The Art of Light on Stage

Lighting in Contemporary Theatre

Yaron Abulafia

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317429708
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Performing Arts

The Art of Light on Stage is the first history of theatre lighting design to bring the story right up to date. In this extraordinary volume, award-winning designer Yaron Abulafia explores the poetics of light, charting the evolution of lighting design against the background of contemporary performance. The book looks at the material and the conceptual; the technological and the transcendental. Never before has theatre design been so vividly and excitingly illuminated.

The book examines the evolution of lighting design in contemporary theatre through an exploration of two fundamental issues:

1. What gave rise to the new directions in lighting design in contemporary theatre?

2. How can these new directions be viewed within the context of lighting design history?

The study then focuses on the phenomenological and semiotic aspects of the medium for light – the role of light as a performer, as the medium of visual perception and as a stimulus for imaginative representations – in selected contemporary theatre productions by Robert Wilson, Romeo Castellucci, Heiner Goebbels, Jossi Wieler and David Zinder.

This ground-breaking book will be required reading for anyone concerned with the future of performance.

Chapter 1

Towering figures in the history of theatre lighting design

Light in the theatre has developed tremendously, perhaps more than any other medium, since the time of Greek theatre.¹ Especially since the Renaissance, theatre lighting techniques have increasingly evolved. Yet, systems for gas and electric lighting were increasingly introduced in the theatre only at the beginning and the end of the 19th century respectively, and these, for the first time in history, allowed for the effective control and modified distribution of light throughout the performance. This feature, in particular, was revolutionary since it linked light with the dimension of time and later enabled theatre-makers to begin pondering the artistic function of light within a practice of design. The ability to adjust lighting intensity at will provided theatre artists with the new capacity to control the visual organization of the dramatic space.

In the history of western theatre, the development of light as a theatrical medium was closely related to technological inventions. Often the introduction of new lighting technologies for public and industrial use, such as gaslight and electric lighting, was followed by the adaptation of these technologies in the theatre. There were a few cases, however, in which lighting technology was invented especially to answer the demands of theatre-makers, ballet masters or managers, and later of lighting designers. The numerous outbreaks of fire in Renaissance and Baroque theatres, much more common and disastrous in the 19th century, were usually caused by inflammable scenery catching fire and make it clear that the lighting was often unsafe and did not as yet meet the needs of the theatre.

With new technologies becoming available throughout the history of theatre, artists were gradually and increasingly able to change the perceptual features of expressive visual effects. Later technological developments enabled artists to realize their contemporary ideals of beauty on stage by the use of light, and to increase the effects that light had on the experience of the spectators. Inventions enriched the palettes of light designers – or stage painters and technicians in earlier periods – with which they could illuminate the stage, represent ideas, or influence the way the spectator perceived, felt toward, and interpreted a performance. Since control systems enabled lighting to change in time and tremendously modify the perception of space, the complexity of this work was acknowledged and resulted in a production demand to entrust the creation of light to dedicated artists. This resulted in the establishment of a new theatrical profession – that of ‘lighting designer’.

There are numerous elaborate historical studies on the development of theatre technology and lighting in particular that provide excellent in-depth investigations, among them books by Allardyce Nicoll (1961), Gösta M. Bergman (1977) and, more recently, by Christopher Baugh (2005), Arnold Aronson (2008), Joslin McKinney and Philip Butterworth (2010), Oscar G. Brockett, Margaret Mitchell and Linda Hardberger (2010) and Scott Palmer (2013). It is not my purpose to introduce one more myself. Rather, this historical chapter provides a context and background for the discussion, later in this book, of new tendencies of lighting design in state-of-the-art contemporary theatre – emphasizing the experience and meaning, and the rising autonomy of light in contemporary performances.

In my writing about the development of the poetic dimension in light design I will refer to the work of influential pioneer lighting designers and theatre-makers from the fin de siècle to the contemporary ‘post-dramatic’ theatre. I will concentrate on how the medium of light was regarded by different towering artists; what function(s) it played in the performance, and how technological developments created new possibilities for artistic expression. In this chapter I will follow light on its path to becoming a fundamental element and cogent force in the creative process and the ‘sculptor ‘of the spatial dimension in the perception of the addressees and performers alike. This chapter also elaborates upon influential ideas in modernist and postmodernist art that inspired innovators in light design – one of them being the distancing oneself from a verisimilar representation of reality.

