STAGE LIGHTING
The most vital part of the stage machine is yet to be touched upon,
the only part in which any mystery is involved. After all, most of our
machinery of the theatre is of the simplest type,--ropes and pulleys
and simple bracing. In a double sense, the electrical equipment is
approached with more awe. While most people know a little about the
simpler laws of mechanics, electricity, guarded by an element of
danger, is a matter too recondite to be brought into the fold of
everyday information out of mere curiosity, or to be reasoned out as
the childish working of a pulley can be figured out by common sense;
it has to be studied and learned. And besides being outside common
matter-of-fact, light is mystery itself, unplumbed nature, a fraction
of the inscrutable life of the world led by strings to the stage.
If the little playhouse is without any mechanical convenience, if its
stage is cramped and mean, it can still achieve visual beauty through
light. This force brings into the playhouse the most vibrant, subtle
and affecting gift of the physical world, barring only the human
presence.
Ultimately it will be seen that a forthright attempt to imitate nature
on the stage can result only in failure; the painted or modeled
semblances of rocks, trees, grass or distant prospects are in the long
run seen to be what they are not what they pretend to be. Similarly,
close as the light of the stage can be brought to resemble the light
of the outer world, it will still be short of complete fidelity to
its original. But it is, in itself, a force of beauty, an authentic
transplanting of the revealer of nature’s divers beauties, so that, if
it fails to achieve what the manipulator tries to make it do, it may
achieve something possibly more beautiful.
More and more can this be true in the theatre, as the artist comes to
regard light as a pure medium, as he learns more of its profound effect
on human emotion, even on the working of the body’s organs, and as
he becomes familiar with the thousand subtle ways in which the earth
and its atmosphere modify the light sent by the sun, reflecting and
refracting it, stealing certain colors from its whiteness and leaving
others, resolving it prismatically by mists and clouds and the swirls
of atmosphere. These are a few of the ways in which nature plays the
artist with light. They point to unlimited lessons in technique that
the theatre artist in light has yet to learn.
The little theatre, or any theatre for that matter, cannot go wrong
by beginning at the beginning. Let it revalue the customary machinery
for stage lighting, and the results achieved by its use. Later I shall
describe this customary equipment, for it has its great uses, and much
of the criticism that I shall apply to it applies perhaps with greater
justice to the manner in which it is used. But, implicit in the system
itself, is a criticism of its purpose to reproduce the effects of
nature under conditions that in nowise resemble those of nature, or its
laying over a convention (artistic at its best, futilely anachronistic
at its worst) not another convention, but a lantern of Diogenes,
showing up shams.
Go back to the beginning. One candle rightly used, as in Robert Edmond
Jones’ lighting of the den scene in _Redemption_, is both drama and
beauty. Imagine Wallace Stevens’ _Carlos Among the Candles_ shown upon
the stage by the candle light of the strange room-world which is the
play’s universe. Here is a complete wedding of drama and the mobile
beauty of light itself, a light we can readily achieve. From these
candles to the sun of Shakespeare’s comedies, the storms of his _Lear_
or the mists and fogs of _The Tempest_ is a far cry. He begged the
question, in extraordinary verse, and acted the words and emotions of
his plays in the plain light of day, which is bound to be beautiful,
even when it is not illusive of the moon.
Right here lies the crux of the problem of installing lights in
the little theatre. A dual approach is required, as in any art:
the creator’s vision of what he wishes to do, and the technician’s
knowledge of how to go about it. The greater responsibility rests
on the first function, for we must settle whether we are to try to
reproduce nature or attain a correlative beauty. To me the beauty of a
stage sunset has rarely been the beauty of a real sunset; it has been
the beauty of rosy light. If anything, the unreality of the sunset has
stood in the way of my appreciation of the reality of red. The beauty
of red was accidental, and not the artist’s intention. It could not
have been avoided, for it is germane to sunset, but the fact remains
that the artist achieved something other than he set out to achieve. It
would have been better to go in for red and attain it than to go in for
sunset and attain red. If blue light intimates the moon, well and good.
It is beautiful itself, and does not awaken marvel at the cleverness
with which we have contrived an effect. Whereas a nicely operated
moonrise, or a jiggling procession of stereoptican clouds leaves us
gaping while the tragedy hobbles, unattended, to it close.
When the theatre forsook the sunlight, it faced the question of light
solely as illumination. By various means,--torches and tapers, gas,
“limes” and electricity,--it has made its art visible indoors and
at night. 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_.
