Deanna Fitzgerald - The Heart of Light - A Holistic Primer For A Life and Career in Lighting Design and Production-Routledge (2022)

The Heart of Light
The Heart of Light: A Holistic Primer for a Life and Career in Lighting Design
and Production is a fresh look into the ever-evolving ÿelds of lighting design and
technology for arts and entertainment.
Full of practical information, historic perspectives, engaging projects, and
opportunities for deep inquiry, practice, and re°ection, this book offers a well-
rounded foundation in the art, technology, and industries of light. It explores a
wide range of topics, including:
• how to observe, communicate about, and use light effectively

• how quietive practices can deepen the creative process
• current lighting equipment used across the various arts and entertainment
industries and strategies for keeping up with its rapid innovation
• how to choose a career path that keeps you inspired, as well as ways to search
for work with dos and don’ts of effective career building
• how to cope with and celebrate the unknown and related challenges of
implementing a design under pressure
• considerations for using self-re°ection to be successful and impact positive
change.
From her perspective of lighting designer, educator, and contemplative practitioner,

the author explores lighting not just as a subject, but as an invitation to a fulÿlling
lifelong adventure.
Written for students of Theatrical Lighting courses and emerging lighting
professionals, The Heart of Light is a must-read for anyone intrigued by the
power of light.
Deanna Fitzgerald is a professional Lighting Designer and member of United Scenic

Artists. Her lighting design˛credits include a wide range of theatre, dance, opera, circus-
themed shows, puppets, architectural lighting, and more. She toured as the Lighting
Director for the international tour of STOMP for six years and designed its Las Vegas
incarnation STOMP OUT LOUD. At the University of Arizona she is an Associate
Dean for the College of Fine Arts and a Professor in the School of Theatre, Film, and
Television where she directed the BFA and MFA lighting design and technology areas
for 12 years. Deanna serves on the Boards of Directors for URTA (University Resident
Theatre Association), USITT (United States Institute of Theatre Technology), and the
Western Region Exam Committee of United Scenic Artist Local 829. She is a yoga
and meditation teacher and conducts classes and workshops focused on using these
and other quietive practices to aid in the creative process.
The Heart of Light
A Holistic Primer for a Life
and Career in Lighting
Design and Production
Deanna Fitzgerald
Map and icon graphics by Mandy Wagner
Cover image: Courtesy of University of Arizona School of Dance and Benny Fung,
choreographer; photo by Deanna Fitzgerald
First published 2022
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 Taylor & Francis
Map and icon graphics © 2022 Mandy Wagner
The right of Deanna Fitzgerald to be identiÿed as author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in
any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identiÿcation and explanation without intent to
infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Fitzgerald, Deanna (Lighting designer), author. | Wagner, Mandy,
illustrator.
Title: The heart of light : a holistic primer for a life and career in lighting
design and production / Deanna Fitzgerald ; map and icon graphics by
Mandy Wagner.
Description: New York : Routledge, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references
and index.
Identiÿers: LCCN 2021034231 (print) | LCCN 2021034232 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780367901172 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367901196 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781003022725 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Stage lighting—Vocational guidance.
Classiÿcation: LCC PN2091.E4 F58 2022 (print) | LCC PN2091.E4 (ebook) |
DDC 792.02/5—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021034231
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021034232
ISBN: 978-0-367-90117-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-90119-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-02272-5 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003022725
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
1 Introduction and an Invitation 1
2 Observe 7
Quietive Practices and the Creative Process 8
Being More Informed than In°uenced 12
Light as it Naturally Occurs 14
Interior Light 15
Exterior Light 16
Geographic Location 17
Period 17
Just Physics 18
References and Resources 26
3 Inquire 27
Light in Art 27
Impacts of Light for the Artist 27
Engaging the Observer 28
Art, Reality, and Plausibility 30
Light as Storyteller 33
Light in Entertainment 34
Developing your Language for Light 37
Helpful Vocabulary from Folks Who Thought a Lot About It 40
v
CONTENTS
Industry Perspectives and Quirks 49

Theatre and Plays, Opera, Dance and Musical Theatre 49
Concerts and Music Touring 52
Live Immersive, Non-narrative, and/or Experiential Situations 53
Television 55
Architectural Lighting 59
Architainment 61
Themed Entertainment 63
Film 65
The Artistic/Aesthetic Standard-Bearers 66
4 Gather 71
Orientation and Preparation 71
Part 1: The Basics 73
The Technical Standard-Bearers 74
An Introduction to Workplace Safety in Entertainment 78
The Lighting Brushes 81
Powering It All: Entertainment Electricity Basics 95
Part 2: Pause, Step Back, Absorb, and Re˜ect 105
Part 3: The Big Bites 111
The Lighting Brushes for a New World, Advanced Technology 111
Moving Lights 112
LED Lighting Fixtures 116
Color Changers 117
Other Kinds of Advanced Technology and Accessories 117
Projections and Other Digital Media in Live Performance 118
Atmospheric Effects 120
Controlling It All: The Evolution of Lighting Control 121
Dimmers 122
Control Boards and Consoles 122
DMX512-A 125
DMX512 Recommended Practices 127
The Alphabet Soup of Lighting Systems Control 127
Part 4: The Wind Down 129
Color 129
Primary and Secondary Colors of Light 131
Complements 132
Getting the Blue Dress Blue 133
Lighting Skin and Skin Tones 133
Opponent-Processing Color Theory and Bleaching 137
vi
CONTENTS
The Spectral Energy Distribution Curve or SED 139

