Stage Lighting Design E-Book

Neil Fraser

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 285

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Stage Lighting Design is a comprehensive introduction to technical theatre, tracing the evolution of lighting design from ancient drama to contemporary performance. Neil Fraser covers everything that today's designers will need to know, from the simple nuts and bolts of equipment, through to the complexity of a full lighting rig, including all aspects of the stage electrician and lighter designer's roles. This revised second edition includes new material on historical development, intelligent control systems and the latest advances in LED fixtures and luminaires. Each chapter includes key exercises, now totalling 100, that enable the reader to practise their skills on a wide variety of lighting challenges. The work of current designers is showcased and analysed, with examples from complete and detailed lighting designs.Includes: Choosing and using equipment; Applying colour; Techniques for focusing; Lighting in the round and other stage layouts; Creating mood and atmosphere; Lighting effects and LED source fixtures; Planning, testing and executing a lighting design.Superbly llustrated with over 150 colour, black & white photographs and line artworks.

Leseprobe

Stage Lighting Design

SECOND EDITION

Neil Fraser

FOREWORD BY RICHARD ATTENBOROUGH

THE CROWOOD PRESS

First published in 1999 by

The Crowood Press Ltd

Ramsbury, Marlborough

Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2018

Second edition 2018

© Neil Fraser 1999 and 2018

All rights reserved. This e-book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of thistext may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 78500 368 4

Photographic Acknowledgements

All photographs are by the author except:

Front cover: from a Son et Lumiere exercise, Rada Lighting Dept, RADA Archive

Page 9: Richard Attenborough Productions

Fig 14: RADA Archive (Photos: David Agnew)

Figs 2, 10, 30, 40, 43, 50, 61, 116, 122, 123, 125: RADA Archive (Photos: Linda Carter) Figs 59, 62, 63, 104, Rear Cover: RADA Archive (Photos: Neil Fraser)

Figs 15, 16, 23, 25, 36, 39, 41, 45: ETC Lighting

Figs 27, 28, 37, 38, 114: ROBE Lighting Ltd

Figs 51, 118: Keith Patterson

Fig 76: Euan Davies

Fig 123: MDG LTD

Fig 160: Noriko Sakura

Fig 169: Rania Calas, NY Theatre Exchange

CONTENTS

LIST OF EXERCISES

AUTHOR’S NOTE FOR THE SECOND EDITION

FOREWORD BY RICHARD ATTENBOROUGH

INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND

1WHAT IS LIGHTING DESIGN?

2THE EQUIPMENT WE USE

3THE THEATRE LAYOUT AND ELECTRICAL RESTRICTIONS

4THE EQUIPMENT IN USE – FOCUSING

5BEGINNING TO LIGHT THE PERFORMER

6COLOUR AND LIGHT

7MAKING IT LOOK REAL

8A GENERAL COVER OF LIGH

9MOVEMENT IN LIGHT AND LIGHTING EFFECTS

10MOOD AND ATMOSPHERE

11LIGHTING THE SCENERY

12WORKING FROM THE TEXT

13THE PRODUCTION PROCESS – RIGGING, FOCUSING, PLOTTING, THE DIRECTOR

14LIGHTING DESIGN EXAMPLES

CONCLUSION

APPENDIX: MORE EXERCISES

REFERENCES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to my children Alex and Holly, who are the brightest of lights in my life.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you to the companies and individuals who have supplied or appeared in photographs, in particular Contact Theatre Co. in Manchester, Polka Theatre for Children in Wimbledon, Liverpool Everyman, Torch Theatre, Strand Lighting, CCT Lighting, Le Maitre Pyrotechnics, Vari*Lite UK. Thanks also to Lord Attenborough and his staff, and all the staff and students at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (1985–present) – especially Gwen Tomson and Peter Harrison for their help with the photographs, Leanne Archbold for proofreading, help with diagrams, photographs and general support, and to Kate Jones for constant help and advice. Thanks also to Gary Thorne and Shirley Matthews for their continuing enthusiasm and encouragement.

