This was confirmed as the lights went down and about half of the audience lit little votive candles in what has become a traditional prelude to the performance.
After finally hearing the opening strains to "Clash of the Lightsabers" performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic after intermission, the "Star Wars -hungry Wars -hungry up the night with hundreds of blue, green audiencenovelit lightsabers.
Following about an hour of song, prayer and spiritual readings, the audience lit candles and made its way across the street into the Boston Common, fanning out around the park's pond with their tiny flames.
At nine o'clock, the sky a soft peach, the amphitheatre filled with the billow of smoke machines and the warm burr of chatter from the audience, lights suddenly splay out across the cavea and the opening notes of 5am fill the air.
Within a few years, commercial radio stations were busy developing programming for dozens of demographic slices of the American audience — light rock for young-adult women, hard rock for young-adult men, elevator music for the older crowd, and on and on.
Admittedly the two debates so far have had a stage, an audience, lights and a set – oh my poor eyes, Sky's set – and of course there's evidence of rehearsal and no small amount of scripting, but then so does a Mansion House dinner or a bar mitzvah.
"It is always a joy to talk about doing business in Vietnam and see the faces of the audience light up".
Nicole Pierce's wide range of modern lighting effects, sometimes silhouetting the dancers and shining lights at the audience, often lighting the dancers from new angles, kept changing the drama.
The show started with an audience member lighting a copy of my book which has my face on it on fire, and throwing it on the stage.
Two extremely large men aren't punching each other within a ring that's already seen nine previous bouts of physically intimidating dudes and, ahem, "divas" perform for a sold-out crowd, and said audience is lighting up in electric reverence for them.