LEDs and Color 140
CIE Chart of Photosensitivity 140
5 Choose 149
Approaching the Design 149
Laying Out the Light Plot 155
Laying Out the Light Plot (Continued) 159
Lighting Teams, Organizational Structures, and Why the Variations 162
The Collaborative Process 167
Working with Directors 167
Working with Other Designers 168
Working with the Rest of Your Team 169
6 Do and Adapt 175

Coping with and Celebrating the Unexpected 175
Focusing the Rig – Getting the Light “Right” 176
The “Tech” Period: Getting It Done While Everyone is Staring
at You 177
Some Common Live Level Setting Proÿciencies 179
7 Refect 189
Markers of Success 189
Learn to Seek Out and Receive Criticism 190
Documenting Your Work 191
Ready to Do It Again? 191
8 Inspiration 201
Appendices
1 How Do I.°.°. 203
Hang Lights? 203
Getting It on the Hanging Position 204
Finishing the Instrument/Fixture 205
Common Mistakes 205
Cabling Dos and Don’ts 206
Troubleshooting Tips 207
vii
CONTENTS
Focusing Tips 208

Strike/Loadout Tips 209
Communicate My Ideas? 210
Create Technical Speciÿcations? 212
2 Live Performance Lighting Design Case Studies 214
As “Traditional” as it Gets: The Man Who Came to Dinner 214
Challenging Conÿgurations: Hands on a Hardbody 215
Grass Roots to Spectacle: STOMP OUT LOUD, Las Vegas 217
Don’t Blind the Acrobat: Cirque Mechanics, Boom Town 218
Pandemic and Streaming Lighting: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein 219
3 Getting a Job 221
Contacts, Contacts, Contacts 221
Resources for Finding Work 222
Resume Perspectives 222
Portfolio/Website Development and Resources 223
4 Suggestions for Scaling This Book 226
For Educators Teaching.˛.˛. 226
Majors in Professional Training Programs 226
Theatre and Entertainment Majors Not Focused on Lighting 227
Other-than-Theatre Majors 227
High School or Vocational Students 228
If You’re Learning on the Job 228
Just Curious 228
Glossary 229
Index 231
viii
Acknowledgments
My ÿrst acknowledgment has to go to Tori Mays who started it all with

me by transcribing my lectures and cheering me on every step of the way.
Fly Jamerson helped me tune my inclusivity meter; Don Fox test drove the
text with our students and gave me great feedback; and Steve Terry gra-
ciously spent a lot of time trying to help keep me out of trouble. The too
many folks to list who took the time to ÿll out my survey, “Share Your Pro
Wisdom: What Do Our Aspiring Lighting Pros Need to Know?” helped
focus in much of this work. I honor my teachers Tom Rahner, Phyllis
Gibbs, Paul Muller-Ortega, Douglas Brooks, and Jim Gage. And I espe-
cially honor the students I have had the privilege to teach and who have
been some of my greatest teachers. The students are too many to name but
many have made appearances in this book, both in the Pro-perspectives and
in the work used as examples. My no-nonsense higher education mentors
Peter Beudert, Bobbi McKean, Brant Pope, and Laura McCammon lit the
way to my academic career progress, making it possible for me to write
a book.
A particular thanks to those who helped me shoot the photos speciÿc
to this book: Peter Bleasby, Shannon Wallace, Chris Mason, Forrest Tall-
bull, and Connor Green. Relatedly, a warm thanks goes out to Cindy
Meier, Joe McGrath, and the ever-inspiring Rogue Theatre. Lastly I thank
my wife Danielle for doing without me for long stretches while I worked
on this and my mom for starting it all by taking to me to experience Peter
Pan °ying over my head when I was a little kid.
ix
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I especially thank the folks who dedicated time – without expecting

anything in return – to sharing their Pro-perspectives with the readers.
Allow me to introduce you to them.
Jess Creager is an associate lighting designer based in New York City
who works on a wide variety of projects, with a special love for work-
ing on new and developing musicals. She recently worked on Company
(Broadway), Disney’s Frozen (West End), and Dear Evan Hansen (Broad-
way, International, Tour).˛Originally from “a little bit of everywhere”,˛she
holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Arizona and is a
proud member of IATSE Local USA829.
Samuel Schwartz is a lighting/production designer who has found a
foothold in live event production, from concerts and festivals to experien-
tial marketing events and ÿlm shoots. He has worked with Ghostemane,
Chris Lake, VT Pro Design, and many others. His jobs have taken him to
China, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, and all over Europe/the US. He
started his journey at Booker T. Washington High School for the Perform-
ing and Visual Arts and continued his theater education at the University
of Arizona.˜
Scot Gianelli is a multi-disciplinary lighting designer with an extensive
background in theatre, experiential events, and architecture. Scot’s focus
is in using this diverse background to cultivate work that explores the
way those often divergent mediums interact, overlap, and blend into each
other. His passion is creating engaging work in which the vibrant aes-
thetic and technological innovations of lighting are married together into
unique, harmonious, and engaging new experiences.
Travis Hagenbuch is a West Coast-based lighting designer whose work
spans a variety of genres, including multi-camera television, ceremonies,
live events, concerts, and theatre.˜ He collaborates with Full Flood, Inc.
and 22 Degrees, Inc. He is a Director of Photography in IATSE Local 600
and a member of the Television Academy “Lighting, Camera, and Techni-
cal Arts Peer Group”.
Rachel Gibney, LC, Assoc. IALD, MIES, began her career as a theatrical
trained lighting designer. Her interest in architectural lighting design led
her to join Available Light, initially as an intern, then as Senior Associate,
and now as one of the company’s shareholders. She has been instrumen-
tal to the success of many of Available Light’s award-winning projects.
Rachel contributes to the ÿeld of lighting design in her involvement with
Women in Lighting + Design, IES technical standards committees, and as
adjunct faculty at North Carolina School of the Arts.
Steven Young is a Los Angeles-based Lighting Designer for Visual Ter-
rain, Inc. His projects include architectural designs at Choctaw Casino,
Akin Gump Law Ofÿces, Argosy Casino Kansas City; themed attractions
x
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
in Hollywood, Orlando, Seoul, New Orleans, and Zhuhai, China; and