While touching upon the aesthetic conventions of light that were common in different periods since the late 19th century, I focus on light’s position in relation to the text, on the visual experience that artificial light offered the spectator (phenomenology), and on the ways in which light represented ideas or concepts (semiotics and poetics). Some artists have sought to stimulate the emotions and the imagination of the spectators by means of new spectacular, ever-brighter lighting technologies (Aronson 2008, 33), or used light to arouse the emotions of the performers, as David Belasco did. Others have examined the interrelations among the media in the performance, sometimes replacing one medium with another and ‘staging’ expressive light instead of a human performer (Svoboda’s Das Rheingold, Geneva, 1977). When possible, I present evidence of audience reception in conjunction with drawings and photos. The historical research thus focuses on how light affected the spectators emotionally and/or contributed to the understanding of the piece.

In this chapter, I will address both the writings and the artistic work of selected pioneers in the history of theatre lighting design, and concentrate on their poetic approach to the role of light in relation to a representation of reality based on verisimilitude and to the changing position of light with regard to the written/verbal text. Many others deserve to be mentioned, of course, but this would exceed the scope of this chapter, which aims to provide an historical and conceptual context for the discussion of the new trends and rising autonomy of light in contemporary theatre.

Before proceeding with the historical overview, note should be made concerning my use of the terms ‘realism’, ‘representation’ and ‘mimesis’, in line with the introduction to this book. In On Realism and Art (1921), Roman Jakobson argues that the term ‘realism’ has been used uncritically since the mid-to-late 19th century, narrowing its definition as a result of the associating with the familiar art movement of Realism. Since then, realism has been affiliated with a very particular aesthetics based on the similarity of art to day-to-day reality.

However, there is another definition of the concept of ‘realism’ that was neglected according to Jakobson. Art has always been realistic. Realism is more of a reflective quality of the contemporary spirit through the arts. Views and experiences, expressed by artists through their work, were continually a reference to reality. As such, the arts have always been facing, and were part of, cultural changes in the course of history, demanding the occasional renewal of aesthetics. In the mid-19th century, the tendency was to represent reality through the formal characteristics of contemporary reality. This was the artists’ contemporary reference to their reality. Since then, art movements have also maintained the quality of ‘realism’, be they abstract painting or post-dramatic theatre. Referring to ‘realism’ through the mere perspective of verisimilitude, of visual likeness to reality alone, would prove to be misleading. Instead, ‘realism’ should be discussed in terms of quality, and the relation between the work and its aesthetic and poetic contexts.

The addressees are invited to accept a new aesthetics as more appropriate for representing the human position in the universe, according to the reality of their time. To use Jakobson’s words: “I rebel against a given artistic code and view its deformation as a more accurate rendition of reality” (Jakobson 1921).

Mimesis, the imitation of human action, in line with Jakobson’s approach, has no fixed ‘form’. Mimesis is, rather, a dynamic element in the process of representation. It can indicate, to a certain extent, how artists and audience perceive art in relation to a certain culture in a given period of time. Understanding ‘mimesis’ in this sense ascertains the validity of the concept for any period and liberates us from the traditional association between realism and representation based on verisimilitude.

Sir Henry Irving (1838–1905)

Theatre director Henry Irving, actor and manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London from 1878 until 1899, was one of the most innovative shaping figures of both the late Romantic theatre and the early theatre of Realism. During his term at the Lyceum, the introduction of gas lighting, followed by the progression to electric light, constituted a whole new theatrical element to be explored. This went far beyond the well-awaited brighter intensity, the availability of safer instruments and the controlled distribution of light. This was, in fact, a wholly new artistic tool for the directors, with which they could shape the visibility of the stage (and auditorium) with greater freedom than ever before (Nicoll 1961, 195). The Lyceum Theatre was the first in London to dim its houselights during the performance, as early as 1892 (Palmer 2013, 174). By so doing, the atmosphere on the stage and the spectators’ attention were both enhanced (Innes 1998, 20). For the perfecting of the performance, Irving used to dim the lights during transitions and, with the help of almost 100 stagehands, perform quick changes of highly elaborate scenery (Palmer 2013, 35). Darkening the auditorium during performances helped him to selectively highlight details out of the darkness and creating illusionary and atmospheric spaces on stage. Following the late Romantic tradition, Irving attributed great importance to the atmospheric unity of scenery and costume as well as to rhythm in acting and movement. As Allardyce Nicoll writes, “The main tendencies of nineteenth-century scenic art may be summed up in the words spectacular and antiquarian” (Nicoll 1961, 190). Theatre houses took pride in presenting seemingly accurate replicas of history, as the following leaflet preface to The Merchant of Venice (Princess Theatre, 1850) states:

The costumes and customs are represented as existing about the year 1600, when Shakespeare wrote the play. The dresses are chiefly selected from a work by Cesare Vecellio, entitled “Degli Habiti Antichi e Moderni di diverse Parti del Mondo [sic.]. In Venetia, 1590”: as well as from other sources to be found in the British Museum.

(quoted in Nicoll 1961, 191)

The preface reflects some of the theatrical conventions of the period, while obliquely indicating the expectations and high esteem of the theatre public for scenic illustration of the text. In relation to the text, the design practice fulfilled an ‘archaeological’ mission and remained loyal to the aesthetics of the historical period in which the play was written.² Moreover, the often-spectacular scenery was to decorate and ‘glorify’ the dramatic text, as Irving stated in 1886: “The first duty of anyone who mounts a piece is to produce a beautiful and pleasing effect” (Finkel 1996, 83). In order to reach a high degree of beauty based on observation of reality, Irving hired leading contemporary painters to decorate his stage. Painting was still the main medium by which to construct the stage image; only occasionally were minor parts of the scenery three-dimensional, giving the impression of a three-dimensional painting (McKinney and Butterworth 2010, 86).

The shortcomings of illumination capacities prior to the invention of electric lighting influenced the development of design conventions, acting style and limited range for actors’ mise-en-scène (mainly downstage) since the earlier theatre of the Renaissance. Before long, the reforms in stage lighting enhanced acting in deeper stage areas and hastened the replacement of previous theatrical conventions such as painted flats and wings by a new aesthetics of Realism, in which new materials and stage machinery were used (Nicoll 1961, 199–200).

After Irving had mastered the techniques and possibilities of directional lighting (using the limelight), he skilfully lit all of his performances. In a conversation with Ben-Tzion Munitz, he notes that “Irving’s innovations and contributions to stage lighting are associated with gas lighting rather than electric lighting. In fact, he tried to resist the transition to electric lighting”. Bram Stoker, who was Irving’s business director and assistant for many years, wrote that Irving’s light designs incorporated different elements, for which he used a large number of gas jets and powerful limelights with various lenses. Through the use of these lighting sources, Irving was able to divide the stage into separate illumination areas, thereby selecting where to use more light on stage and where less; where to use colours and which ones, etc. On Irving’s method, Stoker wrote: “open limes, ‘spot lights’ of varying focus and intensity, lights so constructed as to cover a certain amount of space, and so on” (quoted in Bergman 1977, 301). New features such as increased intensity, control capacities and enhanced optics of theatre lighting enabled not only the illumination of stage areas more distant from the audience, but also differentiation of stage areas through various intensities of light. Bright light also influenced other theatrical elements, including scenery, acting, costumes, movement on the stage and makeup – to mention but a few.

In addition, Irving renewed the use of footlights that had ruled since 1589. He separated the lamps into group sockets, enabling illumination of different stage areas instead of all areas at once. Each group of lamps had a particular colour and when several groups were used simultaneously the mixture of colours blended into a new one, similar to the now-common use of RGB LED mixing (for example, Blue and Red lights create magenta, Red and Green lights generate yellow, and so on). Using this system, Irving could create a different look for each stage area, in terms of both colour and intensity. Although not the first to use coloured footlights, he was a pioneer in successfully dividing and illuminating stage areas differently, rather than as one homogeneous unit. To quote Stoker once more: “He has noticed that nature seldom shows broad effect with an equality of light. There are shadows here and there, or places where, through occasional a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• The Art of Light on Stage
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Towering Figures in the History of Theatre Lighting Design
• 2 Light Art: The Rising Autonomy of Artificial Light
• 3 Theoretical Framework
• 4 A New Conceptual Framework for the Aanalysis of Light
• Introduction to the Performance Analyses
• 5 Madama Butterfly
• 6 On the Concept of the Face, Regarding the Son of God
• 7 Stifters Dinge (Stifter’s Things)
• 8 Rechnitz (Der Würgeengel)
• 9 Peer Gynt
• Epilogue
• Glossary
• Index