LIST OF EXERCISES

1 Looking at Light

2 The Source of Light

3 Light on People

4 What is a Luminaire?

5 Types of Generic Luminaire

6 Know Your Equipment

7 Researching the Space

8 Ohm’s Law – How Much Is too Much?

9 Electrical Safety

10 Focusing Luminaires 1

11 Luminaire Types – Quiz

12 Focusing Luminaires 2

13 Using the Luminaire

14 Using the Gobo, Iris and Doughnut

15 ‘X’ Marks the Spot

16 Using Luminaires in Combination

17 Texture

18 Building a Picture

19 Key Light

20 Back Light

21 Naming Colours

22 Finding Colours

23 Emotional Colour

24 The Spectrum

25 The Primary Colours

26 Additive Colour Mixing

27 Perception of Light and Colour

28 Subtractive Colour Mixing

29 Split Colours

30 Playing with Colour

31 White Light

32 Colour Temperature

33 The Colour of Daylight

34 Sunset/Moonrise

35 General Cover 1 – Covering the Stage

36 General Cover 2 – Copying Reality

37 General Cover 3 – Focusing Practice

38 General Cover 4 – Further Practice

39 General Cover 5 – Exteriors

40 General Cover 6 – Interiors

41 Atmospheres

42 The First Ten Luminaires

43 A Critique of ‘First Steps in Lighting Design’

44 The Elements

45 Using Lighting Effects 1

46 Using Lighting Effects 2

47 Using Lighting Effects 3

48 Moving Lights 1 – Familiarization – Target Practice

49 Moving Lights 2 – Creative Usage

50 Contrasts

51 Opposites

52 Magic

53 Characterization in Light

54 Studio/Studio

55 Black Box

56 ‘Honey, I Shrunk the Set’

57 Ebony and Ivory (Black and White Sets)

58 Fireworks

59 The Cyc’ 1 – Heavens Above

60 The Cyc’ 2 – By George!

61 Gauzes

62 Spot the Light – Placing Practicals

63 Research – Periods and Styles

64The Caucasian Chalk Circle

65The Marat Sade

66Agamemnon

67 A Shorter Winter’s Tale

68Act Without Words and Words and Music

69 The Light Fantastic

70 Working in the Theatre Space

71 The Production Schedule

72 Drawing the Plan

73 Focusing with a Team

74 Plotting Practice 1

75 Plotting Practice 2

76 Plotting Practice 3

77 Lighting Design Studies

78 Last Words

79 Spot On!

80 Make Me A Sunbeam

81 The Moon Of Endor

82 Shelob

83 Where Are We?

84 Where Are We Now?

85 Summer Time

86 Inside The Wardrobe

87 The Worst Pies In London

88 It’s A Lovely Holiday

89 Is This A Dagger?

90 Classic Exercises

91 Chases

92 Fire And Water

93 Dancing Light

94 Waiting For Lighting

95 The Play Is The Thing

96 Photo-Realism

97 Hello Darkness, My Old Freind

98 Shadow Or Substance?

99 Creating Mood

100 The Story Is King

N.B. Key to lighting design plans is on page 60.

AUTHOR’S NOTE FOR THE SECOND EDITION

It has been heartening that in the eighteen years since this guide to stage lighting design was first published, it has become a popular and much used ‘how to’ book. This second edition seeks to add to its strength and appeal by bringing it up to date, recognizing the changes in technology and style within the entertainment industry that have occurred in this period, and by taking this opportunity also to upgrade its illustrations and photographic examples.

I have been most fortunate in my own career to work with many great practitioners and from all of them I have learnt many, many things. Theatre is, if nothing else, a collaborative art form and one of its great joys is in sharing the endeavour of creation. I hope this book continues to aid and to add to this pleasure.