theatrical designs for South Coast Repertory, Arena Stage, and Pasadena
Playhouse. Steven has been awarded a box full of statuettes, plaques, and
certiÿcates for his design work.
Steve Terry is currently the Director of Standards and Industry Relations
at ETC. From 2001–2017 he held executive positions at ETC including
VP of Research & Development. In 1986, he chaired the USITT com-
mittee that created the internationally accepted DMX512 standard. He
founded the USITT National Electrical Code Committee in 1980, and has
represented the USITT as a member of NEC Code Panel 15 since 1994.
He was a founding member of the ESTA Technical Standards Program.
Richard Cadena is an ETCP Recognized Trainer and Certiÿed Enter-
tainment Electrician with 35 years of experience in live event production,
and the author of Automated Lighting: The Art and Science of Moving
and Color-Changing Light (third edition) and Electricity for Entertain-
ment Electricians and Technicians (third edition). He is also a column-
ist for Lighting & Sound America, Lighting & Sound International, and
Protocol magazines.
Don Fox is a professional lighting, scenic, and media designer who
served as Assistant Professor of Practice teaching˛Lighting Design at the
University of Arizona. Fox designs the lighting for Moscow Ballet’s˛Great
Russian Nutcracker˜ and˛ specializes in designs for musicals, dance, and
dramatic theatre.
Amara McNeil is a Junior Lighting Designer at Fordham University.
When she isn’t working on shows, you can ÿnd her advocating for her
peers, holding those in power accountable, or talking up a storm like the
extrovert she is. Amara is a member of Design Action and is an American
Theater Wing Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation Scholarship recipient.
She is also a recipient of the 2019 Pat MacKay Diversity in Design Schol-
arship. She looks forward to what she hopes will be a successful and
fulÿlling career in the arts.
Dawn Hollingsworth, CLD, FIALD, WELL AP, Principal of Darkhorse
Lightworks, is a Certiÿed Lighting Designer (CLD) and a WELL Accred-
ited Professional. Dawn is a Fellow of IALD. She has diversiÿed expertise
in theatrical and architectural lighting design and control systems, mar-
keting, business management, product management and development,
manufacturing, scenic design, and event production. Her practice includes
design of lighting and control systems for commercial, hospitality, educa-
tional, municipal, retail, and entertainment projects.
xi
CHAPTER 1
Introduction and an Invitation
One of the exciting things about lighting design is that it requires both
artistic and technical skills, not to mention management, leadership, organ-
ization, patience, and a good sense of humor. Not only must you harness
the elements of design and create effective compositions in the way that
other visual artists do, but you must do those things by using technology
and skills that in some ways feel unrelated to the product they produce.
Think about a painter who picks up a brush, dips it in the paint, and
applies that paint to canvas to create their work. Painting requires planning
and technique, but consider the unique gap between the tools a lighting
designer uses in order to get to a product and the product itself. The effective
picture that the lighting designer creates requires schematic drawings, lights
that have to be plugged into cables connected to mechanical rooms, and
hours of computer programming in a syntax that doesn’t sound anything like
a visual image. This is part of the reason that lighting programmer and enter-
tainment technician are their own careers separate from lighting designer, but
imagine a painter trying to create a painting by telling someone else with a
brush in their hand what to do. You might argue that scenic designers have
to be able to instruct scene painters in that way, but even in that case there is
still usually a hand connected to a brush, connected to the paint, connected to
the canvas. For the lighting artist there are usually more pieces of technology
and more space between the artist, their medium, and the observer, who – by
the way – may not even realize that medium (light) is there.
My approach to lighting design and the education of designers
is informed by years of another vital set of practices, which we’ll call
DOI: 10.4324/9781003022725-1 1
I N T R O D U C T I O N A N D A N I N V I TAT I O N
quietive practices. If you think about the kinds of over-arching skills a