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. He devised
means, therefore, of varying its intensity. Second, he perceived
that at sunset light is one color, at noon another, and by full moon
another. He gave us dyes and color screens, and with them and his
dimmers brought to the stage the important element of control.
Other advances, through other agencies in the theatre, tend to
subtilize the function of light, carrying it beyond primary
illumination. Second, perhaps, comes the scene designer, who demands
that the light, in addition to illuminating the players and stating the
time of day or year, shall contribute values to his design as picture.
It shall be made to cast shadows where dark masses are wanted in his
composition. It shall highlight other features of the scene; it shall
reinforce the painter’s work with color; it shall give plasticity to
the builder’s work with its highlight and shadow.
Next, the dramatist and producer make their demands--the light
shall reinforce the mood and meanings of the play. By its intensity
or dimness, it gives “atmosphere”; by its color it has a direct
psychological and physiological effect on the spectator, sensitizing
him to values in the play he might not perceive were it enacted in
light of another sort. Dramatist, director and designer, in the
lighting of a play, if nowhere else, should be so much at one that it
is easy to understand Gordon Craig’s wish that one man should combine
the functions of all three.
Light, in the theatre, then: (1) illuminates the stage and actors;
(2) states hour, season, and weather, through suggestion of the light
effects in nature; (3) helps paint the scene (stage picture) by
manipulation of masses of light and shadow and by heightening color
values; (4) lends relief to the actors and to the plastic elements of
the scene; and (5) helps act the play, by symbolizing its meanings and
reinforcing its psychology.
To achieve these five functions of stage light, five different kinds
or sources of light are not, of course, needed. One light may combine
several, or all, of these functions. In Joseph Urban’s lighting and
setting of the last act of _Tristan and Isolde_ some years ago at the
Boston Opera House, a beam of late afternoon sunlight struck across the
stage to the figure of Tristan lying beneath a great oak tree. Slowly,
as the day waned, the sun patch crept from the figure, until, at his
death, it had left him in cool shadow. Thus, a light that illuminated,
that told the time of day, that gave the figure of the singer and the
bole of the great tree high relief by striking from only one side, also
aided symbolically and psychologically in the interpretation of the
drama. Thus to make light function in many ways is to use it with a
sense of its ductility and subtlety as a medium of theatre art. 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.
Of first importance is the machinery of control, the switchboard and
dimmers. The customary place for the board in American theatres is at
one side of the proscenium arch, either on the stage floor level, or
on a perch raised some nine or ten feet above the stage floor. The
manifest disadvantage of this location is that the operator cannot
see the whole of the stage, and must depend for his cues upon a stage
manager. It has, therefore, become the practice in many European
theatres to place the operator in a pit directly in front of the
stage, shielded from the auditorium and facing the actors. From here
he can watch the action and see the effects of his lights constantly.
Telephone connections with lamp operators at the back of the stage
enable him to keep them under his control.
The construction of the board and mounting of the switches are strictly
prescribed by boards of fire underwriters in various cities, and need
not be detailed here. The important consideration at this point is
that, so far as possible, each light unit on the stage shall be subject
to central control from a vantage point from which the stage can be
seen; that each unit shall be subject to _separate_ control; that
groups of like units, classed by location or color, shall be subject to
group control, apart from other groups; and that the stage light, as a
whole, shall be controllable apart from the house lights.
That is, assuming, for purposes of illustration, the arrangement of
lights common to most theatres, the white lights of the first border
shall be controlled by a switch apart from that controlling the white
lights of the second border or the third or the fourth. So, likewise,
for each color circuit of each border, separately. Then there should
be a white border main switch, controlling the white lights of all the
borders, and a blue border main, etc. Above these, there should be a
border main switch controlling all the border lights simultaneously.
And thus with each division of the stage lights. Over all, one stage
main switch should control all the lights of the stage. The auditorium
lights, with their own switches, should be controlled from the same
board as the stage lights.
The outstanding item of expense in building a good switchboard is the
cost of dimmers, the resistance devices by which the intensity of the
light is controlled. They vary in capacity with their wattage and
type. But the dimmers, more than any other part of the control system,
contribute to the flexibility of the machine. In a modern theatre they
are indispensable.
So far as possible, there should be a dimmer for each switch on the
board, controlling each light unit separately. With “master” levers,
related light units can be ganged and controlled simultaneously. When
only a limited number of dimmers can be afforded, it is possible so to
construct the switchboard that circuits to be dimmed can be “shunted”
through the dimmers, while circuits that need not be dimmed remain
on constant. A very ingenious board of this type was designed by Mr.
