Image Makers: Designers C;: H a I" T Ll R 12 LIGHTING and SOUND I Feel That Light Is Like Music
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" " Image Makers: Designers c;: H A I" T ll R 12 LIGHTING AND SOUND I feel that light is like music. In some abstract, emotlona~ cerebral, nonliterary way, it makes us feel, it makes us see, it makes us think, all without knowing exactly how and why. 1 \ • Jennifer Tipto1, lighting De~lgner THE LIGHTING DESIGNER In today's theatre, lighting, Stage lighting is a powerful theatrical tool to focus an audience's attention, sound, and computer enhance understanding, and give aesthetic pleasure. It is sometimes sur 'u technologies affect what we prising to learn that the "lighting" designer emerged in the theatre well tee, how we see, how we before the invention of electricity. hear, how we feel, and often what we understand. As Background areas oftheatrical design, lighting and sound, along The Greeks called their theatres "seeing places." These were outdoor the with the new "machines," atres, and performances took place chiefly during daylight hours, but not ',il,, are essential to the modem without some attention to lighting effects. Playwrights. who were also the I.''' ' stage's theatrical earliest directors, called for drama~c effects with torches, fires, and even effectiveness. sunlight. Aeschylus in Agamemnon, which tells the story of the King's re 'i'i turn at the close of the Trojan War, begins wtth a Watchman standing atop ! 'I the palace to watch for beacons shining from distant mountaintops that it i. I ·: will signal Agamemnon's returri to Argos. Most interpreters think that the ·'II' '' Watchman's speech begins virtually fn the early morning mist and that his '' recognition of the signal flames coincides with the actual sunrise over the Theatre of Dionysus. Although the material of legend, the effect would be I ,, spectacular. Because the plays lasted throughout the day, it is ~lso logical that the red rays of sunset in the Attic sky could have simulated the de structive flames of the burning Troy, or even the cessation of military or personal struggles in the last rays of sunlight. Again, In the medieval outdoor theatres, torches, cauldrons of flame and smoke, and reflecting metals focused the audience's attention on im- portant events in Biblit:al stories. As productions of morality plays during the late Middle Ages moved indoors within manor houses and public halls, oil lamps, candles, and reflecting colored glass provided illumination and effects. By the time of the Renaissance, Italian painters and architects in Italy and France were creating general illumination with tallow or wax candles in chandeliers and wall sconces; spectacular effects with oil lamps, panes of colored glass illuminated from be hind, colored lanterns, and transparent veils of cloth; and astonishing outdoor dis plays of fireworks to climax festival events in Florence or Versailles with incendiary brilliance, Between 1660 and 1800 in England, the general practice was to light the onstage candles before the curtain opened and to snuff them out when the play ended. Chan deliers above the auditorium remained lighted from start to finish. The auditorium was not darkened, so spectators continued to attend theatres as much to be seen as to give attention to the actors and the plays. Diarist Samuel Pepys, in the mid-seven teenth century, complained of candle wax dripping onto spectators and of the candle light hurting his eyes. There were other inventions such as footlights, placed along the apron of the stage around 1672 to give increased illumination to the actors standing there. In 1785, Ar An early lighting control board at gand, or "patent," oil lamps produced brighter and steadier light and replaced candles. the Paris Opera, 1893, with the operator beneath the stage. Note But the introduction of gas, the "gas table," and limelight (or calciam or Drummond also the prompter seated at the light, the prototype of the spotlight or follow spot) in the mid-1880s provided for the front of the stage. first time better general illumination and more reali~r ~hung effects on European ' and American stages. A single operator at a gas table, ·:able to a modem control '' console, could adjust a valve anti "'''-Tease or decrease the inten I sity of a single lamp or control all lights from a single position in the same manner as a modern dimmer system. II I•I Nevertheless, gas lighting had its drawbacks, not the least of I' i ' which were unpleasant fumes, intense heat, and the danger of ' live flame onstage, not infrequently resulting in the burning II down of such theatres as the Drury Lane in London. In addition, ' the heat, smoke, and carbon pollution from gaslights caused the ' deterioration of scenery and costumes and affected the eyes of ac- II,• ,. tors and spectators alike. The incandescent lamp, invented by ' Thomas