The play is the thing, but the lights control the way in which the audience receives all the visual information of a theater piece. Lighting sets the tone for scenes and creates visual illusions that draw the audience into the world of the play. Lighting technology has advanced tremendously since the age of Shakespeare and candle-lit chandeliers, especially during the digital age. Computer technology allows lighting designers to design entire shows on a computer.
History
From the days of Shakespeare to the early 19th century, theaters had three options for lighting: the sun, fire and rudimentary oil lamps. Gas lighting was developed in the first years of the 19th century, and was implemented in theaters around 1815. Gaslight could be colored, and designed to meet the needs of a performance, thus giving rise to the notion of light design specific to each show. Gaslight allowed for limelight, which was the precursors to the spotlight, developed in 1825. Electricity appeared in the 1840s, though wasn't refined for theatrical use until the late 19th century. Into the 20th century, electric light became the norm of theatrical lighting, and has since developed radically.
The Company of Sir Henry Irving
The theater company of Sir Henry Irving, a British stage actor, is largely credited with inventing the notion of lighting technology in theater. The theater company Irving ran out of the Lyceum Theater in London was renowned for its technical virtuosity as much as it was known for the sub par literary quality of its scripts. The company was geared toward entertainment theater, and as such used technical wizardry to transport audiences, pioneering such lighting technology as dimmers, mood lighting, scene specific design and colored lights. The company even toured the United States with its own lighting rig, something unheard of at the time.
Significance
Theater lights are used to enhance the emotions and ambiance of theatrical pieces using color, brightness and shadows. The interplay of light and shadow, known as chiaroscuro, is used to enhance tension and focus the attention of the audience on certain elements of a set. Lights of certain colors, such as blue and red, can be used to heighten emotional response, while using unnatural light colors such as red can create surreal effects. In 2010, colored lights are created with a simple technology known as gels, which are filters placed over the lights to change their colors.
The Evolution of Dimmers
Dimmers are an important part of lighting technology. A dimmer is any apparatus that allows the levels of lights to be changed. Dimmers were a development of the gaslight era, when it was discovered that a valve could be used to change the rate gas flow to a light, thus changing its brightness. In the electrical era, dimmers have undergone a number of changes. In their most primitive form, electrical dimmers were beakers filled with salt water and two metal contacts. Through the 20th century, dimmers evolved from wall switches to large and complicated systems of hardware and software. In the digital age, dimmers can be controlled by computers or from a lighting desk, which is a large mixing board through which all of a theater's lights are routed and with which those lights can be controlled.
Digital Age
Design software is the major innovation in theater lighting technology of the digital age, and opens a new world of possibilities for designers. Software programs allow lighting designers to create scene-by-scene designs for entire shows on a computer, test them both on stage and in digital environments a number of times, and run them live through a pre-programmed sequence by directly connecting the computer to the lights through either Ethernet or DMX systems. Design software also permits designers to create a working list of all the lights, gels, cables, and other equipment required for any given show.
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