Bassett Jones for the Artists’ Guild Theatre in St. Louis. This board
has eight dimmers which can be used for any eight light units on the
stage, giving it a far greater flexibility than it would have if only
a particular eight could be dimmed. It is, however, rather complicated,
with its dual system of constant and dimmer plugs and connectors, so
that only great familiarity with it makes it quick in action.
In addition to the switchboard type of dimmer, there are also smaller
dimmers made for use with nitrogen lamp spots and floods. Where
these are used I believe they should be set by the main switchboard,
rather than on the lamp itself. Attached to the lamp they require an
additional operator and break up the centralization of control.
The actual stage lights fall into two classes--stationary and movable.
The stationary or fixed equipment has remained, on the whole, highly
conventional. It consists, primarily, of the footlights, a trough of
lights set along the floor at the front edge of the stage, throwing
light upward upon the actors and the scene, and the border lights,
hanging troughs, adjustable in height, throwing their light downward.
The first of these border lights, often known as the concert border,
hangs immediately behind the curtain or proscenium drapery, and the
others are hung at intervals of seven feet from center to center.
The footlights and borders are usually wired in three circuits, each
circuit being filled with lamps of a different color, customarily
white, red or amber, and blue.
Of late, these customary units have been put on trial and found
wanting. They serve principally, and almost exclusively, the first
function of stage light--illumination--and are found, on the modern
stage, not to serve it well. Footlights, especially, have come under
the ban, though the campaign against them has been waged a little
indiscriminately. 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. It shadows the features heavily, and lends a
sculptured, massive quality to the face. More and more, this overhead
lighting has come to be used, and with some producers has been made a
fetish.
The very quality that makes this sort of lighting interesting in scenes
of a certain kind exhibits its strongest disadvantage in naturalistic
lighting. In the average room, during the daytime, light pours in
through windows, striking faces at face level. The light comes mostly
from one side of the room, or if there are windows on more than one
side, and the light comes in several directions, it comes in varying
degrees. The sun does not shine in two directions at once. That is
to say, though light may come from more than one direction, and be
reflected multitudinously by walls and ceiling and, in less degree, the
floor, the balance of intensity is always in favor of one direction.
And this direction is not up or down, but in a line approaching a right
angle to the erect figure.
Something of the same sort is usually true out-of-doors. Only at noon
do we have literally overhead lighting. Even then, the beam of light
is so broad as to envelop the figure on all sides, and is so variously
reflected by the dome of the sky, by trees, rocks, water, houses, that
there is, in addition to the direct downward light, a considerable
“general” diffused illumination. At most hours of the day, the rays of
the sun fall upon the earth and its people at a long angle. The factor
that gives relief and prevents a dull flatness in the light of nature
is the dominance of east over west in the morning and of west over
east in the afternoon. Night illumination indoors, though usually from
fixtures above head-level, is reflected by all the walls of the room
and by all the objects in it.
A soft, diffused face-level lighting is thus warranted in almost
all circumstances. The hard glare of foots and borders, used
unrestrictedly, does not supply this need most happily. Used
moderately, footlights have a distinct function, until better means of
moderating the crude shadows cast from above shall have been devised.
An effort to throw light upon the stage at an angle less perpendicular
than that of footlight and border has been made at the Little Theatre
in New York. Here, certain sections of the ceiling panelling can be
lowered and light thrown upon the stage by diffused spot lamps at an
angle of 45°. In Mr. Belasco’s theatre, lights have been installed
in the face of the balcony, achieving the same result even more
satisfactorily. I believe that, in good time, beautifully designed
lighting units will be frankly set or hung in the auditorium of the
theatre.
The footlight equipment of most theatres is, as it has long been,
unmodified, consisting merely of rows of incandescent lamps of
low standard (usually forty watts). The border lights have seen
more innovation during the past few years, especially the first (or
concert) border, most used in lighting interior scenes. Originally,
these border lights were intended to light not only the stage, but
also the hanging strips of canvas (known as borders) formerly used
to suggest a ceiling in interior scenes, and still used to represent
foliage and to misrepresent the blue sky in exterior scenes. With the
use of flat ceilings for interiors comes a demand for a light that
illuminates the scene rather than the ceiling. This is best supplied
by the X-Ray border, made up of a smaller number of lamps than the old
border but of higher standard, each lamp being 150 or 250 watts. Each
lamp is set in a separate compartment, separated from its neighbor,
and each lamp is backed by an X-Ray reflector of mirrored glass with
whorled corrugations, diffusing the light evenly over a large area.
