Theatrical Influence in the Lighting of Architecture

As a lighting designer that spans both the theatrical world and architectural landscape, I often find myself blending the two together despite their own cultures, design conventions, and aesthetics. There are, however, quite a number of similarities that allow inspiration to be drawn from each niche group, for both large and small scale applications. I often find myself reaching to theatrical artists of the past for influence and inspiration as to me, quality lighting is as much an art as it is a science as the theatricality of lighting design can have a dramatic effect on any architectural space. Thoughtfulness in mood, movement, angle, sense of time and place, color, area of focus, and intensity are the tenets of every theatrical lighting designer that are our paint brushes to transform a set on a stage.

With that in mind, the following are important historic and contemporary theatrical figures that I believe every architectural lighting designer should get to know. This is by no means a complete list as there have been so many influential masters of the arts but have had the most influence on my own craft. They serve an aesthetic, approach, and narrative each to their own that has served to shape the environment and landscape of the architectural space:

Nicola Sabbatini

An Italian architect of the Baroque Period, Nicola Sabbatini was one of the most influential pioneering designers of theater in his day. In addition to inventing sophisticated stage machinery to create realistic visual and sound effects, he is credited with the creation of machinery to dim theater lighting of its era – candlelight. He also invented the first reflector spotlight by attaching a polished basin behind a light source and the first attempt at color changing by the use of mechanisms to drop colored wine bottles over the light source. It is with these new creations that the idea of stage lighting for dramatic purposes including the idea of scripted changes in light synchronized to the script took hold. With his architectural background, he advanced methods of changing scenic elements which became known as “scènes à l’italienne”. These innovations gave him the opportunity to advance how lighting works with the architecture of theater.

Adolphe Appia

Considered the founding father of contemporary stage design, Swiss architect Adolphe Appia was one of the first scenic designers to understand the importance of using light beyond merely illuminating the stage and actors for visibility. His contemporary and frequent collaborator, opera legend Wieland Wagner, posited that a fundamental goal of any theatrical production was artistic unity. Faced with the theatrical productions of the day of three-dimensional actors against two-dimensional scenery and backdrops, he advocated for three elements to unify the production. This included the three-dimensional movement of actors taking liberty with multiple levels and space to traverse the floor, perpendicular scenery, and using depth and the horizontal dynamics of the performance area.

From this he created his construct of the Theater of Light which treated the human body, space, and light as malleable commodities to create a unified arrangement of scenery, known as “mise en scene”.?This ‘white cube’ idea he developed in 1913 with composer Richard Wagner and his contemporary Edward Gordon Craig allowed them to experiment with the movement of three-dimensional scenery, actors, music, and light; ultimately deciding that the lighting was the primary driver tying it all together.

This work can be seen as the direct forerunner to many of the Bauhaus movements’ approaches to theater and design as many of the Bauh?uslers would have directly experienced this firsthand. Appia’s cube was innovative for a number of reasons, most importantly and separate from the norm of the day. The idea that the stage should not depict a real place, but one that allows the audience to focus on the text and the actor returning to the primaries of theater – one actor, one audience, and a compelling story.

The space was created with luminous surfaces devoid of shadows compared to limelight and mere illumination of the day.?The recent electrification of theaters allowed him to place light bulbs behind fabric walls in a quasi-lightbox and adorn the stage with varying levels of platforms and staircases. A recreation of this has been opened at the Festspielhaus Hellerau as part of the 100 years of Bauhaus celebration so the modern audience can experience this revolutionary aesthetic.

Edward Gordon Craig

Edward Gordon Craig is the British forefather of lighting design with his career starting in earnest with the production of Dido and Aeneas at the Purcell Operatic Society. Craig, like Appia, realized the potential of lighting to transform the stage space and infused this into his approach of stage lighting. His major influence was contemporary artist Hubert von Herkomer, who experimented with side lit gauze in his private studio, giving a more natural depth to the figures and space. He rejected common practices of footlights that used gas or electric sources. He instead advocated for theater that made light the primary importance through the use of side lighting, and a new feature he developed with a carpenter – the proscenium bridge which kept all the lights behind the proscenium out of the audience’s view.

He also coupled this lighting with changes in color from above and across the stage, being able to gather subtle shifts in light and color combinations, creating deliberate clashes. This effect helped to create endless perspectives and architectural scenes creating movement in a music like counterpoint to the staging.

Stanley McCandless

A Harvard trained Architect and inventor of the modern theory of stage lighting, Stanly McCandless not only was innovative in his thinking of light as design, but provided much in the way of innovative technology as well. Taking cues from collaboration with Adolphe Appia, Edward Gordon Craig, and George Izenour -- McCandless developed his method in which the actors are meant to be fully front lit and sculpted along the sides by providing at least two lights from opposite sides above the plane of the actor by about 45 degrees and approximately 90 degrees apart. Top light could be added or limited footlights for fill. McCandless describes this as being the diagonals of the cube in the center of the acting area. The two primary lights include one that is cool and one that is warm.?The cool light fills in the shadows of the other.?This advancement in lighting from Appia and Craig plays on their thoughts of naturalism and the lighting being a primary contributor to the stage. Through changing of intensity between the cool and warm lighting along with any necessary fill, it gives the actor a balanced feel in addition to suggesting time and place. Working with new technologies such as color scrollers, he was able to shift the warm and cool colors to opposite sides also allowing for a wider variety within the cool and warm ranges of gels.?The McCandless Method of Stage Lighting is still very much taught as a foundation today in modern training programs.

