Theatrical lighting

“ The introduction of electric light into the theatre has made possible an illumination so dependable and controllable that of late years attention has been turned to other phases of the lighting problem. Thanks must be given for most of the advance thus far to the effort of the illusion-theatre to imitate the light of nature. My belief is that the greater advance lies ahead, in the study of light on the stage as an art medium per se. ”

“ The problems of theater lighting differ with each set of conditions and the best results can only be obtained by actual experiment with the means at hand. Do not feel that because you are an amateur, working with limited equipment, real beauty is beyond you. I have seen a stage picture approaching a Rembrandt in its charm of coloring and skilful use of shadows, created on a tiny stage with few appliances by an amateur who understood his lights.
If electricity is to be had, use three or four incandescent globes for the fire on the hearth, arranging logs of wood around them to simulate a fire. ”

“ There is a tendency on the part of some revolutionary stage artists to give to lighting an emotional part in the play, or, in other words, to utilize lighting in obtaining the proper mood for the action of the play. Color and purely pictorial effect are the dominant notes of some of them. All of these modern stage-artists are abandoning the intricately realistic setting, and, as a consequence, light is enjoying a greater opportunity. ”

“ Modern methods of lighting, as we have seen, have carried the actor away from the centre of the stage, so that now important business is often done far from the footlights. This tendency has led to further innovations. ”

“ In it we have the only single agency in the theatre that can work with all the other agencies, binding them together—that can reveal with the dramatist, paint with the designer, and act with the actors.
The machinery by which this medium is brought to the stage and through which its wonders are wrought commands a deep respect. Tradition has already laid its heavy hand here, and innovation in lighting equipment moves slowly. It is almost wholly within the last five years in the United States that lighting units of marked novelty have been introduced. ”

“ The stage as a whole is a mobile picture in light, shade, and color with the addition of words and music. Excepting the latter, it is an expression of light worthy of the same care and consideration that the painting, which is also an expression of light, receives from the artist. The scenery and costumes should be considered in terms of the lighting effects because they are affected by changes in the color of the light. ”

“ After the rehearsal of a scene has advanced sufficiently to suit the critical requirements of the producer, the camera man is in requisition, and he is consulted as to lighting so as to produce the required photographic effect. Preferably, of course, sunlight is used whenever possible, hence the glass studios; but on dark days, and when night-work is necessary, artificial light of enormous candle-power is used, either mercury arcs or ordinary arc lights of great size and number. ”

“ Practically all the light comes from four large lamps hung in the auditorium. They replace footlights, borderlights, and floods from the sides. Illumination from the auditorium itself is essential to good stage lighting; the footlights are an unhappy makeshift. David Belasco very wisely uses a battery of lamps hidden in the face of the first balcony. In German theaters, the huge 6000-candlepower bulbs developed since the war, tempt directors to inefficient and distracting lighting from the ventilator above the main chandelier in the roof of the auditorium. ”

“ Two important things the stage worker of the modern theatre contributed, through his rough approximations of realistic effect, two things that will serve, whatever our aim in lighting. He saw that the light at some seasons, in some weathers, and at some times of day, is less bright than at others, and that it fades at dusk. ”

“ The lighting arrangements are extraordinarily complete: the theatre has a standard electrical equipment of footlights and borders and a switchboard of the best type to which has recently been added the latest lighting devices, consisting of an X-ray border, the end section of which is on a separate dimmer, a thousand-watt centre floodlight, six five-hundred watt-spotlights, each on separate dimmers, in the false proscenium or tormentor, [22] and a line of one-thousand-watt floodlights for lighting the plaster (p. lx) sky. ”

“ Several other London theatres have since adopted the incandescent electric lamps, and it is obvious that the system will become universal. In all ocean-going passenger steamers, electric lighting of the saloons and cabins is now the rule. No mode of illumination so readily adapts itself to the production of artistic and decorative effects as the glow lamps: for the covering glasses may be tinted of any required shade, and the lights may be placed in any position. ”

“ With a carefully planned switchboard and dimmer-bank, and numerous pockets or current outlets, for the initial equipment, there is hardly any limit to the development of the little theatre’s lighting facilities, for if it must begin with only a few lighting units, it can acquire more from time to time, and with each acquisition build up its means of achieving beauty. ”

“ While only an expert electrician and, if the effects are to be artistic, an artist, can erect and manipulate a system built on Fortuny's principles, still amateur electricians and directors should do their best, by means of experimentation, to use indirect lighting.
Just how this can be done must rest with individuals, but two or three experiments may be briefly described.
Suppose that the cyclorama, or the hangings masking the back of the stage, are made of white or light-colored cloth. ”

“ Border lights of the old type are not useful enough to warrant the expenditure of the money they cost. Footlights, too, though useful when no better means of front lighting can be devised, can well be replaced by face-level lights from the auditorium, concealed by wall traps or by the balcony rail, or hidden in decorative coverings suspended, chandelier-like, from the ceiling. ”

“ The use of sky borders has largely given way to the high cyclorama of canvas or plaster, leaving the sky prospect open to the eye as far as the sight line reaches. The overhead lighting must be powerful enough to flood stage and sky with light. It is becoming more and more common to reinforce the ordinary border-light equipment with hanging thousand-watt lamps in specially constructed steel hoods. In the Arts and Crafts Theatre, in Detroit, Sam Hume installed his entire overhead equipment of such hanging lamps, and did away with the old border light altogether. ”