Each compartment may be fitted with a color screen of gelatine or dyed
glass. Often, too, spot lamps, large and small, are mounted on this
border to accentuate the light on certain areas of the stage.
The other borders, used mostly for exterior scenes, must serve to
flood stage and scene with light. The old type of border does not
serve adequately, even in the type of scene for which it was designed.
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. In the average theatre, however, these lamps are more in
the nature of movable lamps than of permanent equipment, and will be
further spoken of below.
[Illustration: The Neighborhood Playhouse, New York. This building
is one of the most satisfying examples of recent theatre design in
America, being free from overdecoration and admirably fitted to its
purpose technically. Harry Creighton Ingalls and F. B. Hoffman Jr.,
Associate Architects.]
[Illustration: Auditorium of the Artists’ Guild Theatre, St. Louis.
This little auditorium is made useful for both dramatic productions and
art exhibitions by means of an ingenious device for tilting the floor,
described on page 29. Above is the view toward the balcony, below the
view toward the stage. Laurence Ewald, Architect.]
The footlights and border lights, and, occasionally, vertical strips
inside the proscenium frame at the sides, constitute the whole of the
stage-lighting equipment that is more or less a part of the structure.
They “go with the building.” Everything else is movable and falls into
the second classification of lighting units. But, in the structure
of the stage, provision must be made for the use of such additional
lights. Outlets in the form of “stage pockets” are set at regular
intervals in the stage floor; into these pockets, spot and flood
lamps may be plugged. The pockets are set in the stage floor in two
lines running up and down stage, a short distance behind the proscenium
opening, at either side of it. There are usually from four to six such
pockets on each side of the stage. Sometimes there is one at the back
of the stage, and one or more in the fly-gallery. Occasionally, also,
in houses served by alternating current, there are pockets served by
a small house generator, supplying direct current for the use of arc
lamps. In some theatres, also, there are pockets connected with storage
batteries, intended to supply an emergency service or for use with
lighting units of a voltage other than the usual 110 volts. The pockets
must, of course, be carefully insulated, and covered with a hinged iron
lid set flush with the floor.
The movable lights are of two general types: flood lights, for general
diffused illumination, and lens lights, for concentrated, direct
“spotting.” Under the first heading may be classed all special lights
known, in stage parlance, as strips, floods, or bunches. Strips are
small troughs, fitted with from three to ten sockets, and are used
in lighting off-stage “backings,” set-pieces of scenery, and small
areas where a special accent of color or intensity is wanted. Bunches,
now largely obsolete, are hoods set on extension standards, fitted
with ten or twelve sockets each. These have been replaced by flood
lamps, burning 500 and 1,000-watt nitrogen-filled mazda bulbs. The
hoods of these flood lamps have diverging sides or are fitted with a
reflector behind the light, and have grooves at the front of the hood
for carrying color-frames. Formerly such lamps were equipped with arc
lights, but the nitrogen lamp has wholly displaced the arc in flood
lighting. Its advantages are that it does not require an attendant to
“feed” the light, that it can be dimmed, giving it range of intensity
to make up for decreased brilliance, and that it can be burned on
either direct or alternating current, without the annoying buzz of an
arc light burning alternating current.
Spot lamps are mounted in closed iron hoods, emitting light from only
one end through a lens. The hoods, like those of flood lamps, are set
on extension standards, and can be tipped up or down and turned from
side to side. Arc spots are still in general use, as the thousand-watt
lamp is not sufficiently brilliant for use on large stages or for long
throws. In little theatres, however, the thousand-watt spot is bright
enough and has all the advantages over the arc that apply to the newer
type of flood lamp. For such small stages, the principal consideration
always should be centralized control, and it cannot be got with the arc
light. As incandescent, gas-filled bulbs of still higher standard are
developed, the arc spot will cease to be used, even in large theatres.
There is also a small variant of the spot light, known as a “baby”
spotlight, burning a lamp of 150 or 250 watts. Used with care, this is
one of the most valuable stage lights we have for producing delicate
variations in light volume and color in particular areas of the stage.
These small lights may also be dimmed.
* * * * *
I have referred above to hanging hoods with thousand-watt lamps
for general illumination. Where these are not made a part of the
permanent lighting equipment of the theatre, they may be introduced
for special scenes and effects, being hung where desired, and massed
in such numbers and of such colors as needed. The hoods are equipped
with chains by which they may be hung upon pipe battens and tipped
as desired. They are plugged, like other movable lights, into floor
pockets or fly-gallery pockets.