Amongst the many people I have been lucky to work with I count myself hugely privileged to have had the chance to be in the presence of, and play even a small role in the life of, a man not only great in the industries he bestrode, but by all agreement simply a great man: Richard Attenborough most kindly wrote the foreword to the first edition of this book and, in that he is irreplaceable and his words none the less as true now as they were then, I include it again and remain highly in his debt. He is greatly missed.

FOREWORD

BY RICHARD ATTENBOROUGH

I am enormously pleased to have been invited to introduce this book. Although it is a long time since I appeared in a theatre, I have never forgotten the vital importance of good lighting for the stage. Today, of course, I am keenly aware that this is also true of the medium of film.

The allied professions of theatre and film, which have dominated my working life for nearly 60 years, are both immeasurably enhanced by the art of creating pictures. That is why the original term ‘moving pictures’, later shortened to ‘movies’, so aptly describes the cinema experience. Pictures, whether they be on stage or screen, tell stories and every story can be made – or marred – by the manner in which it is lit.

Like good directors of photography, good stage lighting designers really do deserve to be fostered and encouraged. It seems to me that Neil Fraser’s excellent book will do just this and that his text approaches the acquisition of professional lighting skills in exactly the right way.

As Chairman of RADA, where I trained as an actor during the War, I hold proper technical instruction in the highest possible esteem. At the Academy we quietly pride ourselves, not only in the contribution we make more famously to the world of acting, but also on the breadth of skilled technicians we have trained and sent out to become key members of the theatre profession.

RADA’s courses in stage management and theatre production, in prop making, scenic construction and painting, wardrobe and costume making, and in stage lighting are all based on the same precepts which Neil Fraser, who has been Head of Lighting at the Academy since 1985, has used throughout this book. They embody the idea that the vocational training requires the student to do, rather than just watch or listen. We are all aware that experiences made personal, made actual, are those which we really learn.

Neil’s years of teaching at RADA and guest-lecturing throughout the world have helped him develop and refine the exercises that form the backbone of what follows. I believe you will find these exercises both imaginatively stimulating and of great practical use.

The theatre world can be hard at times, with long hours, low pay and poor funding, and yet it can also be one of the most wondrous, exciting and satisfying of professions. In making good use of this book and in realizing your own potential, I sincerely hope you will also take enormous pleasure in what you do.

So my very final enjoinder is that simple but all important word: enjoy!

INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND

WHAT IS STAGE LIGHTING?

Any light source pointed at a darkened stage could be described as stage lighting. Any light aimed towards that dark, mysterious space will show something of what is there. Real stage lighting, however, does much more than this – it does not just illuminate an empty space. Good stage lighting adds character to space, texture to object, emotion to event, impetus to action, and powerful dramatic emphasis to the stage picture. As would be expected, this takes time and practice to get right. Stage Lighting Design aims to accelerate this process and help you to become an accomplished stage lighting designer.

Fig. 1 Nicola Sabbattini’s illustration, a simple oil-lamp light source, c.1630

This book will help you to progress beyond gaining simple technical knowledge to develop good and varied techniques in the lighting of dramatic pieces for the stage. The world of stage lighting is introduced in such a way that skills will be developed at your own pace and in your own individual style. Alongside the development of good working methods you will also discover an overall personal design criteria – to not only ‘do’ lighting but also to ‘think’ lighting.

The book contains both comprehensive technical information and a wide range of practical exercises. Whilst the technical information stands in its own right, the exercises reinforce and develop the knowledge gained by making it personal to you. This will enable you to evolve an understanding of how light works within the artificial world of a stage space, to discover a means of interpreting this world to interact better with the art of the dramatist or director, and in doing so develop your own individual lighting style.

Fig. 2 The beauty of light beams caught in smoke.

Fig. 3 A lighting designer’s sketchbook.

More than anything it is this individuality, supported by a good technical understanding, that creates good and unique lighting and makes a good lighting designer.

