In this interview, veteran lighting designer Brian MacDevitt recounts his creative process for the Broadway production of "Betrayal." He began with a preconceived, minimalist, surgical vision of a sleek gray set and terse lighting to match Pinter's sharp dialogue. After an early meeting with director Mike Nichols, who felt the play needed more sensuality, MacDevitt shifted his concept toward a naturalistic, intimate aesthetic inspired by painter John Koch’s depictions of light in Upper West Side interiors. To achieve moving, natural light on actors and walls, he proposes using a video projector as a sunlight source, filming light filtered through leaves against a white background and projecting it onto a matte‑created window in collaboration with projection designer Finn and the set designer. The goal is to capture the play’s accidental, deep, and sexy love through dynamic sunlight, gauzy curtains, and subtle shadows. MacDevitt also shares his teaching philosophy: encouraging students to view projectors not as mere devices but as light sources that can create believable, atmospheric environments.
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For this, for Betrayal, what I'm working on now, I had what a preconceived idea about what the play was, and I came to meet with Mike Nichols, and it's kind of, I don't know if you know the play, but it's, it's, it's, it's Pinter, so it's got really terse language and really, it's really sharp, and I felt fairly surgical. And I imagined it being this like really sleek, clean production. I, you know, if I were doing the set, I imagined like a big gray wall of carpet, you know, like infinity psych of gray carpet and just 2 or 3 pieces of furniture on the stage and really smart, surgically spoken language. And, you know, because I thought it was this power, I think typically and traditionally it's the kind of power power struggle between these people. So I came with a lot of information like that and to share a lot of stuff with Mike, and he's like, he's— his idea was different. He said no one's— he doesn't feel like the show's ever fully succeeded in every— in any form because it's not sexy enough, and there's potential to do a really sexy production of it. My description of it now is like it's kind of a hot mess of people who really love each other and can't help loving each other. There's very little, like, cerebral moves by people. It's just like accidental love and deep love and sexy love. I mean, they're just like a big pile on top of each other, you know. It opened my eyes to something that I didn't— I wasn't prepared for. So that whole idea about coming to the first meeting with all your ideas, and I had I can't remember what the kind of research that I brought, but it was things that were minimal and clean. And now, actually, I've been using a lot as a reference this painter John Koch, K-O-C-H. And it's all naturalism. It's all natural, beautiful. All of his paintings are of models or himself in his apartment on the Upper West Side. But it's all about like real light. So what I'm excited about, and I don't know if it's going to work, is I'm using a video projector as a lighting source, so as a sunlight source. So I'm, I am filming like this. I'm filming light through leaves against a white background, and I want to project that on the stage. And Finn, who's the projection designer, is going to matte it into a window, and the set designer is helping us pick out what that window would look like. So I want to see like movement of light on people, and none of the gadgets we have do it in a natural way. So that's like kind of a big investment I have in it. I hope it works. It's something I've always wanted to do. You know, at school I keep saying to students like, don't think of a projector as a projector. Think of it as a light source. Think of it as a way to make believe that's the sunlight, and then whatever you put in it is what obscures it. You know, I have like curtains blowing and, you know, like sexy afternoons in a, you know, in an apartment with sunlight through a tree and a gauzy curtain kind of thing. And I hope to see that on their bodies and to see it on the walls.