George Izenour

George Izenour is a unique architect with whom I spent his waning years as one of my graduate school thesis advisors. George has had direct influence on a significant number of new arts facilities and renovation projects in the performing arts space and he is often considered the founder of modern theater consulting. George was an inventor, author, lighting designer, educator, and theater consultant. He developed and ran Yale University’s Electro-Mechanical Laboratory in the basement of the Yale School of Drama (now the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale), in an abandoned squash court. It is here where he developed several groundbreaking inventions including the first modern dimming system using an inverse polarized rectifier circuit and held several patents that are the basis for all modern stage lighting control consoles.

George also was the inventor of automated lighting through the use of electro-mechanical means. His first creation motorized a Fresnel style fixture on a three-axis gimbal, which is a hollowed-out bowling ball and gear shift arm from a car in the 1930’s. After WWI, he then developed and patented a moving ellipsoidal fixture that is placed on a yoke. This became a precursor to modern moving head fixtures with the design being emulated in the early 1970’s by Grand Funk Railroad for a tour as moving follow spots.?Along with his inventions, his theater consulting has the greatest impact on modern stage lighting. Through careful consideration of where fixed lighting positions could and should be placed, his development of sophisticated stage rigging shows how lighting could be located on stage.

Josef Svoboda

Adolphe Appia and Edward Gordon Craig brought light to the stage, but it was Josef Svoboda that brought darkness and mystery.?Like Appia, Svoboda brought architectural elements into his designs such as platforms and staircases. The departure between the two is Svoboda’s use of light to punch through or punctuate the darkness on stage, created by the three-dimensional scenic elements. Svoboda saw light as a precious element that would be freed by the use of special effects and color changes.

Having access to more modern technologies gave him the freedom to use projection as a light source with ever growing effects. His most famous of these is within his co-founding of Laterna Magika Theatre in Prague, where performers interacted with film imagery. This used closed-circuit monitors, projection, and special effects that allowed the scenes to magically seem endless in space and time.?Svoboda also was keen to use mirrors of various sizes to distort or reflect the stage elements.

Robert Wilson

Of living theater Icons, Robert Wilson is considered one of the most important modern theater practitioners. As a lighting designer, director and playwright, Wilson’s work transforms light into (in his words), “the most important actor on stage”. Because of this, he has worked collaboratively in cross disciplinary works of art and design in addition to theater. His use of flowing, heavily textured light on stage weaves in and out of the fabric of the play much in the way a musical score does. Often, it is credited that his work as a dancer is what allows him to seek the movement and rhythm of lighting to reinforce the text without illustrating it - allowing the actor to move in and out of the light.

Ming Cho Lee

Called the Dean of American scene design, Ming Cho Lee shaped the ideal and future of design in professional theater and opera in America. Having had the honor of studying under Lee while at YSD, I witnessed first hand his idea of “new minimalism,” which is characterized by austerity in color, suggestive pieces of scenery that localize to each scene without being realistic, and abstract sculptures that were suggestive of environments rather than backgrounds.?His suggestive and austere set designs allow light to permeate, play, and define location, action, and character.?His later work moved from the collage of minimalism to text-centric approaches that were tied to the play.

Jennifer Tipton

Best known for her work in dance, Jennifer Tipton, (another one of my YSD mentors) is renowned for her painterly use of lighting to sculpt the body, evoke moods, and define movement.?She pioneered the use of white light in theater and dance, even combining the use with fog effects to allow performers to enter the stage from areas such as upstage without being seen by the audience before their entrance. She suggested that the most important difference between theater and dance is darkness being forbidden in dance, as you need to see the movement of the dancer, but in theater you could close your eyes and listen.

Es Devlin

Although her work began in theater, Es Devlin is best known for her stage sculptures as a scenic designer for large scale concert shows for prominent musicians. Her work is identifiable through her heavy use of projections and sculpting the stage with light to achieve dramatic means in line with the music.?This “smoke and mirrors” effect is seen in her delicate optical illusions.?She is a forerunner of the use of augmented reality within the stage environment in which she created an app that the audience could download prior to a performance that allowed them to take photos of the live show and the augmented reality world simultaneously.

Bert Neumann

Bert Newmann’s iconic stage designs were groundbreaking in post-German Reunification as a stark opposite to Bertold Brecht’s theater of Escapism, which stripped the stage of any kind of theater lighting design and flooded the stage with harsh white light to create an alienation effect. Neumann on the other hand experimented with non-conventional aesthetics through an abundance of brash, colorful, and often ambitious stage scenery and architecture bordering on the absurd. He encouraged the lighting designer to be as brash and bold playing off heavy neons and illuminated mirrored surfaces. This served, like Brecht, to alienate the audience but in an overwhelming way.

By initiating one’s self to the practitioners listed here, the architectural lighting designer can instill a greater sense of playfulness, emotion, time and place, movement, and contrast that are instilled in these legacies. Each offers a unique piece of the puzzle either in contrast to their contemporaries and predecessors, or by expanding on previous doctrine in new and interesting ways. These contributors, to the theatricality of light, leveraged the story that must be told on the stage as a driving force behind their work. Many, who were practicing architects of their own right, explored the interplay of lighting and scenic elements in terms of enhancing the environment and supporting, or in some cases being, the character.?Each through partnerships and collaborations with their contemporaries moved the ball forward for the world of theater, thoroughly enhancing the experience for performers and viewers.

About the Author

Raymond Kent is the founder of the Innovative Technology Design Group for the international architecture and engineering firm, DLR Group, Inc.?Theatrically, he is an award winning scenic, lighting, and projection designer with work that has been seen in major performance venues across the US.?Architecturally, he has produced award winning work as a designer in theater planning and technology, audiovisual systems, digital media soundscapes, and architectural and exhibit lighting for premiere clients.?Raymond has guest lectured for several Colleges and Universities internationally, presented at major national and international conferences, authored books on stage lighting and other technical subjects for theater, and is a frequent contributor and editor for major publications.