Chapter 12 – Image Makers: Designers
(Lighting, Sound, and Technical Production)
I feel that light is like music.
In some abstract, emotional,
cerebral, nonliterary way, it
makes us feel, it makes us
see, it makes us think, all
without knowing exactly how
and why.
—Jennifer Tipton
Chapter Summary
• In today’s theatre, lighting, sound, and computer
technologies affect what we see, how we see, how we
hear, how we feel, and often what we understand.
• As areas of theatrical design, lighting and sound, along
with the new “machines,” are essential to the modern
stage’s theatrical effectiveness.
Lighting Design: Background
• Ancient Greece:
– Torches, fires, sunlight
• Medieval Europe:
– Torches, cauldrons of flame and smoke, reflecting
metals (outdoor)
– Oil lamps, candles, reflecting glass (indoor)
• Renaissance:
– Candles, oil lamps, panes of colored glass illuminated
from behind, colored lanterns, transparent cloth veils,
fireworks
Lighting Design: Background
• English theatre:
– Onstage candles (lit before play, snuffed at end)
– Chandeliers lit start to finish
– Footlights (c. 1672)
– Argand (“patent”) oil lamps (c. 1785):
• Replaced candles
Lighting Design: Background
• Gas (c. 1850):
– Replaced oil
– Limelight (prototype of spotlight)
– Operated by technician at “gas table”
– Drawbacks:
• Fumes
• Heat
• Live flame onstage
Lighting Design: Background
• Incandescent lamp (1879):
– Replaced gas lights
– Advantages:
• Not a fire risk
• Allowed for lightening and darkening different
areas of stage
• Provided source of mood
• Allowed for different colors
– London’s Savoy Theatre first to be fully lit with
electricity (1881)
Lighting Design: Background
• Adolphe Appia:
– First modern lighting designer
– Argued for light as the guiding principle of all design
– Established standards for lighting practices
– Believed light could unify all production elements
– Defined role of modern lighting designer
The Art of Light
• Light designer’s tools:
– Form:
• Shape of light pattern
The Art of Light
Courtesy Will Owens/ PlayMakers Repertory Company
• Light designer’s tools:
– Form
– Color:
• Mood achieved by filters
(thin, transparent sheets
of colored plastic,
gelatin, or glass) or by
varying degrees of
intensity
Death of a Salesman, with
Lighting by Mary Louise Geiger
The Art of Light
Courtesy of High End Systems
• Light designer’s tools:
– Form
– Color
– Movement:
• Changes in form and
color using dimmers,
motorized instruments,
and computerized
control consoles
The Designer’s Process
• Read script:
– Note visual images, practicals (lamps, chandeliers,
etc.)
• Meet with director and designers:
– Work out basic questions about lighting
• Create a design:
– Light plot
The Designer’s Process:
Light Plot and Focusing
• Light plot:
– Map of lighting instruments:
• Location of each instrument to be used
• Type of instrument, wattage, color filter
• General area to be lighted by each instrument
• Circuitry needed to operate instruments
• Focusing:
– Lights pointed toward area they will illuminate
The Designer’s Process: Cueing
• Operators provided with cue sheet:
– Chart of control console showing instrument settings
and color
– Each cue numbered and keyed to script
• Designer and operators fine tune intensities, colors:
– Each change marked on cue sheet
• Some shows use computer-programmed cues.
Special Lighting Effects
• Lighting effects:
– Mirror balls
– Searchlights
– Projections
– Holograms
– Fireworks
• Gobos:
– Slide inserted into gate of spotlight to project images
The Designer’s Assistants
• Assistant designer:
– Helps prepare light plots
– Compiles instrument schedules
– Acts as liaison with technicians
– Locates special equipment
• Master electrician:
– Oversees safety issues
– Maintains equipment, checks before performance
• Lighting crew:
– Installs, operates, maintains all lighting equipment
Theatrical Sound: Background
• Earliest theatre:
– Music
– Choral chanting
– Actor’s voices
• Elizabethan theatre:
– Thunder machines (series of troughs for cannonballs
to rumble down)
– Thundersheets (sheets of tin that made a rumbling
sound when rattled)
– Thunder runs (sloping wooden troughs for rolling
cannonballs down)
Theatrical Sound: Background
• Since 1900:
– Telephone, doorbell ringers
– Door slammer
• Since 1970s:
– Audio recording, playback technologies, sound
systems
– Microphones, amplification
Uses of Live and Recorded Sounds
Sound
Foghorn
Hourly chime
Birds
Rain, thunder
Toilet flushing
Scream, howling
wind,creaking floorboard
Telephone, door knock
Helps establish:
Setting
Time of day
Season
Weather conditions
Realism
Mood
Onstage cues
Music
• Functions:
– Evokes mood
– Establishes period
– Heightens tension
– Intensifies action
– Provides transitions between scenes and at endings
• Implementation in production managed by sound
designer
The Sound Designer: Process
• Reads script, makes note
of cues
• Meets with director,
designers, composer
• Researches sound
libraries, records sounds,
music
• Prepares sound track
• Plots effects/music on
cue sheet
Special Effects with Sound
• Function of special effects:
– Capture audience’s attention
– Increase emotional impact
• Examples:
– Offstage noise (e.g., car door slam)
– Recorded music (e.g., to underscore emotional
scene)
• Aids in telling story, reinforces intended impact of scene
Computer-Aided Design
• Computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided
manufacture (CAM):
– Help designers configure space “virtually”
– Allows for preview, change of designs before
manufacture
– Access to virtual libraries
– Allows for “virtual” design meetings
Technical Production Team
• Production manager (PM):
– Coordinates staffing, scheduling, budgeting for every
element of production
• Technical director (TD):
– Manages scene shop, construction and operation of
scenery, stage machinery
• Costume shop manager:
– Manages costume inventory and budgets, buying
fabrics, building, buying, and/or renting costumes and
accessories
Technical Production Team
• Production stage manager (PSM):
– Coordinates the director’s work in rehearsals with the
actors and the technical departments
– During show, responsible for running entire onstage
and backstage operation
• Assistant stage manager (ASM):
– Responsible for the smooth operation of technical
systems and actors’ exits, entrances, and costume
changes.
Core Concepts
• All design elements in the theatre serve the play and
enhance the storytelling quality of the theatre.
• In collaboration with the director, designers (in tandem
with actors) transform the “empty space” into the living
world of the production.
• The theatre’s production and stage managers, along with
the many technicians, provide the technical support
system without which no theatre can open its doors.