lighting designer or collaborative artist need – an awareness of what is
around them, an ability to maintain focus on objectives as ideas evolve, an
openness to others’ perspectives, an ability to keep generating fresh ideas
and hold a lot of information in their head at one time, stay calm under
pressure, etc. – all of these things can be a routine outcome of many of the
quietive or contemplative practices available. If you’ve tried any of these
things and think it’s not for you, I invite you to keep an open mind and
read on, because there are lots of examples of pros who thought the same
thing but just hadn’t found what they needed yet.
Consider this: in order to create a good design, we have to be able to
generate new ideas. In the 1990s, popular psychology told us that our
minds come up with an awful lot of thoughts throughout the day, but
most of them are the same thoughts. Truly new ideas come when our
minds stop looping through all the information we already know. If quie-
tive practices can help us do that, isn’t it worth a try?
If we honor this incredible gift of our minds, but take the time to condi-
tion it away from constantly chewing on immutable information, we may
ÿnd ourselves with a vibrant, creative life. People will often say to me, “I
tried.˛.˛.” (insert any quietive practice you think you don’t like) “.˛.˛.and
I can’t clear my mind, so it doesn’t work for me.” Or “I tried that and I
couldn’t sit still.” In the kind of quietive work I teach, sitting still isn’t the
goal, nor will I ever instruct you to “clear your mind”. Think of the irony
of this. We have spent our whole lives developing our ability to think,
solve problems, communicate.˛.˛. But now we think we’re going to make
that lifetime of conditioning stop by sitting down and willing it so? This
is not likely to happen. And why would we want to? Research shows that
we might be happier not thinking about the past or future, but we also
wouldn’t be able to create a lighting design or manage much about life.
Are you ready yet? It won’t take much time to get started. We’ll go fur-
ther on this idea in the next chapter, but for now, engage with the project
“Getting Started Being Quiet” at the end of this chapter and give it a try!
In the meantime, get ready for a book about lighting that will inspire
you to create like someone who cultivates skill in action (one of the
many ways the work of yoga is sometimes deÿned) and channels crea-
tive potency. We’ll start our journey by considering how we can most
accurately comprehend the visual world around us (Observe, Chapter 2).
Next we’ll dive deep into what is known about light and consider how we
can go about knowing more (Inquire, Chapter 3). After that we’ll take a
long trip through the resources the industries utilize, while strategizing on
keeping up with its constant innovation (Gather, Chapter 4). Then we’ll
begin the process of coalescing this information into your own choices
(Choose, Chapter 5). After that we’ll consider how the artist turns choices
2 C H A P T E R 1
into actions, and then hones the result (Do and Adapt, Chapter 6). We’ll
begin to wrap-up by learning to self-assess and grow (Re°ect, Chapter 7).
In the last chapter, I’ll offer some inspiration (Chapter 8) for your new
life’s journey and ask you to consider your contribution. Following that,
the Appendix will be a potpourri of important information waiting for you
when you need it. For those of you using this book to teach a class or classes,
jump to Appendix 4 now for “Suggestions for Scaling this Book”.
If you’ve ever been to a yoga class, you may have heard the word
Namaste. Don’t worry, you don’t have to do yoga to be a lighting designer,
Figure 1.1 Performers waiting for technical adjustments during a musical theatre
rehearsal under light at the University of Arizona
Photo courtesy of Danny Gurwin
C H A P T E R 1 3
but since I do, I infuse some of the gifts of my practice into my teach-
ing. I respectfully borrow the word Namaste from east Indian culture. It
has been translated in many ways, but I invoke my former students, col-
leagues, and collaborators who prefer this version: “The light in me sees
and honors the light in you.” Namaste, y’all!
Project: Getting Started Being Quiet
Why?
To condition the mind for creative thought.
What and How?
If you have just a moment:
• Sit or stand comfortably.

• Close your eyes.
• Bring your attention to your breath as it moves in and out of your body.
Don’t try to control the breath, just observe it.
• Notice any sensations in the nose, throat, chest, or abdomen.
• Continue with this for a few moments or minutes as you are able.
When you notice that thoughts or other things have interrupted (and
they surely will), bring your attention back to the breath. Do not try to
engage, argue with, or judge the distractions. Just favor your breath.
• When you feel ready to come out of this, relax for a moment, tilt the
head forward to shield your eyes, then open the eyes slowly.
• Be sure to rest for a few moments before reengaging with things. An
abrupt switch from quiet to engaged can cause agitation. The longer
the quiet moment the longer transition needed.
If you have a half an hour or more:
• Try a little movement before sitting. Walking, yoga, tai chi, a gentle bike
ride, swim, or just moving around as you are able may help to unravel
tension as long as you can work with favoring the breath or another
focal point. Modifcations to yoga and other quietive practices exist for
different kinds of mobility and physical or mental considerations, so
don’t hesitate to look around for resources (a local class or an instruc-
tional video) that meet you where you are.
• When you are ready to be still, follow the instructions above.
4 C H A P T E R 1
Measuring Success: This kind of activity does not allow for an immediate
measuring of success. You can use a more-often-than-not meter, but know
that how you feel about quieting can be affected by all kinds of things in
your life. If “more often than not”, you feel lighter and more clear headed
in the time following a quietive moment, then it is likely that you are expe-
riencing the positive effects of these practices. If after practicing for some
time, your quiet practice feels like a safe place – familiar and warm – this
also can be a sign of success. But remember that almost nothing is a sign of
failure. Feeling like “it didn’t work” and resistance to taking the time usually
has more to do with what is going on around you than the quietive exercise
itself. It takes commitment and a certain degree of trust, but it will pay off.
Timetable: If you are new to this, start with a minute at a time two to four
times a day. If you have access to a device app that can randomly cue you
throughout the day, that can be helpful, or maybe you can fnd a buddy.
After a minute a few times a day seems doable, try fve minutes in the
morning or in the evening, and then try both. After that is comfortable,
follow your instinct to lead you to longer periods or join a meditation group.
However you go about it, consistency is key. The more consistent you are,
the more comfortable it will be; the less consistent you are, the more chal-
lenging it will be. Set a goal that is practical for your particular situation and
stick with it.
C H A P T E R 1 5
CHAPTER 2
Observe
We’ll begin Chapter 2 by jumping right into a project designed to hone

your ability to observe thoroughly.
Project: Lighting Moments
Why?
One of the lighting designer’s most important tasks is to use light to affect
others. In order to do that, they must gain an awareness of light around
them and its impact. In this project you observe, document, and refect on
single moments when the light in the experience affected you in some way.
In the beginning, favor moments in which the light is naturally occurring
(rather than designed), because those take more practice.
What?
Explore two questions:
1. What is the physical reality of the moment? In other words, what spe-
cifcally caused this experience? Where is the light coming from, what
is it landing on, and what is its color, texture, and quality?
2. How and why does it make you feel? This is usually the harder ques-
tion to answer when you’re just starting out, but rest assured, there
DOI: 10.4324/9781003022725-2 7
OBSERVE
is almost always an answer. If it grabbed your attention, there was an

