Exhibitors Herald (Dec 1924-Mar 1925)

January 3, 1925 EXHIBITORS HERALD V A monthly supplement of Exhibitors Herald, published for the information and guidance of exhibitors in matters of theatre construction, operation and equipment and to promote the ideal of greater and finer theatres. Edited by H. E. Holquist Decorative and Theatrical Lighting By CLAUDE BRAGDON, F. A. I. A. (A paper presented belore the annual convention of the Illuminating Engineering Society, Itriareliff Manor, N. Y. The conclu<ling installment of this paper ^ill be presented in “Belter Theatres” for January 31.) Although this is a gathering of engineers, I shall approach the subject, as you would doubtless prefer, from the standpoint of the artist; that it to say, as one who thinks of light not as a convenience to see things by — as the average man thinks of it — or as a vibration of the ether — as the scientist thinks of it — but as a language of emotional expression which may be made to speak to the soul more eloquently than music. And you will pardon me if I speak in the first person, for this is an account of my own adventure and has no value or importance other than that. We are all dealing with light, doing things to it and with it, but we do not think about light any more than a fish thinks about water and, for a similar reason, that it is the very medium in which we have our being. Let us, therefore, think about it for a moment now. Light is a positive and potent force, ceaseless in its operation. Relative to light, sound is a sluggish and a feeble thing. Its medium the air, its limits the earth-sphere; but light — “swift as meditation or the thoughts of love” companions our earth and sister planets not only to the sun, but to the stars. Light is the creator, sustainer and revealer of all things, even that whereby it reveals itself — the eye; but light itself remains a mystery. To the question. “What is light?” the wisest can answer only that he knows not. Light IS, and that is all that can be said. The physical effects of light on the animal organism are well known. The blisters which come from sunburn represent only an intensification of what is going on all the time in some degree or other. That is, we are being bombarded by fiery particles which both stimulate and destroy cell life. Not less constant and potent, though more obscure, is the effect of light upon consciousness. It acts upon the emotional nature in unmistakable ways, even upon the emotional nature of animals, as evinced by the saying, “like a red rag to a bull.” Of these emotional reactions we are for the most part unconscious, or we attribute them to some other cause ; but anyone who has worked with light in the theatre knows how inevitably an audience reacts to light changes. Light is an agent in moving men to laughter, to terror and to tears. In Mr. Walter Hampden’s production of Macbeth, at the first few performances some part of the audience always laughed when the murder of Banquo took place in the forest. This may have been merely a relief from tension, but it ruined the scene and was most disconcerting to the actors. A change in the lighting of the stage so altered the psychology of the audi ence as to eliminate the laughter from that time on. As this scene was given at first everything could be seen clearly, though dimly. People knew what to expect, and could follow every move. For this general lighting was substituted the nearly horizontal ray of a single blue projector, like a shaft of moonlight penetrating the forest. Then one saw only the lurking of shadowy forms of the assassins, the quenching of the torch of their victims, and for a vivid moment the contending bodies locked in a death grapple within the lighted area. It was over almost as soon as begun, and from a mood of expectancy, curiosity and apprehension, the audience was led to a revealing moment of shocked surprise entirely alien to the spirit of laughter. In another instance it was desired to encourage laughter and not to quench it. As first given, the graveyard scene in Hampden’s Hamlet was played in a pallid waning daylight with the result that the comedy of the two grave-diggers, with which the scene opens, failed to register with the audience. We tried the experiment of beginning the scene in a bright, warm, cheerful light, and it was surprising how much better a comedian Mr. Allen Thomas and his companion suddenly became. The light was not acting against the risibilities of the audience, but with and for them. * * * Because the color quality of light acts powerfully and inevitably on the emotional nature, it is an aid in the induction of the particular mood which it is desired to create in the theatre. In the last act of Cyrano de Bergerac the time is autumn and the mood autumnal. Accordingly, this scene was drenched with amber light; in the battle scene — and in that alone — the light turned to red with telling effect. There is an intensely moving scene in the last act of “Benevente’s Field of Ermine” — a passage between a jaded and hearthungry noblewoman and the young boy who has evoked the maternal instinct in her. A great deal of . the effect of this scene was due to the light, which came solefully from the fireplace, waxing and waning, as a wood fire does, throwing the faces and figures into intense relief, and casting strange, gigantic shadows on the opposite wall. I have seen many other beautiful illustrations of the enhancement of a scene by means of light, but always they were the creations of artists, sensitive to light. Mr. Simonson’s park scene in Liliom is a case in point, the background being a leaftracery against a night sky with the two lovers lighted by the nearer and warmer glow of a street lamp just out of sight. Mr. Robert Edmund Jones devised a most dramtic lighting for the outdoor scene in Launzi. It was a ferry house by a dark river, out of which the heroine had just been rescued after an attempt at suicide. The only light at the beginning of the scene was from a single-shaded lamp projecting from the wall of a house. After the rescue an automobile awaited to take the unfortunate young woman away. One hears the chug of its engine coming nearer and nearer. Then its headlights send an increasing shaft of light across the stage. It never actually appears upon the scene, but the action takes place in this horizontal beam of light, admirable for the purpose of the drama. It would be easy to multiply the examples of the power of light to create and maintain the appropriate psychological mood in the theatre. But though all people react emotionally to light, whether they know it or not, very few are able to see light — to see it analytically, that it, as a musician bears music — distinguishing the sound of separate instruments, and hearing in the harmonies their component sounds. It is music which has educated the sense of hearing to this pitch of perfection. The sense of light today, not as a serviceable faculty, but as a source of aesthetic enjoyment, is only just emerged from that rudimentary state in which hearing was before the rise of the musical art — rudimentary, I mean, as a source of pleasure. =K * The real trouble with nine-tenths of all decorative and theatrical lighting is that the very people who devise and employ it have no clear idea of the effect which it is desirable to produce. With equipment capable of producing almost any effect, they often get only the poorest results, or else arrangements and devices which are excellent in certain places and under certain conditions are used in other places and under other conditions where the results are the opposite of good. Let me cite a single example. Kilbourn Hall is a little theatre in connection with the Eastman Music School, in Rochester. It was built by Mr. Eastman as a memorial to his mother, and the effect was made to have it as complete and perfect as possible in every way. But from the start there was trouble with the stage lighting. A friend of mine who was scheduled to give a dance program there knew about this, and asked me if I would not do what I could to get the lighting right. I attended the rehearsal and found these conditions : A shallow stage with no apron was found equipped with footlights in alternating colors, the borders being similar. The richest quality of white light comes.