Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 2004 - 69

The Speed of Light
Dialogues on Lighting Design
and Technological Change
By Linda Essig. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann,
2002. ISBN: 0325005087, 160 pages, $18.95,
softcover.
In The Speed of Light, Dialogues on Lighting
Design and Technological Change, Linda
Essig documents the integration of computer
technology and other dramatic changes in
stage lighting during the last twenty-five years
through interviews with key designers and engineers. She also examines how these technological changes have impacted the practice of
lighting design. The intermixing of oral history
and analysis makes for a compelling and intriguing narrative. Her probing questions and
the candid responses she elicits from her interview subjects give readers a glimpse into the
pioneering spirit of the people who were
working with and shaping the technology that
we have come to take for granted.
Essig weaves the various interviews together in a manner that takes the reader along
for the journey from the beginnings of the use
of computers, through the development of
control protocols like USITT DMX-512, to the
advent of automated lighting fixtures. She does
this in a style that allows the reader to feel as
though they were listening to these conversations first-hand.
The distinguished group of people Essig
interviews includes lighting designers such as
Ken Billington, Natasha Katz, Neil Peter
Jampolis, Dennis Parichy, and Jane Reisman,
as well as equipment designers and engineers
like Fred Foster, Gordon Pearlman, David
Cunningham, Mitch Heftner, and Steve Terry.
The designers are well-known for their beauti68

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ful work but they sometimes reveal the ugly
facts behind creating magic with limited,
quirky equipment; and the engineers talk eloquently about the sluggish process of developing industry standards.
Gordon Pearlman recounts the development of the "LS-8," which in the fall of 1975
became the first computerized control console
used on Broadway, in A Chorus Line. It is difficult to believe that the LS-8 operated with only
sixteen kilobytes, not megabytes, of core
memory. A desktop calculator today has more
memory than Pearlman's state-of-the-art computer lighting console. There was also no
memory storage device in the LS-8. The program had to be loaded from a paper tape, a
chore that took forty-five minutes.
Essig avoids getting bogged down with
bits, bytes and hardware and keeps her focus
on how technology influences the practice of
lighting design. She traces, through her questions, how lighting practitioners shaped the
development of certain technologies and various types of equipment to achieve their aesthetic goals. And she contrasts styles of lighting
design based on piano/resistance board control systems with those based on the emerging
computer technologies.
Section 2 covers the development of automated lighting and how it influenced lighting
design practices. Along the way, Essig also investigates the evolution from semaphore color
changers and indexing color wheels to color
scrollers and dichroic filters. Tom Littrell, who
was the first operator/engineer for the
Vari*Lites on the Genesis Tour in 1981 discusses the early days of using Vari*Lite fixtures
and the dynamic possibilities of "music-motivated" lighting design. Littrell also describes
the relationship between the programmer and
the designer when dealing with automated fixtures. Richard Winkler, Marc B. Weiss, Mitch
Dana and Natasha Katz are among the designers who are featured in this section. Natasha
Katz discusses her work on EFX, a large-scale
Las Vegas production that was lit primarily
with automated fixtures.
Section 3 describes how USITT's DMX512 Digital Data Transmission Standard developed out of the need for interconnectivity as
users demanded they be able to control all
kinds of lights and peripheral devices from
one lighting console. DMX-512 attempted to
answered this challenge and in doing so
changed the practice of stage lighting design,
both commercially and aesthetically. Essig's

conversations with behind-the-scene-players
give readers a fly-on-the-wall view of the discussions at the USITT conference in Oakland,
California, in 1986 when DMX-512 was "born."
In the last section, Essig explores such
questions as "Is more really better?" and the
often-asked, "How has the use of computerized control consoles and automated fixtures change the theatre?"
Anyone who is interested in the recent
history of the stage lighting industry, especially
stories about how technological changes have
influenced the aesthetics of lighting design, will
enjoy The Speed of Light. Essig turns folklore
into facts by talking directly with the individuals
who were involved. Twenty brief biographies of
the people Essig interviewed for this book, as
well as careful documentation, including many
footnotes, expand the reader's understanding
of details that may not be familiar to them.
The Speed of Light fills in many gaps in
our understanding of our recent history while
it also asks important aesthetic questions. The
many technological leaps we have taken in the
last twenty-five years have transformed lighting
equipment from simple lamps with lenses to
animated and automated, though not always
"intelligent," systems that expand and complicate the lighting design process. This book is a
valuable resource for practitioners, educators,
and students of theatrical lighting design.
Reviewed by Debra Garcia Lockwood,
California State University, Fullerton

Entertainment Rigging
A Guide for Riggers, Designers,
and Managers
By Harry Donovan
Seattle, WA: Rigging Seminars, 2003. 710
pages, $97.50, softcover.
Arena rigging, the craft of using chain hoists to
suspend lighting rigs, sound rigs, and just
about anything else from the rafters, got its
start in the 1970s when some bright, and lazy,
rock 'n roller figured out that he could turn a
bunch of one-ton CM chain hoists upside
down, secure the hook of the hoisting chain
overhead and then have the hoists climb their
own chain upward, incidentally hauling the
rigs up to trim height with them. Those earlydays riggers worked in a wild-west-frontier

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 2004