effect. For example, a sunrise that leaves you feeling invigorated, per-
haps because of the vibrant red. Or maybe a movement of shadow in
an unexpected place that leaves you feeling anxious. It may feel hard to
answer this question at frst, but the effort will be time well spent.
How?
This works well as a class exercise on a discussion board, or organized on

social media. Upload a picture, answer the two questions, then view other
participants’ submissions and comment on them. Sharing or even capturing
the images is not absolutely necessary in order to meet the basic objectives
of the project, but doing so can spark good conversations and be the begin-
ning of a useful personal library of images. Simple journaling in a notebook
about an experience is also quite suffcient.
Measuring success: A progressive depth of analysis over time is the best

indicator of success. If you’re having trouble analyzing the impact, ask your-
self why you noticed the moment in the frst place. What were you feeling
before you noticed it and what were you feeling after? What about the
experience might have caused that change in feeling? Over time, this gets
easier and your ability to detail your experience will grow.
Timetable: In the beginning, set a goal of one entry every couple of

weeks. Eventually you will fnd yourself doing it automatically and be
amazed at what was always there. Until that happens, use deadlines. If
you haven’t had an experience as the deadline is nearing, make some
time to fnd one.
Always honoring my teachers, this project has evolved from one that James
H. Gage called the “Lighting Diary”.
Quietive Practices and the Creative Process

Quietive practices are more commonly known as contemplative practices,
but I think this can be a bit confusing. In the way that I have learned and
instruct quietive practices, we aren’t meant to be contemplating things
when we practice. So I have borrowed the word “quietive” from one
of my teachers, Al Kaszniak, who holds an unusual pair of titles: pro-
fessor emeritus of neuropsychology and Buddhist Sensei. For me, good
8 C H A P T E R 2
OBSERVE
contemplation is a cherished effect of quietive practice, but not something

we do intentionally when we practice.
The seemingly most popular contemplative or quietive practices are
yoga and meditation, but there are many more. The Center for Contem-
plative Mind in Society (contemplativemind.org) has a tree graphic that
lists other activities you may have heard of: tai chi, Aikido, qigong, even
dance and some others you may not have realized can have similar results:
singing, journaling, visualization, volunteering.
Not all of these activities will achieve the results that I’m sug-
gesting we – as artists – aim for, so let’s define what we’re trying to
accomplish.
If you’ve tried one of these things and thought it wasn’t for you, what if
you considered the long game? Think of these activities not as magic pills,
but as practices, or maybe in the same way you might see your favorite
exercise or recreational activity. When you ÿrst started out, was it fun
every time? It was probably hard sometimes, but you kept doing it. Why?
Figure 2.1 Tree of Contemplative Practices

The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society
C H A P T E R 2 9
OBSERVE
Meditation and most quietive practices take some time to pay off too. Most
of the time, most people will feel calmer when they are done, but it is also
true that it will often feel hard, especially if you are a fast-moving, always-
busy person like me. The rewards, however, are many and they get richer
over a lifetime. Some of them are obvious and don’t take many cycles of
practice to attain, like feeling calmer, having less anxiety, having better
moods, and better sleep. The longer you keep it up, the more profound the
effects.
It is also important to consider that the reason we talk about both
meditation and meditative practices is that meditation as we commonly
think of it isn’t for everyone or even for every situation. For people who
have serious anxiety challenges, or even in a moment when the nervous
system volume is turned up, sitting still can worsen anxiety and agitation.
Very experienced meditators may be able to effectively sit through that,
but for others, there are better options. In the project “Getting Started
Being Quiet” in the last chapter, you noticed that I suggested walking
as an option. In fact, walking meditation is standard practice in some
traditions. Done with the same intentions, many kinds of movement may
become meditative on their own.
Consider this ÿnding from a meta-analysis of MRI studies published in
Biomed Research International:
Results of the present ALE [activation likelihood estimation] analy-

sis suggest that meditation practice induces functional and structural
brain modiÿcations, especially in areas involved in self-referential
processes, including self-awareness and self-regulation, as well as
in areas involved in attention, executive functions, and memory
formations.
(Boccia et al. 2015, p. 14)
Meditative practices actually re-wire your brain and may make it work
better. It didn’t happen the ÿrst time you tried it, though, so give it another
chance.
So what intentions are we aiming for? Our ÿrst objective as med-
itator-creatives is interrupting repeating thoughts. You can relate this to
another colloquial term we’ve been hearing a lot lately: “creating band-
width”. When the mind is thinking, it is doing exactly what we have trained
it to do: think, plan, mull, solve. There’s no reason to judge or set up con°ict
with that. But most of the time, we don’t have much in°uence over what it
decides to think about and it will keep trying to work on a problem even
when there is no new or useful information to consider. “What am I going
to have for lunch?” or “Why did that other driver look at me that way?”
or “I wonder what was bothering my co-worker this morning?” These are
10 C H A P T E R 2
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questions you aren’t likely to get answers to until more time passes, but that
won’t stop them from taking up bandwidth in your mind.
Meditation allows you to choose a point of focus – often the breath, or
maybe a “mantra” or sound, maybe a candle °ame, depending on what
type of practice you choose. Then (and more importantly) it gives you the
opportunity to notice when your mind wanders and practice deliberately
placing it back on that point of focus. As I mentioned in the “Getting
Started” instructions, it is important not to approach this as a battle of
wills. The mind doesn’t respond well to being handled in that way and
mental stress can develop when you try. All you have to do is favor your
point of focus. When you realize your mind has gone someplace else, gen-
tly bring it back. Over time, you begin to see that the freedom to direct
your mind is connected to how aware you are about where else it is trying
to take you.
A student once said to a meditation teacher: “I sat in meditation for
only ÿve minutes and I swear my mind wandered off at least a hundred
times.” “That’s great!” said the teacher. “You had a hundred chances to
practice coming back! Imagine how much better you’ll be at it now!” My
teacher always instructs: “Do not judge the effectiveness of your medi-
tation experience by its subjective quality.” Often it will feel great, but
when it doesn’t, just remember the long game. Regular yoga practition-
ers will tell you that even when they have a “bad” morning practice˛– and
by that they usually mean they were frustrated by it in some way – the˛day
that follows that practice still goes more smoothly than days when they
don’t practice at all. Don’t expect meditative practices to be a magic pill.
With consistent repetition, they will be so much more than that.
So how do we know if an activity is meditative or not? The key is how
attuned you can be to what the mind is doing. How aware are you of
when you are in charge versus when the mind is dragging you places? This
is why seated meditation in a quiet place is the preferred method because
you reduce all possible distractions except the mind activity itself. You are
more likely to notice sooner when the mind wanders, so you really will
have many, many chances to come back. I sometimes like to meditate when
I’m hiking, but the downside is that the scenery will grab my attention for
a long time before I notice that I’m not in charge anymore. For that reason,
it is even possible for yoga to not be meditative. When the class is challeng-
ing, you might be ÿlled with anxiety about what’s coming next and it can
take some time before it’s just you and your body attuned to the moment.
That’s not to say that in a challenging yoga class you can’t have a medita-
tive experience. You can. What matters is how much opportunity you have
to practice being present, and there’s nothing quite like being present to
what your body is experiencing. But fearing or anticipating something that
hasn’t happened yet is the opposite of being present.
C H A P T E R 2 11
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Being More Informed than Infuenced

