course it’s shut down for ages. I worked on the Pantomime at the London Palladium before five or six shows later, it closed.”

“It was daunting going back. It was a little bit like the back to school feeling, but like an extreme of not having done anything since the end of January. I was thrust into doing the country’s biggest pantomime at the London Palladium, having done nothing for ten months.”

Ben Cracknell worked on Pantoland at the Palladium, London post first lockdown 2020.

“Going back to the theatre, amongst all of the differences with masks was a great experience with this show. I remember we started sort of creating the lighting program and the lighting for it, and it was just electric as suddenly it was so buzzing because I just remembered what I loved about it. I love that feeling of as I was saying about like reading the stage. It’s sitting there staring at a dark stage and thinking, OK, which one shall I turn on first? What’s the first statement? How am I going to ultimately the audience are going to say that the house lights are going to go down and it’s going to start. And that is kind of a really you know, it’s not pressure, but there’s excitement in terms of how do you begin? And we had a lot of fun with that show. You know, there was a great atmosphere and everyone coming back anyway because people were so grateful to be working back in the theatre.”

“there was a great atmosphere and everyone coming back anyway because people were so grateful to be working back in the theatre.”

Ben Cracknell, Lighting Designer.

What was it like working on Sunset Boulevard in Concert at Home?

Ben Cracknell then went on to work with Curve on their gorgeous production of Sunset Boulevard in Concert at Home. “There’s several gifts with this show. Firstly, I’ve done it before. Secondly, is working with Nikolai Foster, who I love to bits. I love Curve and Chris Stafford and all of the guys there. But also there was no scenery. It was just lighting. So I guess just I was in this playground where I could do everything. I designed lighting round the stage and I was kind of really in my element. There’s just something about it. It’s a means to an end. I just love that storytelling and making a show in the positive. It all just coming together and being like one part of that is, you know, a real sort of gift, I guess, to do.”

Sunset Boulevard in Concert at Home, Curve Leicester.

Initially with the Curve’s idea for their production of Sunset Boulevard the audience were going to be socially distanced around a revolving stage. “It was such a different thing. Knowing that the audience would be in four different spaces around the stage, I would have to light all 360 degrees of the stage in essentially 40 different locations. I used bars and trusses of light, but they all were pointing in the middle because I just wanted to create this kind of big focus on that space!” The end result with “trusses and bits of scaffolding looked wicked. Nikolai’s vision was so clear to treate the whole thing a bit like the way the tour had been set in a sort of studio soundstage environment.”

When we discussed some of his favourite productions he’s worked on, he often compliments the experiences at the Curve. “I loved Sunset Boulevard. I remember going to the sitzprobe and I just enjoyed it from the second popped up with those ridiculously seductive strings.” He also enjoyed working on Breakfast at Tiffany’s at the Curve as well as the hit musical Heathers in the west end.

Is there any work from other lighting designers that really inspire Ben Cracknell?

“I mean I love Howard Hudson‘s work. His lighting is fantastic and I’ve seen a lot of the stuff he’s done. What he did with &Juliet was really exciting. I really love him for his use of colour. I also love Hugh Vanstone‘s work. If you look at his shows like Matilda and so on and just how he uses colour, I think it’s just glorious. Dreamgirls was beautiful. He had all of those towers of lights pivoting around and it was great. There’s a lot of love in our industry and I love seeing people’s work and there’s certainly lots of people who inspire me!”

You can see some of Ben Cracknell’s work for yourself when you watch The Color Purple brought to your homes between 16 Feb-7 March. You can find out all of the information here.