“ The new methods of stage lighting make possible all kinds of color combinations and effects. The use of the plaster horizon (or of the cyclorama, a cheaper substitute, usually a straight semi-circular curtain enclosing the stage, made of either white or light blue cloth) , combined with high-powered lights set at various angles on the stage, makes outdoor effects possible, the beauty of which is new to the theatre. [15] Nowadays footlights are not invariably discarded, but where they are used they are wired so that groups of them can be lighted when other sections are dimmed or darkened. ”

“ When traps are needed in the floor, they can then be cut without difficulty at any point.
The lighting equipment of the stage, by far the most important of its mechanical attributes, I shall describe later, but I shall treat here of one device, which is structural. It is one of the German inventions for the perfection of illusion to which I have referred, and the only one I recommend to little theatres, far and wide. I recommend it because of the added beauty it can bring into the playhouse, rather than because of its merit as a part of the perfect machine. ”

“ The theater is nervous, horrific, clangorous, glowering. There is nothing fountain-like. No spirit wells up in beauty. There is no dignity and no glory.
The fault may not be Poelzig’s, but the lighting of the stage and orchestra seems unfortunately handled. Some of the lights for the inner stage are placed in front of the arch of the proscenium instead of behind it, and thus they illuminate it, and emphasize something that ought not to be there at all, let alone pointed out. The lights for the orchestra originally came wholly from the lower edge of the dome. ”

“ Lighting Your Stage Let us imagine that we are seated in a dimly lighted theater. The signal rings. The curtains open and what do we see? People. What makes them visible? Light. What makes the color? Light. What makes the interesting shadows? Light. It is light that does all these things, makes the picture visible and carries our thoughts and feelings into the play which is about to begin.
By what means is all this done? By means of footlights, overhead lights, movable strips of lights, and movable spotlights. ”

“ Actors have ways of obtaining the light they want by fair means or foul, and it is much better to arrange the lighting so that it will be satisfactory to those using it, than to have it continually tampered with.
A bright illumination is essential for making up and both sides of the face should be fully illuminated. To accomplish this it is necessary to provide [252] at least two lights for each mirror. Every lamp should be provided with a substantial guard which may be securely fastened to the outlet box. ”

“ The arrangement of the theatre requires in addition to the ordinary stage a second stage at a lower level than the ordinary one, hidden from the audience as far as direct vision is concerned; this hidden stage is to be strongly illuminated by artificial light, and is capable of being rendered dark instantaneously whilst the ordinary stage and the theatre remain illuminated by ordinary lighting. A large glass screen is placed on the ordinary stage and in front of the hidden one. ”

“ Their independence of atmospheric air renders them most convenient in places where other forms of illumination would be dangerous or impossible; e.g. in coal mines, and under water during diving operations. By their aid great improvements have been effected in the lighting of theatres, which require a quick switching on and off of light. They have also been used in connection with minute cameras to explore the recesses of the human body. In libraries they illuminate without injuring the books. In living rooms they do not foul the air or blacken the ceiling like oil or gas burners. ”

“ Months of preparation and weeks of rehearsal were necessary.
One detail that was especially absorbing was the matter of lighting; catching the high lights and shadows. This was the first time the "bridge of lights" was used on any stage. Lighting has always been to me more than mere illumination. It is a revelation of the heart and soul of the story. It points the way. Lights should be to the play what the musical accompaniment is to the singer. A wordless story could be told by lights. Lights should be mixed as a painter mixes his colours—a bit of pink here, of blue there ”

“ The equipment of the present stage consists of footlights, side-lights, border-lights, flood-lights, spot-lights, and much special apparatus. One of the severest criticisms of stage-lighting from an artistic point of view may be directed against the use of footlights for obtaining the dominant light. ”

“ The X-Ray flood lamps, manufactured for lighting the exteriors of buildings and for illuminating night construction jobs, are coming to be used on the stage. They can be focused, have a higher efficiency than a lens light burning the same number of watts, and produce a more pleasant spot than the sharply defined light-area of the conventional spot light, projecting a brilliant ray, most intense at the center and fading toward the edges of the field. There are a number of firms manufacturing lights of this type, and they are now generally used for lighting outdoor pageants. ”

“ Steadily, however, producer and dramatist have worked together to make the stage as illusive as possible. On the one hand, realism has strained it to the utmost; on the other, poetic and fantastic drama have forced it to visualize for us the realms of imagination. Responding to all this, modern science and invention have come to the aid of drama. Electricity has opened up ways of lighting not even yet fully explored. At present, particularly in Germany, most ingenious devices have been invented for shifting scenery as quickly as possible. ”

“ The last thing the scene painter does before the introduction of a new play is to have his scenes set upon the stage at night in order that the lighting of them can be arranged. The artist sits in the center of the auditorium and minutely observes every nook and corner of the scene under the glare of the gas or electric light. Here a light is turned up and there one is lowered until the proper effect is obtained. The gas man or electrician takes careful note of his directions, and the stage manager oversees everything. ”

“ When footlights alone are used in a realistic scene, they are bad. If the light from the floor dominates, the under surfaces of the face—chin, nose-tip, eyelids—are unnaturally and disagreeably accentuated. If the light from below and above is balanced, the result, though more natural, is perhaps as bad, for the lighting is flat, and there is no relief in the features or figures of the players. For plays and scenes of a heroic or fantastic sort, treated decoratively, rather than literally, lighting entirely from above gives interesting and picturesque results. ”