Designers usually need reference material for their creations. We’ll look
at this more in depth when we talk about the design process, but as we
get started on our journey together, I want you to begin considering in
what ways this exploration can have its greatest usefulness and how it
can get you into trouble. Designers research reference material that is
both contextual and visual.
Contextual research is usually an intellectual exercise. We look for
information about the author, the period, locations, past productions,
scholarly analysis – especially if you’re doing a piece that people may
have a strong frame of reference for – like a Shakespeare play, a classic
musical, or a remake of a popular movie.
Visual research sometimes means abstract visuals such as color or tex-
ture palettes, but we may also be referring speciÿcally to what light will
look like. For instance, if we know we’ll have to light a scene where peo-
ple will be driving in a car at night, we might look for visual examples of
people sitting in a car at night to see how exactly the dashboard light or
passing headlights reveal what we see. Or maybe we are lighting some-
thing that takes place in Italy over the summer and we’ve heard that the
summer light in Italy has a certain unusual quality about it, so we ÿnd
visuals to understand what that is.
Here is my question to you: should you watch or even look at past
productions? Take some time to brew your answer before reading on.
Many creatives say not to watch other productions, because it will
immediately impact your choices and pollute your unique contribution
to this new work. Others say do it because in order to create something
that is truly new, you have to know what has come before. What do you
think are the advantages and disadvantages to watching other versions of
things and why might you not?
One thing to consider is that you are not designing in a vacuum. When
you’re working with a director or producer who has 20 or 40 years’ experi-
ence ahead of you, if you don’t know anything about previous productions
you could be sending a message that you are unwilling to do your home-
work, or that you are disinterested in what others have done. It is also possi-
ble that you’ll come up with and get attached to an idea that seems fresh to
you but in fact was done before and seems a too obvious choice to others.
For these reasons and many more, I suggest that not only should you take
a look at past iterations, but that sometimes it is your professional respon-
sibility to do so. This will be especially fraught with peril when you are
ÿrst learning to design or when you ÿnd yourself creatively drained. Other
people’s solutions may become particularly difÿcult to un-see. Or it may just
be that the other idea you see is so good, so deÿnitive, that anything you can
come up with feels inadequate. You need learn how to do it anyway.
12 C H A P T E R 2
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So how do we do it? The simple answer is that (like everything else) it

will take practice and experience. The more experiences you have and the
more new ideas you take in, the more you will develop your discernment
as an artist. This will allow you to more fully participate in an experience
as an observer and let it become part of you, but not have it be the only
thing you can imagine.
The ÿrst strategy is to get out there and experience everything you can.
Ticket prices and demands on time may make it challenging for the new
artist, but there are lots of creative ways to make this investment in your
career and life’s work. Many organizations have discount days, student
pricing or invited dress rehearsals. Often road venues will facilitate shad-
owing so that a student can sit next to a professional as the show is going
on. Sometimes volunteering to help gets you access and can help you
make contacts. There are many generous people working in the business
who may be willing to help you while you are learning. Take this respon-
sibility seriously now and begin your lifelong strategy to experience all
that you can.
Another strategy that will help is to consider the timing of your
research. More general background information – like what the material
is about, its genre, its historical or cultural context, location, time, and
season – are easier to take in without being in°uenced. The process of
exploring those things early will lay the groundwork for a deeper under-
standing and make you more immune to outside in°uence. Researching
what audiences and scholars thought will be more likely to in°uence, so
perhaps save that until you have formed your own thoughts. Looking
at visuals from other incarnations of a production are the most likely to
imprint deep in your psyche, so perhaps don’t look at those until you feel
you have a strong relationship of your own to the material.
There are times when it may be appropriate not to watch a previous
version. If you know that the material has an iconic place in the world,
you might want to check in with your director or producer about their
feelings. I once designed a production of The Curious Incident of the Dog
in the Night-Time in which the director so wanted to distinguish our pro-
duction from the iconic National Theatre version that she asked us not
to look at it. A similar thing happened when I was hired as the lighting
director for the iconic STOMP tour. Typically, when you are hired onto a
tour that has a home show on- or off-Broadway, the ÿrst thing you do is
°y in to see the home show. But the creators of STOMP let me know in
the interview that they wanted me to stay away from their off-Broadway
creation because they felt that the tour better represented the way they
wanted the lighting to feel.
Hopefully you can begin to sense the qualities of a truly professional
collaborator. It isn’t only about making fast choices that seem fun or
C H A P T E R 2 13
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stimulate you in some way, it’s about developing yourself and your pro-
cesses to make each particular creation great.
In the book The Magic of Light, pioneer designer Jean Rosenthal
famously said, “You begin by holding the play in your hand.” It’s such
a simple and poetic statement that I hear it in my head every time I pick
up a script for the ÿrst time: “I begin by holding this play in my hand.”
It becomes a sacred ÿrst moment on a very special journey. She contin-
ues, “Even if the play is a classic with which I am thoroughly familiar, it
becomes a new play for me. I am older than I was, things have happened,
the world has changed, and I will be working with certain people” (p. 59).
No choices are absolute, but rather exist in this moment in time that we
will all share.
Light as it Naturally Occurs

