Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 2009 - 34

Throughout this article, I will focus on the elements of
performing arts venues that contribute to the creation of lighting design and the training young designers. Venues intended
for use by working professionals or located within institutions
that can make pedagogical investments without regard for revenue generation can overcome the problem I outline. It is the
venues that provide the initial exposure to the art of lighting for
audiences and practitioners that I address. These venues exist
in the reality of tight budget caps, limited planning resources,
and survival in the face of adversity. It is my perception that for
every one venue for the pros there are dozens for the rest of us.
The sheer numbers of school, community, and houses of worship that offer initial experiences with light require us to create
better opportunities for learning about light.

some history
Prior to the spread of Stanley McCandless' ideas in the 1960s,
most production lighting was a craftsman's project. McCandless
began to systematically consider the distribution or angle from
which the light was projected as a design element. The idea
of lighting from multiple directions, each serving the production within a unified design was novel and changed both the
production staging and the architectural design of new spaces.
McCandless coupled the idea of distribution with the related
quality of color to develop a stylistic system for supporting the
actors' work.
As the idea of motivated and designed light became more
complicated through the 1970s, theatre managers began making accommodation for lighting from more directions. PostWWII America witnessed a democratization of the audience and
the use of boxes for seating declined. Lighting designers eagerly
took these, began adding front-of-house pipes, bolting booms
onto aprons and behind prosceniums, and pressing for the creation of new slots, booms, bumps, and splays. By the end of the
decade many theatres had lighting from a wide variety of locations, rapidly expanding the concept of designed distribution of
lighting far beyond the scope of McCandless' system.
Equipment manufacturers developed the circuit patch
panel to resolve the need for a wide array of locations with the
still limited number of dimmers typical at that time. A theatre
could boast two or three hundred hang locations with circuits
that could patch down to the thirty or forty dimmers available,
some with capacities as high as 12,000W. So, each theatre could
be adapted to provide angle solutions for lighting that met the
very specific and divergent needs of the various performing arts
by the relatively simple matter of rehanging fixtures and adapting the hard patch in the lighting patch bay. The idea of specials
developed as several limited-use fixtures could inhabit a single
dimmer and be switched on and off as needed by their branch
breakers. I have routinely included over one hundred design
elements within a production that included sixty or fewer dimmers this way. Patch bays and the concept of episodic play
structure are stylistic partners.

theatre

design

technology

W I N T E R

2009

The key point is this: though the development of dimming
lagged, between 1950 and 1975, the architectural design and
renovation of theatres advanced conceptually to allow lighting to move from a craft of convenience to an art of specific
response. The patch panel made this advance possible by its
inherent flexibility and easy adaptation. The emergence of
angle as a powerful emotional and intellectual design element
allowed lighting to reach the visionary horizon first laid claim
to in the early part of the last century by Apia and Craig and
written about so eloquently by Jean Rosenthal.
In the late 1970s the first generation of high-density rackmounted dimming came on the market. Eventually, the ninetysix dimmer rack with 2.4kW units became the standard format
for dimming as we know it today. Through a protracted product
development process, the evolution of the DMX-512 standard,
and concessions from the theatrical unions, we ushered in the
modern era of computerized lighting. Typically, each dimmer is
hardwired to a specific circuit and each circuit has a dedicated
2400W dimmer-one dimmer per each circuit (DPC). The
general adoption of DPC equaled the death of the patch panel-circuits were each hardwired to their assigned dimmer.
Though the patch panel had significant flaws, it also allowed
a generation of young designers to understand and manipulate
angle in meaningful and delightful ways.
The lighting of the late '60s through the mid-'80s was informed by a growing variety of angles that supported a diverse
range of color and conceptual lighting ideas. Today's popular
performance lighting is informed by limited angles. If you visit low to moderate priced new venues, you will find lighting
angles that replicate (at best) Stanley McCandless' 1960s-era
system and (at worst) a 1840s gas-lighted auditorium. Not
only does this limit the production support available for productions but, worse in my mind, it limits the training of young
designers. The vast majority of new spaces are designed to limit
angle choices. This limiting of angle choices is a direct result
of the shift to DPC. A patch panel provided the means to have
the cheap circuits far outnumber the expensive dimmers. We
traded the most expensive component-the patch bay-for a
radical increase in the number of dimmers. By matching dimmers to circuits, we made angle choice a direct consequence
of budget size. You can only have the variety of angles that your
hardware budget allows just as you can only have the quality of
direct sound that your facility propagates.

A flawed process
Here is how most projects get built today. Someone initiates a
project and asks the question "How much will it cost?" A good
facility manager can figure out what you are going to do with
the space and how big the various areas in the building need to
be. This allows you to figure out some rough square footages.
You multiply the square feet by generic cost estimates supplied
by your general contractor to get the building costs. Finally, you
develop a budget for equipment-at the end of the process. On

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 2009