Edison in 1879, was almost immediately adopted as the means of lighting the entire stage. It was an answered prayer to end the disastrous theatre fires caused by open gas flames. Electricity transformed overall possibilities for lighting design in the theatre. It made possible complete control of a range of in tensities and colors; it provided the ability to lighten or darken different areas of the stage; it provided a source of mood for the actor and atmosphere for the play; and it also made possible spec tacular effects. In 1881, London's Savoy Theatre was the first to be fully lighted with electricity. Enter the modern lighting designer. At the turn of the twen tieth century, Swiss designer Adolphe Appia understood the 276 PART THREE G THEATRE'S PRACTITIONERS LIGHTING DESIGNER Jennifer Tipton Jennifer Tipton, born in Columbus, Ohio, grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee, where she briefly studied dance with Martha Graham and Jose lim6n. A graduate of Cornell University, she eventually found her way with the help of designer Thomas Skelton Into a career as a lighting designer for choreographers Paul Taylor, Robert Jaffrey, Jerome Robbins, and Twyla Tharp. Beginning in the late sixties, she worked consistently as a lighting designer for re gional theatres, for dance and opera companies, and on Broadway. In 1976, she won the Drama Desk Award for lighting design in Ntozake Shange's for colored girls who hove • considered suicide/when the rainbow is enufand Antoinette Perry "Tony" Awards for The Cherry Orchard at lincoln Center in 1977 and for Jerome Robbins' Broadway in 1989. She designed lighting for Robert Wilson's the CIVIL worS at the American Repertory The atre, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and for the 1997 revival of Eugene O'Neill's The Hairy Ape, starring Wilt em Dafoe, for the Wooster Group, New York City. In 1989, she again received the Drama Desk Award for lighting design in jerome Robbins' Broadway, Long Day's journey into Night, and Waiting for Go dot. In 1991, she made her directing debut at the Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis, with The Tempest. She teaches lighting design at the Yale School of Drama in New Haven, Connecticut. Tipton's use of light is characterized by "textured and sculptured space" and by use of a palette based ::m white. She summarizes the essence of the lighting desi~ner's art by saying, "While 99.9 percent of an audience is not aware ofHght, ,100 percent is af fected by it." 1 Suge llgho'ng controls what we see and often what we hear. Jennifer Tipton's lighting design for the 1977 production Or Agamemnon at Lincoln Center The ater, New York City, creates a sorriber atmosphere while focusing attention on the bodies of Agamemnon and Cassandra lying before the palace doors. ' '1- !' i I~~-~~ .... , .... ~ CHAPTER TWELVE ti IMAGE MAKERS: DESIGNERS 277 L [-:--"; artistic possibilities of lighting for the theatre. In Music and Stage Set :I " Jennifer Tipton says that the direc-' ting he argued that light should be the guiding principle of all design I tors who have meant the IT)OSt to her and set down modern stage lighting practices. He believed that light are the ones who have stirrlulated her could unify or bring into harmony all production elements, including to use darkness. Andrei Serban, who two- and three-dimensional objects, actors, and inanimate objects, directed the revival ofChekh:Jv's The shapes, and things. Appia established light as an artistic medium for Cherry Orchard for Which Tipton won the theatre and defined the role of the modern lighting designer. her first Antoinette PerrY 'Tony" Award, insisted on "darkness." He said, The Art of Light "No. darker, darker, darker. daiket" Pioneering Am~rican designer Jean Rosenthal defined lighting design 'And it got ~ery dirk, ·so peOple ~ere as "imposing quality on the scarcely visible air through which objects almoSt inVisible," TiptOn said, "which arid People are seen." 3 One rule of lighting maintains that visibility made\i~ices ri~g oi.it even more deafly and ambience (the surrounding atmosphere) must be inherent to the than when the lights were On. The total theatrical design, including scenery and costumes. The light de fact that he [Serban] had rTiade m~ signer's tools, other than the instruments themselves, are form (the i go that dark at that m~ment meant shape of the lighting's pattern), color (the mood achieved by filters that the whole composition over time thin, transparent sheets of colored plastic, gelatin, or glass-or by changed .... Because the dar~esS varying degrees of intensity, or by both), and movement (the changes was there. the brightness had to be of forms and color by means of dimmers, motorized instruments, and ·. brighter. an~ there had to be other computerized control consoles). ' ' darker moments. Serban didn't tell me to do that. I just did it. It had to be.