Anyone who can sense light has a perception of how light behaves
and people with shared backgrounds or shared ways of perceiving
light have similar expectations about what it can and will do. A light-
ing designer may intentionally use light in a way that does not mimic
reality, but because light behavior is a common reference point, they
need to understand the realities of it well before making those choices.
Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher did not start out breaking the rules of
two-dimensional space to create his mind-boggling works – he learned
the rules and then broke them. Let’s explore what the “rules” of natural
light are.
Figure 2.2 Day and Night, 1938, M.C. Escher

M.C. Escher’s Day and Night © 2021 The M.C. Escher Company – The Netherlands. All
rights reserved. www.mcescher.com
14 C H A P T E R 2
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Interior Light
Look around the room you are in now. Where is light coming from?
Does it come from one source or many? How much of the light you see
comes directly from a source and how much is re°ected off surfaces?
What are its color and temperature qualities? What is the difference
between the color of the direct light vs the re°ected light? What is the
difference between the color of light that directly hits an object and the
shadow that object casts? What is the quality of light on people’s faces
and how is it different from what you see on inorganic objects? How
does light illuminate the eyes and when does it obscure them? How does
light behave on different skin colors and tones? As we will hear more
about later, this last question about skin color and light is one of the
most neglected in lighting design education. Please spend a little extra
time with it.
Each reader is going to have their own answers to these questions, and
those answers will be highly dependent on what is present for them – the
time of day, proximity to windows, season and atmospheric conditions,
the color and textures of the objects – but even with these variables, there
will be commonalities. If it is daytime and there are some windows on
a clear day in the summer, chances are there is some direct light com-
ing through windows that has a warmish quality. That light is probably
re°ecting off surfaces and is probably cooler in nature than what is com-
ing directly through the window, but also taking on the color quality
of the objects it re°ects off. Depending on where the sun is, direct light
through the window will create lines of light and shadow where the frame
of the window cuts it off and there will be a difference in the color quality
between that light and shadow. Re°ected or diffused light will not cast
distinct shadow, but you will see contrast in other ways. Look to the
upper corners of the room, for instance. Notice how interior walls them-
selves are not lit evenly; the light will usually be more apparent in the
middle and fade off at the top and bottom.
By contrast, if it is night-time, or if the room is dark for other reasons,
then perhaps there are artiÿcial light sources in the room. If you have a
way of comparing both situations simultaneously (natural light versus an
artiÿcial light) explore that. The type of artiÿcial light source will change
the experience as well. For instance, maybe warm light bulbs are in a
table lamp, °uorescent light in the kitchen or bathroom, and LED light in
a desk lamp. Any of these will alter the answers to the questions I posed.
Notice also that if an interior is lit with internal artiÿcial light, it tends
to come either from straight overhead (if it’s a ceiling ÿxture) or from
about a 4’ height (if it’s a lamp). Neither of those angles are the most
°attering or pleasing angles, which is why so many people use sconces or
hanging lamps if they have the option. The type and quality of interior
C H A P T E R 2 15
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light can send subtle messages to the observer about the circumstances
in the space.
Pause to scan your memory of other interior spaces and consider what
might be different: a dentist’s ofÿce, a lobby of a hotel, a mall, a bar, a
fast-food restaurant, an upscale restaurant, the gym, or a casino. Explore
and contrast all that you can. Remember that looking at the sources of
light is useful, but be sure also to look at the whole visual experience.
What the light reveals is usually the more interesting story, not the light
source itself. When is natural light used or not? What is the impact of
that? One well-known trick that casinos use is to completely eliminate
natural light so that the client has no sense of time of day. What then is
the quality of the light in that room? Upscale restaurants tend to be lit in
a “source-y” way. Every table may have its own downlight, which won’t
necessarily be °attering on the face, but which gives the illusion that you
and your party are alone. This is because your space seems bright to you
and everything around you feels darker.
Exterior Light
Now go outside if you are able. Just like interior light, the experience of
exterior light will have commonalities even within the variables. The pres-
ence of natural or artiÿcial light and the time of day matter outside, but
now differences in seasons, atmosphere, and geography are more appar-
ent variables. One of the interesting things about sunlight is that it is not
below eye level or straight above for very long. So even though the sun is
always moving, it is true more often than not that if a person is facing the
sun, the face will be fully lit with only minimal shadows, and the person
will cast a shadow in line with the direction of the sun. Such a situation,
because it is what we are used to seeing the majority of the day, is what
our brain equates to “natural” light. This reality dictated a standard “nat-
ural” angle for lighting positions in the American theatre for a century.
When the light isn’t arranged that way, it tends to give us more informa-
tion, can be more interesting and can be used to subtly signal things to
the observer.
Now scan your memory again for other kinds of realities, some of
which may be present for you right now: sunrise or sunset; just before and
after a sunrise or sunset; the different seasons, especially when the land-
scape is snow-covered; a rainy day; before a storm; with the presence of
trees or awnings or porches (things that diffuse light and/or cast shadow);
night and all the possible lighting sources at night, like the moon, city
lights, street lights, exterior building lights, and even the absence of light
sources at night. Take some time to mentally compare and contrast your
sense of light in those situations.
16 C H A P T E R 2
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Geographic Location
Differences in light due to geographic location are subtle. Isn’t sunlight just
sunlight no matter where you go? You may have to do a web search and put
them side by side to see differences, but consider some examples of highly
contrasting geographic locations (in terms of quality of light), even when the
time of day is the same: downtown LA vs a Swiss Alpine city; inside a South
American rainforest vs the western US desert landscape; traveling down a
street in New York City vs walking in St Peter’s Square in Vatican City. The
source of daylight may be the same, but atmosphere and environment change
the quality of that light. Because most of the lighting design we will do will
involve people, be sure to re°ect on what faces of all tones look like in all of
these different scenarios. Many places have a quality of light that is known
to people who have experienced it so always do your homework when rec-
reating a place you aren’t familiar with. Ask people who have been there to
describe it for you. I think a fun place to lose yourself if you have access to
one is the photography book section of any library. You can do this online,
but it’s a different kind of experience if you can make a pile of books around
you to thumb through, noticing the commonalities and contrasts of different
places in the world. Check out the periodicals section for travel magazines
which will allow you to compare many locations under one cover.
Period
Designers who work with physical objects must be well-versed in period
styles in order to ensure congruity and authenticity in the choices they
make. Period has less in°uence in lighting, but it does matter that we
know about how the sources of light have changed and how light might
look different in different time periods. We can use that sensibility to cue
the audience in certain ways. For example, one of the simplest time-tested
methods for showing a difference between two periods in the same story
is to light the older scenes warmer (more amber or yellowy) and the more
recent ones cooler (more blue or white). You might have seen the televi-
sion show This Is Us, which used this technique to help us know which
timeline we were in. Artiÿcial light has become cooler and brighter over
time and many observers have a sense of that. Some of our perception
has to do with photography technology because older photos tend to be
more yellowy and softer, but it’s all related. It’s a good idea to ask yourself
what light would have been like in the time period your material is taking
place, just as you think about location, time of day, seasons, etc. in order
to consider how you can make choices around those realities in a way
that supports your design intentions.
Consider too how your audience takes meaning through its own
frame of reference. We’ll talk more about this later, but the emergence of
C H A P T E R 2 17
OBSERVE
LEDs caused a huge shift in how artiÿcial light is experienced. Those of