Certain instructional devices are used throughout the text. These are boxes, as illustrated below:

INFORMATION BOX

These boxes contain technical information immediately relevant to the area being discussed in the text.

SAFETY BOX

It is most important that at all times our work is safe. Safety Boxes are placed in the text specifically to warn the reader of any possible safety aspects that they may encounter.

A General Note on the Exercises

1. Each exercise is followed by an analysis of expected results. Do not be tempted to read the analysis of the exercise before carrying it out (unless advised to do so at some point in the exercise) – otherwise you are more likely to learn what the author thinks and not what you think!

2. In the case of those exercises in parts, carry out each part completely before moving on to the next one.

3. Think of and apply your own variations on the exercises – practice certainly makes perfect.

4. The exercises, as with the various sections of the book itself, are written to create a total guide to the world of lighting design. The starting point has to be that the reader knows nothing. Often this will not be the case and so you should either select the most relevant sections or exercises, or simply read through rather than carry out all the exercises.

5. In some cases it is important to have other people look at your work. Often this is indicated in the exercise, but it is also important generally not to become too entrenched in your own ideas without reference to what others may think. Always be ready to share in this way and the results you achieve will be much enriched.

6. Further guidance on carrying out the exercises is to be found in the text.

7. If you intend to work through a number of exercises it may be a good idea to keep a written record of your journey through ideas. This may well then become a useful reference book in its own right as your career as a lighting designer or theatre technician progresses.

To those of you who wish to get ‘stuck in’ to the exercises and ideas about modern stage lighting, please jump forward to the next chapter. For those of you who would like to know a bit more background before they leap forward, I present here a potted history of what has come before.

SAFETY ISSUES

It is important to always seek advice if you are ever unsure about a safety issue whilst carrying out a practical exercise.

FIRST AID

Everyone working in technical theatre work should be encouraged to have first aid training.

A LIGHTING HISTORY

The very early history of technical theatre deals as much with the problem of how to get a decent amount of light on stage, as with what to do with it once it gets there. Surprisingly, even with such slender means at their disposal, early practitioners were often worrying about the same things or coming to the same conclusions as ourselves.

Perhaps this is not so surprising. After all, little has fundamentally changed in the relationship between viewer and viewed. Since the earliest days, since theatre came off the streets and in from the outdoor arena – since the sixteenth century at least – the audience has remained physically removed from the action and in need of help to see and understand clearly the events before them. Perhaps the really astonishing thing is how little has really changed.

ANCIENT DAYS

Early dramatic performances occurred, for the most part, out of doors. The birth of theatre in many diverse cultures and periods derived from religious ceremony, and one of the earliest references to theatrical lighting (of sorts) is in the writing of Bishop Abraham of Szuszdal who, in 1493, saw a presentation of the Annunciation in a Florentine church and marvelled at the hundreds of lights used to encircle the throne of God.1

Of the same period, Giorgio Vasari (1511–74) described the manner in which such presentations were made – particularly those staged by the architect Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446):

The apparatus of the Paradise of S. Felice in that city [Florence] was invented by Filippo [Brunelleschi].... On high was a Heaven full of living and moving figures, and a quantity of lights which flashed in and out.2

THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE

Many ideas are first described in this period of high innovation and exploration. Mobile candlelight, polished bowl reflectors, light coloured by silks and shone through liquid lenses (also coloured) are all catalogued in this period. Oil and flame are dimmed mechanically, and the use of footlighting, in particular, is recorded by Serlio as early as 1530.3

In this period we know of the work of three practitioners: Serlio, Sabbattini and Di Somi.

Sebastiano Serlio (1475–1554) published a book entitled Regole generali di architettura4 in 1545 that deals with, amongst many things, a description of the artificial lighting of a typical Renaissance theatre to be erected within an interior – a courtyard or hall. Serlio talks of ‘general stage light’ and of ‘mobile light’ – the latter for specific effects like representation of the sun or moon.

