Something Hopeful Photograph

This is a photograph of the ghost light and the set for the production of Fiddler on the Roof I'm in rehearsals for right now. In rehearsal today, we did a little field trip to visit our performance space for the first time. I love light and feel like light and hope are intertwined for me, so I wanted to capture both the ghost light (bottom left corner) and the unlit lights above. I love that the ghost light looks bright yet mysterious (it's a little unclear what it is--which is often how hope feels to me), I love that all the lights above are turned off, but are lit by the ghost light. I love that the set has empty window frames hanging. I also love that there are no physical bodies within the picture, but instead the impact and role of bodies in the space can be inferred--who will the lights be lighting? Who will be walking on the set? Who will be watching what happens on the stage? For me, this image exemplifies hope in a lot of ways: the hope I felt watching live theatre again for the first time after the beginning of the pandemic, the hope I feel for the future when I teach and learn, the hope we find in stories, the metaphorical lights in our lives that are always left on (like Christ). It's my hope that this image gives you something hopeful to think about, too.