The color of light on the stage is obtained in three ways. Where lamps
of low standard (twenty-five or forty watts) are used, as in the foots
or borders, they may be coated with dyes, put up for the purpose, made
with a collodion base. The burning lamp is dipped into the liquid and
left alight until the dye coat has thoroughly dried and hardened.
Bulbs of high standard, however, cannot be dyed, as the dye does not
stand up under the intense heat generated by a lamp of one hundred or
more watts. As a matter of fact, few of the commercial dyes are wholly
satisfactory, even with smaller bulbs. The blues especially deteriorate
under heat, either fading or cracking, or burning to a purple or black.
The rays of larger lamps, burned either in flood or spotlight hoods,
are colored with gelatine mediums, held before the light in frames
of proper size. The gelatine colors also fade under heat, and, being
very fragile, crack and tear, and must be frequently renewed. For
durability, the best color medium is a sheet of glass with the color
blown in. Unfortunately such glass is very costly, cannot be had in a
large range of colors, and is usually not as translucent as might be
wished.
Mr. Munroe Pevear of Boston has made interesting experiments with
mediums of dyed glass. He manufactures his own dyes, and claims for
them a much longer life than the commercial variety enjoys. His mediums
are highly translucent, and are, of course, far more durable than the
gelatine mediums. He makes them, however, in only the three primary
colors, for his development of color screens has been ancillary to
experiments of a larger intent--the development of a synthetic lighting
system.
The principle of his color system is simply the principle of the prism
inverted. The prism breaks white light up into its primaries. Mr.
Pevear unites the primaries to make white. By combining his red, green,
and blue light in varying degrees of each, he is able to obtain any
color in the spectrum. To pale out his lights to tints, he includes in
his border and footlight equipment a fourth circuit of white lights.
To my knowledge, only one theatre has been equipped by Mr. Pevear--the
Toy Theatre of Boston, now the Copley. But in the short-lived tenancy
of the house by the Toy Theatre Company there was never a whole-hearted
effort to test Mr. Pevear’s equipment. Experiments with synthetic
lighting have been conducted at various times and places by Sam Hume,
Norman Geddes, the present writer, and others. The results more than
reward the effort of such experiment, and I commend a study of its
possibilities to all workers in little theatres.
In addition to the typical theatrical lighting units, other units, not
designed primarily for theatrical use, are being adopted. Foremost
among these are the reflectors of the X-Ray type. These are made in a
number of sizes and shapes, but are of two types, the whorled reflector
and the parabolic reflector. The first type gives a diffused light and
the second a concentrated beam. 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.
They are quite as valuable in the indoor theatre as on the pageant
field.
I have used frequently, instead of baby spots of the regular type,
automobile windshield spots, burning a six-volt lamp. These cost
perhaps one-tenth as much as the regular type, and can be used on
a special circuit supplied with current either through a small
step-down transformer or from a storage battery, kept continually
charged by running current into it from a strip of carbon lights
wired in series-multiple. These windshield spots are usually equipped
with a swivel and trunnion mounting, so that they can be turned in
any direction, are focusable, and have a clamp by which they can
be fastened to pieces of scenery or upright pipe standards in the
proscenium entrance.
Besides a goodly number of well-distributed stage pockets into which
movable lamps may be plugged, there should be points of vantage from
which lights may be cast, perches and bridges elevated above the level
of the stage. Most useful is a bridge across the stage, just inside
and above the proscenium. From this bridge, special flood and spot
lamps may be manipulated. Often perches are built out from the wall
at either side of the proscenium from which spots may be thrown down
to the stage. Occasionally these are movable structures with several
levels and can be wheeled to various points off stage. The fly-gallery,
also, is used for spot lighting. When a false proscenium is used, the
overhead bridge and side perches are sometimes built into the structure.
In planning the lighting equipment for a small stage, all thought of
the usual theatre installation can be set aside. 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 essentials for a flexible, adaptable lighting system are
centralization and delicacy of control, numerous and well-situated
current outlets, and as wide a variety as possible of movable lamps for
flooding and spotting. There should be enough circuits to allow the
use of a three- or four-color system, along the lines of the synthetic
system of Mr. Pevear, described above. Along with this there must be
facilities for throwing light from above the stage from bridges and
movable platforms. The only permanently installed piece of lighting
equipment that is absolutely necessary is the X-Ray border at the front
of the stage for the lighting of interior scenes.
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. And in this direction the most vital
contributions to the craft of the theatre are yet to be made.
[Illustration: Figure 9--The permanent “scene” of the _Théâtre du
Vieux Colombier_. See page 74. (From _Album du Vieux Colombier_ by
Fauconnet.)]