Pre Electrical Staged Lighting And Lighting Effects

Essay, Research Paper

PRE-ELECTRICAL STAGE LIGHTING

AND LIGHTING EFFECTS

There is a common notion that stage lighting is the youngest of the stage arts, having suddenly been developed since the advent of electricity. Electricity was the final link in a chain of development stretching far into the past. True, stage lighting has come a long way since the dawn of electricity but its foundations were thoroughly established during the three centuries before Edison. Colored light, spotlights, translucencies, and dimming were well known before the incandescent lamp. This paper seeks to identify and explain some of the most prevalent forms and techniques of stage lighting during the pre-electricity era.

At the beginning of theatrical activity, light played an important role. The light used in the earliest productions was natural light. The open Greek theatres were built to use directional sunlight and had no need of artificial sources. The Greeks organized their plays to run a course through the day in order to use the different types of light available at different times (Penzel, 3).

Although the Romans may have used torches in their theatres, the idea of light being controlled as a visual effect had not yet been discovered. Until the Renaissance, the main purpose of theatre lighting was to permit the audience to see. Most ancient and medieval drama was performed outdoors.

By the beginning of the Renaissance, oil lamps, torches, and candles were about all that was available to produce artificial light. The oil lamp had been used since prehistoric times, as had the torch, which may be the oldest of the three. The candle was developed somewhat later, although there is no documentation as to an exact date. It is known that the molded candle was not introduced until the eighteenth century (Encyclopedia Britannica, 23.,226).

Although window shutters on playhouses in England were sometimes closed to darken a set and create an effect, Renaissance Italy is probably the birthplace of lighting designed specifically for stage productions, as opposed to general-purpose lighting. Since the Italians were the innovators of scenic illusion, it is expected that they would have also have been the first to manipulate light (Hewitt, 18). One Italian theatre architect, Sebastiano Serlio wrote about the use of “bozze”. Bozze were small glass containers that would be filled with colored water and placed in front of candles to produce colored light. Leone di Somi, another stage architect of the same era was the first to darken the audience area. His intent was to increase the fear and drama of a particular tragedy by making the audience feel isolated in the dark (Nicoll, 231).

At the beginning of the Restoration, candle chandeliers continued to be the main source of stage light throughout Europe. A new innovation however was footlights. Footlight began to appear first as candles and later as oil lamps. A painting of the Com.die Fran.ais from around 1670 shows the stage being lighted by six chandeliers and a bank of thirty four footlights. It was not until about 1720 that molded candles were developed (Encyclopedia Britannica, 23.,226). Molded candles allowed for bigger wicks and thus, more light. They also needed more maintenance and the candle snuffer’s office became an integral part of theatre management (Penzel 20).

One of the most significant lighting developments of the eighteenth century was practiced at the Drury Lane Theatre, under the management of David Garrick. Garrick’s innovation was the removal of the chandeliers. The chandeliers had, for a long time, obstructed the view fro the upper galleries and were also inefficient. The emphasis on lighting was now shifted to sources located behind the proscenium and across the apron. Garrick also introduced the “float”, a long metal trough filled with oil, in which a number of metal saucers, each containing two wicks, could float (Hogan, lxv-lxvi). The trough was lowered into the floor by ropes and pulleys and could thereby achieve a dimming effect.

The Argand burner, a new type of oil lamp, was perhaps the last major lighting innovation of the eighteenth century. It was invented by a Swiss chemist named Amie Argand who had invented the lamp to satisfy his own lighting needs and then later patented it (Thwing 71). His 1784 British patent reads:

“A lamp so constructed as to produce neither smoak [sic] nor smell and to give considerably more light than any lamp hitherto known, by converting the smoak into flame, by causing a current of air to pass through the inside of air on the outside of the wick by means of a chimney.” (Thwing, 73)

Not only did the lamp give off less smoke, it also used less oil. This was the first advance in lamp technology in thousands of years and it started a rush of lighting activity to take place during the nineteenth century.

From the mid to late 1700’s, a new technology was in the works: gas lighting. Gas was much brighter than anything that has been used in the past and created many new opportunities for experimentation in lighting. By 1817, the development of gas production, storage, and metering was almost complete and it did not take long for gas technology to move into theatres. One of the earliest theatrical installations of gas was at the East London Theatre at Wellclose Square. Its advertisement in the London