In ‘Fingersmith,’ a lead role for light
It’s an oft-overlooked part of the theater experience, but without it, the audience would be stuck in the dark. As the lighting designer on the American Repertory Theater’s “Fingersmith,” a Victorian England-set thriller full of twists and turns, Jen Schriever knows her craft doesn’t captivate like a scene-stealing dance number or a mesmerizing monologue, but she’s obsessed with it nonetheless. One of lighting’s key roles “is to transport us moment to moment,” said Schriever, taking a break from one her final technical rehearsals at the A.R.T.’s Loeb Drama Center. For “Fingersmith,” on the Loeb’s main stage, her lighting is in overdrive. With only one main set to work with, Schriever and the design team had to get creative, using lighting not just to convey feeling and mood, but also to quickly and frequently shift locations — from a series of rooms in a London slum to the expansive hallways and library of a...