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

Theatre 111
it will perform when hung and focused on the stage.
If you glance up at the grid above the stage or at the
pipes above and to the sides of the audience, you will see
the huge range of instruments from which the designer
makes a selection.
Fixed-focus spotlights are the main instruments for
lighting stage action; they come in two main forms. The
ellipsoidal reflector spotlight (ERS—but sometimes
called “lekos” by old-timers after the company that
popularized them) has a sharply defined conical shape
and is the instrument of choice for intense, hard-edged,
and closely focused lighting. The circular ERS beam is
easy to shape: four shutters can frame it from different
sides, an iris can tighten its radius, and gobos—metal
templates—placed into the instrument can project silhouettes
of almost any variety. The fresnel (pronounced
‘fren-ELL’) spotlight, named for its French-designed
lens (originally used in lighthouses), has by contrast
a less-defined and less-shapeable beam. It is most
often used for general (wash) lighting, backlights, and
downlights.
Other common lighting instruments are even less
focused. Parabolic aluminized reflectors, or PARs
(“cans”), can be used for color washes and general lighting.
Striplights, banks of PARs or floodlights, are used to
light drops, cycloramas, and other broad areas. Specialty
instruments include follow-spots—whose high intensity
and manual operation allow for “following” an actor (for
example, during a solo dance number)—and automated
lights, which can be computer-programmed to instantly
change direction, color, and beam size at the mere touch
of a button. Though more common in the musical theatre,
follow-spots and automated lights are beginning
to make an impact in “straight” (nonmusical) theatre
as well.
The most exciting new development in lighting
technology is the LED, which creates an electroluminescence
that can deliver sufficient lighting intensity
and color control to rival many incandescent sources.
While costing more at the outset, LEDs prove considerably
less expensive in the long run because they
are vastly more energy-efficient and environmentally
friendly than incandescent bulbs. LEDs are now
widely found in PAR cans, strip lights, moving color
washes, and the “LED walls” used in large image and
video projections (see the Projections section later in
this chapter), and by 2015 were providing sufficient
intensity to provide the light source for certain spotlights
as well.
Because few theatres have the time or space flexibility
to permit much on-site experimentation in lighting
design, the development of the light plot and cue sheet
takes place primarily in the imagination and, where possible,
in workshop or free experimentation apart from
the working facility. This limitation places a premium
on the designer’s ability to predict instrument performance
from various distances and angles and with
various color elements installed. It also demands sharp
awareness of how various lights will reflect off different
surfaces.
Once the light plot is complete, the lighting instruments
are mounted (hung) in appropriate positions,
attached to the theatre’s circuits (wiring system),
“patched” to proper control channels (dimmers), aimed
and focused in the desired directions, and colored by the
attachment of frames containing “gels” (plastic color
media).
Once the instruments are in place and functioning,
the lighting designer begins setting the intensities
of each instrument for each cue. This painstaking process
involves the programming of thousands of precise
numerical directions into the computer software from
which an operator will execute the cues during performances.
And finally, the lighting designer presides over
the working and timing of the cues, making certain that
in actual operation the lights shift as subtly or as boldly,
as grandly or as imperceptibly, as desired to support and
complement the play’s action and achieve the design
aesthetic.
Great lighting design springs out of thousands of
details, most of them pulled together in one or two
final weeks. Gradations of light, difficult to measure
in isolation, can have vastly differing impacts in the
moment-to-moment focus and feel of a play. Because
light is a medium rather than an object, audience members
are rarely if ever directly aware of it; they see only its
illuminated target. Therefore, the lighting designer’s work
is often poorly understood by the theatergoing public
at large. But everyone who works professionally in the
theatre—from the set and costume designers to the director
to the actor—knows what a crucial role lighting plays
in the success of the theatre venture. As the Old Actor
says as he departs the stage in off-Broadway’s longestrunning
hit, The Fantasticks: “Remember me—in
light!” The light that illuminates the theatre also
glorifies it; it is a symbol of revelation—of knowledge
and humanity—upon which the theatrical impulse
finally rests.