Fig. 4 Typical Renaissance perspectivized stage settings.

Light was shone through glass bowls of liquid towards the stage and Serlio talks of colouring these liquids to create ‘lights shining through, of divers colours’. Similarly, water-filled bowls were used behind the light source as effective, but primitive, reflectors.

Serlio’s long manuscript is a fund of interesting detail on the staging of his period. He describes many feats of staging and numerous scenic effects, amongst them the ability to produce smoke for effect and how to create the appearance of lightning.

Fig. 5 TOP: The ‘bozze’, an early oil lamp. ABOVE: Serlio’s coloration of liquid.

Leone Ebreo Di Somi (1527–92) was in charge of court presentations in Mantua. Around 1556 he wrote a treatise on playwriting and theatre craft as a form of dialogue – questions and answers – between two courtiers.

In this document, Di Somi makes fascinating points about the lighting of comedy and tragedy. He gets close to describing back-light, introduces the notion of mirror reflectors and deals with the concept of contrast in lighting.

Nicola Sabbattini (1574–1654) built and equipped the Teatro del Sol in Pesaro that opened in 1636. Within the next three years, he published two books on the traditional practices of the theatre of his day. In these books Sabbattini wrote at some length on the subject of lighting, and interestingly made a strong case against the use, or overuse, of footlights.

Fig. 6 Sabbattini’s dimming mechanism.

In this period, lighting equipment was generally non-directional, and was for some while to come. As such the auditorium was usually as well lit as the stage.

Also worthy of study in this period are the writings of Angelo Ingegneri (1550–1631) and Josef Füzzenbach (1591–1667). The latter, a German who studied in Italy, wrote his Architectura Recreations in 1640. In it, his detailed description of the lighting of the period confirms the general layout that was to stay more or less unchanged until electric light sources finally make possible directional projected light.

LIGHT RELIEF

On a lighter note, the writings of Sabbattini, in his dissertation on stage lighting of 1638, also noted that the falling down of scenery or of lamps (oil in this case), due to the clomping around on stage of performers or dancers, ‘is one of the things that damage the prestige of a stage director’ – so, once again, no change there!

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Francesco Algarotti (1712–64) wrote in his Saggio l’opera in Musica5 about the practices of the French theatre world of 1755. He called for a number of reforms that he felt were needed to create a greater sense of illusion or stage moment. This included the concept of using chiaroscuro lighting. On this he says: ‘What wondrous things might not be produced by the light, when not dispensed in that equal manner... as is the custom’.

In England, David Garrick (1717–79), the actor-manager, is credited with bringing a number of innovations to the English stage from France, which he visited in 1764. For example, at Drury Lane Theatre the following year (1765), he removed the unconcealed lights above the stage that had shone into the eyes of the audience.

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: GAS AND ELECTRIC LIGHT

The history and inventiveness of nineteenth-century theatre practice is a period that sees a veritable explosion in what is technically possible. I would like to draw the reader’s attention to the excellent book Theatre Lighting in the Age of Gas by Terence Rees for greater detail and analysis.

Glynne Wickham in his historical writings evaluates the developments of this century thus:

Candles and oil-lamps [had] provided the sole form of lighting in every theatre until the end of the eighteenth century, [they] were banished first in favour of gas and limelight and then in favour of electricity.6

In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries there came a time when equipment devised to illuminate the stage reached a new level of flexibility and brilliance, and as such, the way lighting had been previously arranged and the thinking on it had to change.

Fig. 7 Typical gas footlight.

This moment in history also more or less coincided with, and could even be said to have derived in part from, a strong move away from the overbearing artifice of the nineteenth century – that is, a desire to break away from the 2D picture (set against a now darkened auditorium) that theatre had generally become. The new electric light made more than a small contribution to this aspiration.

