Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 2012 - 78

book
Quoting these designers, Unruh suggests that
by avoiding expertise in their field, Walton
presented his lighting colleagues with scenic
challenges that forced them to invent and innovate, thereby advancing the art of lighting in
general.
More than once, Unruh refers to Walton as the Jo Mielziner of his generation. But
this claim does neither designer any favors.
Mielziner was an innovator driven by innovative texts to create a new design vocabulary.
Tony Walton, with his painterly, deeply chromatic, and winning rendering style, is one
of our greatest painters of the theatre, richly
and endlessly inventive within the known languages. Many designers astonish by exploiting
new technology. Tony Walton does it the oldfashioned way, but makes it look ever fresh
and new.
Though this book includes many fine illustrations of Walton's work as a costume designer, its narrative generally leans toward his
set designs. Tony's costume sketching always
seemed to my amazed eyes to be utterly pure
and virtually effortless, his brush hand bypassing his intellect to connect directly to some
deep torrent of theatrical instinct. After I assisted Tony on the Circle in the Square production of Uncle Vanya, he thanked me with
a superb costume sketch of George C. Scott
as Astrov. It hangs in my home today, framed
in the dark umber wood tone of the original
set. Visitors are drawn to that sketch as to a
magnet: so deftly laid in, yet so articulate; so
simple, yet possessed of such profound and
living presence.
Perhaps a second volume of The Designs
of Tony Walton should be created to give
proper due to his costume work. Meanwhile,
we can enjoy this important collection of images, anecdotes, and insights, a celebration of
the remarkable career of Tony Walton.
Marjorie Bradley Kellogg has designed
scenery for Broadway, Off-Broadway, opera
and the regional theatre. She is associate
professor of theatre at Colgate University,
and is the author of eight science fiction
and fantasy novels.

theatre design

& technology

reviews
Lighting and the Design Idea,

Third Edition

By Linda Essig, Jennifer Setlow; Boston,
Wadsworth/Cenage Learning, 2011. 304 pp.
Paper, $101.95.
Reviewed by Richard S. Beam
When the first edition of Lighting and the
Design Idea appeared in 1997, I was fortunate enough to be asked to review it for
TD&T. This third edition is a marked improvement over that edition, although it still has some
weaknesses. With its clear focus on the design
process, the book is quite impressive.
It falls into several sections. The first (chapters One to Five) introduces the discussion to
follow, then concentrates on the variety of light
sources and the human process of vision, before
moving into detailed discussion of the functions
and properties of light, elements of composition
(including lighting composition), and a fairly extensive discussion of color, an area which is often
somewhat confusing. These first chapters will
likely be quite helpful.
I found the next two chapters (Six and
Seven) to be a section of particular interest
and one of the best treatments of an approach
to script analysis and research that I have
encountered, especially for designers. While the
discussion is aimed at lighting designers, it has
valuable application to almost anyone, designer
or not, who desires to develop a process for
analyzing scripts and learning more about the
considerable importance of careful research as
a tool for greater understanding of the material
which is the basis of all theatrical events.

Conception to creation
Chapters Eight through Fourteen follow the
process of creating a lighting design from conception through the creation of the plot and paperwork, the hang and focus process, and cuing
in considerable detail. As in the first edition, the
emphasis here is largely on the fully commercial situation, but there is acknowledgment of
the fact that the situation in many academic and
regional theatres is going to be somewhat more
restricted in terms of the selection of control

spring

2012

systems and instrumentation than was discussed
in the first edition. This is important, as it allows the authors to recognize the reality of such
circumstances, while pointing out that there are
cases when such things are both possible and
an important part of the designer's duty.
The final section, Chapter Fifteen, is a brief,
but valuable, discussion of how to prepare to
enter the professional world of lighting design.
It includes employment options, regional factors, preparation of résumés and portfolios,
the importance of interviews, and options for
developing a professional network to gain employment. This is a valuable addition to this text
and is, I believe, new to this edition. It might
be expanded in future editions with further examples and other options, but this is certainly of
considerable value as it is.
The field of theatrical lighting is rapidly
changing because of environmental concerns
over the efficiency of traditional lamps. This includes the increasing use of fluorescent, LED,
HID, and other sources as replacements for
traditional incandescent lamps. These sorts of
sources are discussed in some detail, including
their differences in color rendering, an idea of
paramount importance to lighting designers as
these sources become more common. Also, the
rapid expansion of the use of moving lights is
addressed in some detail, as it needs to be. Discussion of the variety of types of control systems
seems up to date, as does the coverage of computer visualization techniques and the section
on the use of computer-aided design.
All in all, this is quite a good text for an
upper-level, undergraduate course in lighting

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 2012