Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 2012 - 79

design. I think its specific focus suggests the
fairly strong need for an earlier course in basic
design principles, drawing, perhaps some basic
drafting, as it seems unlikely that the material
included here would be sufficient to satisfy the
needs of a student without some established
background in design fundamentals.

Some reservations
While there is much to admire in this work, I do
have some reservations. As was true in the first
edition, the small scale of a number of the reproduced light plots and other drawings makes
them very difficult to study, which reduces their
usefulness. There is also some inconsistency in
the formatting of drawings, which in a few cases
forces you to turn the book first one way, then
the other to view these drawings. This was a bit
of an annoyance as I read through it.
There is also some weakness in having
only sixteen color plates for a treatment of ideas
where color plays such an important role. It must
be stated, however, that more of these are pro-

duction, or production related, than was true
in the first edition, which I found a significant
improvement. On the other hand, the gray scale
value of many of the black-and-white images
seems excessively dark, making a fair number of
these pictures less useful than they might be, as it
is hard to examine them in detail. It is possible,
of course, that this is an anomaly of the copy I
received for this review, but it did seem to be a
significant drawback. I also was constantly wishing that many of the pictures were larger (which
might have helped make them clearer, even with
the gray scale difficulties). While I acknowledge
the additional expense that larger pictures would
involve, it would be quite helpful.
It should be noted that the publisher
does have supplemental materials available
(for an extra cost) for both instructors and
students, which I was not able to examine. It
is certainly possible that these materials would
resolve many of the difficulties mentioned
above by allowing access to these images at
a larger scale (and perhaps without the gray

spring

2012

scale difficulties). I certainly hope that this is
the case, as that would go a long way towards
making this a significantly stronger treatment
of rather complex visual ideas.
Overall, Lighting and the Design Idea
is highly worthy of a close examination and
thoughtful consideration by those who teach
lighting design. This edition is certainly a significant improvement over the first edition. Some
of the improvements may date from the second
edition, which I have not examined, but, based
on the listing of new features provided by the
publisher, this edition would appear to have
been carefully revised to maintain currency in a
rapidly changing field.
Richard S. Beam teaches in Western
Carolina University's School of Stage and
Screen, where he served as principal scenic
and lighting designer and technical director
for thirty years. He currently teaches
design, theatre history, dramatic literature,
and criticism.

theatre design

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