Stage Lighting

1. Stage Lighting Prepared by: Mariz T. Entod

2. Lightning in Theater History

3. Stage lighting in Ancient Times • Ancient Greek plays performed in an open-air theaters. • The plays were usually staged during the daytime in order to take advantage of the natural light from the sun.  • The location of the stage should also be such that it could obtain the best effect of the natural light from the sun.  • They also used mirrors and other background materials that could reflect the natural light in order to change the lighting in the play. 

4. Theater of Dionysus

5. Theatre at Epidaurus (finished about 340 BC)

6. 15th Century

7. Candles were also used which were mounted over the stage and its wings.

8. -oil lamps came about and it made indoor theatres possible”.

9. SebastianoSerlio • Is an Italian Mannerist Architect, painter and theorist. • Introduced the used colored light liquids in bottles (red) wine, saffron(yellow), ammonium chloride in a copper vessel (blue)”

10. Leone de Somi (1550) -a Jewish- Italian playwright, director, actor, poet and translator.

11. Happy Scenes

12. Tragic Scenes

13. 16th to 17th Century

14. Joseph Furstenbach  -introduces footlights and sidelights to the stage. At this time they are crude oil lamps or candles.

15. Nicola Sabatini - an Italian architect and the writer of theater books used lighting techniques such as dimming the candles through them use of metal cylinders lowered on the candles.

16. AimeArgand(1780s) • - Swiss chemist AimeArgand develops the modern oil lamp which soon replaces the candle as the primary light source.

18. 18th Century 19th Century

19. Kerosene lamp (widely known in Britain as a paraffin lamp) is a type of lightning device that uses kerosene as a fuel.

20. The 19th century ushered in many improvements in stage lighting with the invention of the Bunsen Burner by Robert Wilhelm Bunsen. Robert Wilhelm Bunsen (March 31, 1811-August 16, 1899) was a German chemist and teacher. He invented the Bunsen burner for his research in isolating chemical substances - it has a high-intensity, non-luminous flame that does not interfere with the colored flame emitted by chemicals being tested.

21. Bunsen Burner

22. Lime Light • Limelight (also known as Drummond light or calcium light) is a type of stage lighting once used in theatres and music halls. An intense illumination is created when an oxyhydrogen flame is directed at a cylinder of quicklime (calcium oxide), which can be heated to 2,572 °C (4,662 °F) before melting.

23. Sir Goldsworthy Gurney (1793–1875) was a surgeon, chemist, lecturer, consultant architect  and prototypical British gentleman scientist and an inventor during the Victorian period. Captain Thomas Drummond (10 Oct. 1797 – 15 Aprl 1840), from Edinburgh, Scotland, was an army officer, civil engineer and senior public official. Drummond used the Drummond light which was employed in the trigonometrical survey of Great Britain and Ireland. He is sometimes mistakenly given credit for the invention of limelight, at the expense of Sir Goldsworthy Gurney

24. Home-made limelight

25. Sir Joseph Wilson Swan,   (born October 31, 1828, Sunderland, Durham, England—died May 27, 1914, Warlingham, Surrey),  English physicist and chemist who produced an early electric light bulb and invented the dry photographic plate, an important improvement in photography and a step in the development of modern photographic film.

26. Incandescent lamp or incandescent light globe - is an electric light which produces light with a filament wire heated to a high temperature by an electric current passing through it, until it glows.

27. Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931) Was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. 

28. Edison filed his first patent application for "Improvement In Electric Lights" on 14 October 1878

29. In 1881, Richard D'Oyley Carte opened the new Savoy Theatre in London with an advertisement saying that it was the “first public building lighted 'entirely' by electricity.” In fact, there were a total of 1158 of the new Swan lamps (as invented by Joseph W. Swan), used to light the auditorium, the dressing rooms, the corridors and the stage” (Williams).

30. Richard D'Oyly Carte  (3 May 1844 – 3 April 1901) -was an English talent agent, theatrical impresario, composer and hotelier during the latter half of the Victorian era. Rising from humble beginnings, Carte built two of London's theatres and a hotel empire, while also establishing an opera company that ran continuously for over a hundred years and a management agency representing some of the most important artists of the day.

31. Savoy Theatre in London

32. Savoy Theatre in London

33. Objectives of Lighting Design

34. Providing Visibility To see the performer’s faces and their actions on stage.

37. Establishing Time and Place By its color, shade, and intensity, lighting can suggest the time of day, giving pale light of dawn, the bright light of midday, the vivid color of sunset, or the muted light of evening.

40. Creating Mood Light, together with the scenery, costumes, can create a certain mood.

41. What is the mood of the Scene??

45. Reinforcing Style Lightning can indicate whether a play is realistic or nonrealistic

46. Which is Realistic and which is not??