Robert Cohen - Theatre, Brief Version-McGraw-Hill Education (2016)

110 Chapter 5 Designers and Technicians
Shown here is Tom Ruzika’s light plot for the 2003 Broadway production of Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks
(substantially reduced in size to fit this page). You are looking down from the theatre’s ceiling; the stage is at the top
of the drawing, and the audience area (the “house”) is at the bottom. The gray rectangles on each side indicate the
vertical sides of the proscenium; the “CL” symbol is the center line of the stage and house, and each bomb-shaped
symbol is an individual and specific lighting instrument. “Practicals” are lighting or other working electrical instruments
that are part of the scenery but are also connected (“wired”) into the lighting control system (the “board”). The light
plot tells the electrical staff where instruments are to be hung, where (roughly) they are to be aimed, and how they are
wired to the board. © Thomas Ruzika © The Ruzika Company
are increasingly being electronically programmed to pan,
tilt, or change color by remote control. A cue sheet is a
list of the precise moments in the script that the lights
are to move and/or change color or intensity. Both light
plot and cue sheet are developed in consultation with the
director and other members of the design team, who may
take major or minor roles in the consultation depending
on their interests and expertise. Some productions use
hundreds of lighting instruments and require thousands
of individual cues. In these cases, the complexity of the
plot and cue sheet can be extraordinary, with weeks or
months of preparation. In today’s theatre the cues resulting
from this lengthy process are almost always then
programmed into a computer capable of executing them
with the necessary speed and precision.
The lighting designer works with a number of different
types of lighting instruments and must know the
properties of each well enough to anticipate fully how