Lighting

Lighting. The open-air performances in Greece, Rome, medieval Europe, and Elizabethan England—also in Spain's Golden Age—took place by daylight, with torches used for the final scenes. It was only in the enclosed private playhouses, which originated in Renaissance Italy and gradually spread across Europe, that artificial lighting was needed, and even there large windows could throw light on to the stage for afternoon performances. However, the value of artificial light in the theatre was soon apparent, particularly as an additional element in the stage picture, and as early as 1545 Serlio advised placing candles or lamps behind coloured glass in windows, or behind bottles filled with coloured liquid to give a jewel-like effect. He also advocated the use of barbers' basins behind the lamps to act as reflectors. The auditorium was at first brightly lit by lamps or candelabra. In the 1560s the Jewish dramatist Leone di Somi (1527–92), in his Dialogues on Stage Affairs, insisted on reducing the amount of light in the auditorium in order to intensify the effect of the stage lighting. He also used mirror reflectors behind lamps fixed to the backs of the side wings, and extinguished many of the stage lamps at the first tragic moment in a play, which apparently had a profound effect upon the spectators. A later writer on the theatre, Angelo Ingegneri (c.1550–c.1613), wanted to darken the auditorium entirely, but this was not achieved for a very long time, possibly because a fashionable audience wanted to be seen as well as to see. The theatres of the 17th and 18th centuries continued to use candelabra hung over the stage and auditorium, with concealed lamps behind the wings and below the backcloth, and also footlights which, as can be inferred by a reference to them in the Architectura civilis of the German architect Josef Furtenbach (1591–1667), were in use by 1628, a practice further confirmed by the Italian architect Nicola Sabbattini (1574–1654) in his book Pratica di fabricar scene e machine ne'teatri (1638). Footlights are first shown in use in an English theatre in the frontispiece to Kirkman's The Wits (1672). The unconcealed chandeliers over the stage threw a painful glare into the eyes of the spectators in the gallery, as Pepys recorded as early as 1669, and Garrick at Drury Lane in 1765, in imitation of the French theatre, was the first in England to remove them entirely, relying on extra lamps concealed behind the wings, in addition to the footlights, to give a sufficiently strong light on stage. The same improvement was made at Covent Garden, but with rather smelly oil-lamps instead of wax candles. Gas was first used to light the stage at the Lyceum in Aug. 1817. The Olympic in 1815 was possibly the first theatre to use gas inside the playhouse, but the first London theatre to be entirely given over to gas-lighting was Drury Lane in Sept. 1817. Covent Garden followed two days later. The new lighting was considered a great improvement, and in the next 10 years practically all the more important theatres in London and the provinces were converted to it, the Haymarket being one of the last (1843). Some playgoers regretted the loss of wavering candlelight, just as some later audiences preferred the soft glow of gas to the hard brilliance of electricity. Candles, oil, and gas were all equally lethal (see FIRES IN THEATRES), but at least gas could be more easily controlled at the source, thus allowing the creation of beautiful effects of sunrise, twilight, and moonshine. Yet there were complaints that in general gas-lighting was too bright, the steady glare being fatal to the stage illusion. This was partly offset by sinking the footlights below the stage level, as planned by Fechter in 1863, and by the reforms of Irving at the Lyceum. Among other innovations, he arranged for all the lights to be regulated from the prompt corner and for the first time darkened the auditorium throughout the performance, as Ingegneri had suggested nearly 300 years earlier. Associated with the use of gas-lighting is limelight, which lived on into the age of electricity. The lime, or calcium flare, first used in 1816, gave a brilliant white light much used for ‘realistic’ beams of sun, moon, or lamp light through doors or windows. But its main use was to spotlight the chief actor and follow him about on stage, whence the expression ‘in the limelight’. Electric arc lights were in use as early as 1846 at the Paris Opéra, and were first used throughout a theatre at the Paris Hippodrome in 1878. Carbon arcs gave brilliant illumination but were noisy and apt to flicker, and limelighting continued in use in many theatres until the invention of the incandescent bulb. The first American theatre to be lit by electricity was the California in San Francisco in 1879, and the first English theatre was the Savoy in 1881. Although the Paris Opéra was not completely lit by incandescent bulbs until 1886, electricity was installed in most theatres in Europe and America by that time.

Electrification led to the development of modern stage lighting. German theatres pioneered the use of the Kuppelhorizont invented by Mariano Fortuny (1871–1949) in 1902. This ‘sky-dome’ of coloured silk reflected the beams of high-powered arcs down on to the stage, giving a bright, diffused light; it was expensive in terms of current and was replaced by the Rundhorizont, a half-dome of silk or plaster which developed into the cyclorama. Adolphe Appia and Gordon Craig did their most innovative work in Germany. They rejected the conventions of painted scenery in favour of a three-dimensional setting: the flat illumination of the late 19th-century stage had consequently to be replaced by directional lighting, casting shadows in the manner of real light to convey the mass and moulding of both actor and set. Appia insisted on the importance of lighting as an integral part of a unified artistic conception, as did Craig, who used changing lights against severely simple settings to build up an effective non-naturalistic stage picture. Special effects in the field of lighting can call on a multiplicity of techniques. Apart from imaginative colour changes, one of the simplest uses the Gobo, a cut-out mask slotted into a lantern housing to throw the shadow of leaves, architectural units, or other off-stage features on to the scene. Shadow projection, by the direct-beam projector, is a refinement of the technique introduced in 1916 by Adolph Linnebach (1876–1963) at the Court Theatre, Dresden. The Linnebach and direct-beam projectors create magical effects by means of shadowgraphs. Optical lens projectors, or stereopticons, can create up to a complete setting using large format glass slides specially painted or photographed for the purpose. Moving effects such as clouds, snow, or flames are achieved by effects projectors (sciopticons in America) carrying slides in a motor-driven turntable or drum. Such effects can be particularly successful when projected on to a gauze cloth, or unbroken stretch of fine net, in front of the action. Lighting units and dimmers have become increasingly refined and easy to operate. The spotlight, precise and economical, is the most important element in lighting, floodlighting being seldom used. Remote control was introduced in the 1930s. In the 1940s some theatres used light consoles, resembling organs, and in the 1960s lighting systems became computerized. Film projection has a place in stage production and has been used to great acclaim in the Laterna Magika of Prague, devised by Josef Svoboda, where slide and film projection are wittily combined with a few live performers to convey the illusion of a stage packed with scenery and action. Ghostly effects can be created with ultra-violet light, under which only objects coloured by fluorescent paint or dye can be seen. The pulsing flashes of strobe (stroboscopic) light can ‘freeze’ action into a series of jerks; the technique became popular due to the disco vogue and can be powerful when used with discretion. Stage lighting has achieved great subtlety in suggesting mood and scene, creating both natural and non-naturalistic effects. The lighting designer plays a vital role in the modern theatre.