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY AND BEYOND

In today’s theatre world, we have an almost boundless freedom in the way in which we present and reinterpret drama on stage. Sometimes it is good to remember not only where this freedom has come from, but also just how wide it is.

In the technical arena our sense of freedom can, perhaps, be said to date from the ideas of two great men: Adolphe Appia and Edward Gordon Craig. Naturally, of course, their work did not arise in a vacuum.

Theatre practitioners of every century have sought to reinvent ways of making stage productions powerful and meaningful for their audiences.

As the twentieth century dawned, there came a reaction across Europe and beyond to what was perceived as the artifice of the nineteenth century. From Stanislavsky in Russia, George Fuchs in Germany, Jarry, Antoine and Zola in France, W. B. Yeats in Ireland and Strindberg in Sweden, all wanted to do away with painted cloths and fake vistas, demanding, instead, ‘real’ things on stage.

Agreement and reaction to these theatrical philosophizers, and others in the allied arts, then led to the more abstract developments of Dadaism, Surrealism and, in the theatre, Symbolism. This, in turn, led others to turn to Expressionism and a breadth of other theatrical styles.

Thus the thoughts of Artaud, Tzara, Maeterlinck, the Bauhaus, Grotowski and Bertolt Brecht, in their different ways, paved the way for Beckett, Sartre, Ionesco, Pirandello, Pinter and Peter Brook, and the rich diversity of theatrical styles we know today.

Not all the great theatrical revolutionaries of twentieth-century theatre actually dealt with lighting specifically – that is, perhaps, why Appia and Craig are so influential, as they were, arguably, the clearest, the earliest and the most outspoken, in particular about how a new language of scenic art was to be achieved.

Those that did comment on theatre lighting are easy to understand, especially from the context of our own time and work. What follows, in roughly chronological order, is a summary of the thoughts of the most influential of these people.

CHRONICLE OF THE DEVELOPMENTS THAT OCCURRED IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

1803 – The Lyceum Theatre in London becomes the first to use gaslight as part of its lighting.

1817 – Drury Lane Theatre is first to be totally lit using gas.

1826 – Limelight is invented, an oxygen and hydrogen mix burning on a block of lime.

1843 – All London theatres have converted to gas by this time, the Haymarket being the last.

1846 – Electricity is used to create a light source for the first time in the Paris Opera to spotlight a performer, but it is noisy and it flickers – limelight is preferred.

1855 – A lens is put in front of limelight for the first time.7 This unit is generally used to follow performers, and thus, even today, follow-spots are still often referred to as ‘limes’.

1863 – Charles Albert Fechter suggests concealing footlights, and Henry Irving adopts this practice for the first time at the Lyceum Theatre, London.

1878 – Incandescent electric light is used for the first time in a theatre, in the Paris Hippodrome. It is silent and does not flicker.

1879 – The California Theatre in San Francisco becomes the first American theatre to be lit by electric light, using 1,158 lamps.

1881 – The Savoy Theatre in London becomes the first English theatre to be lit with electric light.

1886 – The Paris Opera is the first European theatre to be fully converted to electricity.

1889 – Henry Irving (1838–1905) introduces the notion of completely darkening the auditorium during performances.

1896 – Kliegl Brothers were founded in New York. This was the first company specializing in lighting equipment.

1914 – Strand Electric was founded in England.

AUGUST STRINDBERG (1849–1912)

At the turn of the century, the movement away from the counterfeit of scenic illusion was initially toward the ‘naturalistic’. One of the best known declarations of Naturalism was made by playwright August Strindberg in the preface to his play Miss Julie8 in 1888. In it he calls for realistic interior settings and for ‘the abolition of the footlights’.

ADOLPHE APPIA (1862–1928)

Appia, a Swiss stage artist and scenographer, wrote copiously about the need to re-evaluate the art of scenography. He anticipated the Symbolic movement by deciding that the search for ‘realism’ was as artificial as what had preceded it.

Naturally, he envisaged lighting as playing a vital part in revealing the edifices. He wrote:

What music is to the partitur, light is to the presentation... an element of pure expression as contrasted with those elements that bear a rational meaning.9

Appia divided light into two groups:

1.Verteiltes Licht or Helligkeit (general illumination).

2.Gestaltendes Licht (formative light).10

The first of these was the more traditional light, to be used to soften shadows and diminish contrast caused by the second. The second, however – a new light for the theatre – was for creating ‘relief, plastic form, for the actor and his environment, a concentrated beam of light cast from an ideal, predetermined position’.11

Appia experimented and discovered the importance of shadow to offset light.

GEORGE FUCHS (1868–1932)

Fuchs was a director of the Munich Art Theatre and his writings start from a very similar premise to those of Appia – that is, to do away with artificial attempts at the ‘real’. However, unlike Appia, he thought that the performer should not be put in an abstract 3D-setting, but made 3D by lighting against a 2D-backdrop. In his mind, scenic painting still had a role.

EDWARD GORDON CRAIG (1872–1966)

In England, Craig, like Appia, developed a philosophy of symbolic scenography ahead of its time. Craig, a producer/scenographer, published On the Art of the Theatre in 1911. In it he described a scene without the ‘distraction of scenery’ needing ‘to create a place which harmonizes with the thoughts of the poet’.12

Once again a practitioner attacked what must be seen as the most artificial and overused element in the theatre – the footlight. Craig wrote ‘in place of the footlights another method of lighting faces and figures could be adopted’.13 Provocatively, Craig also writes that it would be ‘a blessing if the theatres were not only without footlights but without lights altogether’.14

STANISLAVSKY AND MEYERHOLD

Constantin Stanislavsky (1863–1938) co-founded the Moscow Arts Theatre in 1897–98 and in him ‘Naturalism’ had one of its strongest advocates. Stanislavsky worked alongside Anton Chekhov and, another theorist, Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874– 1940). In 1903, Meyerhold broke away from the strictures of Stanislavsky’s belief in psychological truthfulness to establish a theatre that ‘seized with unquenchable thirst would go in search of new forms for the expression of eternal mysteries’.15

FUTURISM: MARINETTI

Ironically, Futurism was too anarchic to have much of a great future! Its exponents failed to achieve, or even seek, great or lasting work in their fields. Instigated in Paris in 1909 by the writings of Italian Filippo Marinetti (1876–1944), his Manifeste des auteurs dramatiques futuristes states that theatre ‘among literary forms, the one that can serve Futurism most effectively – [should] force the soul of the audience away from base everyday reality’.16

DADA AND FORMISM: TZARA AND WITKIEWICZ

One of Futurism’s offshoots, or interconnected philosophies, was the even more destructive Dadaist movement. Founded in Zurich, New York and eventually centred in Paris, one of its followers was Tristan Tzara (1896–1963). In 1922 he wrote:

Actors could be freed from the ‘cage’ of the proscenium theatre, and scenic and lighting effects be arranged in full view of the spectators, making them a part of the theatre world.17

Stanislaw Witkiewicz (1885–1939) returned from visiting Paris (via the Russian Revolution) to his native Poland and became involved with the Formist movement in 1918.

EXPRESSIONISM: REINHARDT, THE BAUHAUS

Expressionism, although predominantly in origin a German movement, is a term defining a broader approach than Dadaism or Futurism. It had neither a specific centre nor a single body of followers.

Precursors of Expressionism included Georg Büchner (1813–37) and Reinhard Sorge (1892– 1916), both of whom died before their time at the tender age of twenty-four. These playwrights found one of their greatest interpreters in director Max Reinhardt (1873–1943).

The premiere of Sorge’s play The Beggar was produced by Reinhardt in 1917. Of it a contemporary critic wrote:

The staging showed an understanding of the expressionist mind; across the proscenium hung a fine gauze, that now familiar device for preventing the diffusion of light on a subdivided scene.... The lighting moved from one part of the scene to another, leaving all the unlighted part invisible.18

This movement eventually led directly to the work in Berlin of Erwin Piscator (1893–1966) and, one of the twentieth-century’s greatest theatre innovators and practitioners, Bertolt Brecht.

THE USA: BELASCO, CHENEY AND MACGOWAN

Working within Broadway’s perhaps limited understanding of ‘Naturalism’, and far from the European extremes of Futurism and its offshoots, David Belasco (1859–1931) nevertheless stretched the limits of technical expertise in his stagings as perhaps never before – blizzards, hurricanes, radiating sunshine, dust storms and much more were painstakingly recreated on stage – or apparently so – and presented to an admiring public.

Belasco was also more than a little in accord with Appia and others in the prominence he conferred on stage lighting. In 1919, in his book TheTheatre Through its Stage Door19 he wrote:

Lights are to drama what music is to lyrics of a song. No other factor that enters into the production of a play is so effective in conveying its mood and feeling.

Many more radical practitioners in the US found their voice in the magazine Theatre Arts founded by Sheldon Cheney in 1916.

BERTOLT BRECHT (1898–1956)

Brecht is one of the undoubted giants of twentieth-century theatre. He was exiled from Nazi Germany in 1933 but invited back to East Germany to found the Berliner Ensemble in 1949. He continued to work with them until his death.

Brecht took the ideas inherent in the expressionistic work he saw around him in Germany in the 1930s and went on to develop a theatre of his own – best described as ‘Epic Theatre’. This was a theatre of politics and reportage. Brecht shunned any of the glamorous or romantic ideals inherent in the work that preceded him.

Brecht’s most famous concept was that of verfremdungseffekte – usually translated as ‘alienation effect’. This involved using a repertoire of theatrical methods and tricks to remind the audience, or keep them aware, that they were in an artificial environment.

In lighting, and indeed in scenic terms, Brecht did two things. First, he kept things unromantic and uncomplicated – bare stages, simple curtains and bright unsophisticated lighting. About Mother Courage in 1949, he said:

Fig. 8 Protection, captions, cartoons in use in Brecht the play. Contact Theatre, Manchester.

Our lighting was white and as brilliant as our equipment allowed. This enabled us to get rid of any atmosphere such as would have given the incidents a slightly romantic flavour.20

Second, Brecht used whatever means he could think of to keep the audience alienated – signs, coarse scenic devices, asides to the audiences, political songs unrelated to the storyline and sharp, abrupt changes of lighting. This also included allowing the equipment itself to be in full view of the audience.

Fig. 9 Methuen’s 1970s collected Pinter. Note the surrealist covers.

THE ABSURD: IONESCO, ADAMOV, BECKETT, SARTRE AND PINTER

It was Martin Esslin who famously grouped several writers and thinkers together under the title Theatre of the Absurd.21 Although all worked independently of each other, these playwrights had in common the manner in which they continued to explore the dramatic freedoms possible in the theatre of the twentieth century. They built on Strindberg’s theatre of dreams, on Brecht’s refusal to use the traditional ‘romantic’ story-telling methods, providing works that at last suited the flexible, symbolic and non-real settings of Appia and Craig.

JERZY GROTOWSKI (B. 1933)

In Poland, director Jerzy Grotowski took Artaud’s theories of ‘cruelty’ into new areas.

For technical innovation I would also direct the reader to the work of Mariano Fortuny (1871– 1948) in Spain, with his work on colours transmitted through silks, and Josef Svoboda (b. 1920), the Czech scenographer who used projection and powerful (low voltage) back and toplight units to create a style of lighting that was integrated with the scene it lit.

PETER BROOK (B. 1925)

In the UK, Peter Brook explored a rich abstract setting in, amongst others, his famous production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the RSC in 1970, and he developed Grotowski’s ideals in his production of the Marat Sade by Peter Weiss in 1964.