us who have lived more of our lives without LEDs than with them can
have a different kind of reaction when we see them in a period piece.
On a musical theatre production of Cabaret a few years ago, a student
lighting designer and I learned about our own frame of references when
he plotted LED ÿxtures into the environment of the Kit Kat Club. The
sharp contrast of period between those ÿxtures and the 1930s table
lamps stuck out like a sore thumb to me and others. But for many, LEDs
feel so “everyday” that they don’t even notice them. The ÿx was an easy
one: to mask the ÿxtures in such a way that the audience could not see
the source. This way the designer could use them in the musical numbers
(when “reality” matters a little less) to get great color, but they weren’t
able to be seen by anyone who may have felt they were out of place. But
this became a great learning exercise for all of us about plausibility and
how we come to think of what we experience as plausible or not, which
is something we’re going to talk about later. If you consider how your
audience may understand what you offer them, you will take many more
of them along on the journey.
Just Physics
Spend some time noticing what light does and doesn’t do simply because
of physics. Remember of course that we will probably break the rules in
order to come up with more interesting compositions, but that we must
come to know the realities so that we can effectively manipulate them.
Following are realities that I see come up all the time in entertainment
lighting:
• We only see light when it is re°ected off a surface, caught in atmos-

pheric particles, or when we look at the source. To put it succinctly:
Light isn’t seen until it lights something that can be seen.
• A single direct light source hitting an object will create a cast shadow.
Shadows will be cast both on the surface of the object where the
depth changes AND on the other side of the object. Shadows cast on
the other side of the object can be hidden, but the shadow itself can
only be eliminated by adding another light source or re°ected light.
• The direction of the cast shadows will usually indicate the direction
of the light source (but it can vary when there are multiple surfaces or
the surface is at an unusual angle).
• The length or depth of the cast shadows will indicate the relative
difference between the height of the light source and the height of the
object (as when cast shadows are longer at sunrise and sunset than in
the middle of the day when the sun is overhead).
18 C H A P T E R 2
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• The contrast between a shadow and the surface around a shadow

will be directly related to how bright or intense that light source is.
Brighter light creates greater contrast.
• Ambient light bouncing off objects in the surround or caught in parti-
cles in the air can lessen how much we notice the cast shadow and/or
the contrast. It makes the atmosphere and edges appear softer.
• We will see the edge of a single direct light source if the projected
beam is narrower than our ÿeld of view. In other words, lighting an
object with one single light, unless the source is so big that it covers
more area than we can see in our ÿeld of vision (like the sun) guar-
antees that the edge of that light will be visible, often giving away the
nature of its source. An illustration of why this is relevant: a single
spotlight on someone is considered theatrical because the edge of the
light is usually a dead giveaway that it is an artiÿcial light source.
To make it look more natural, designers use many lights to cover a
broader area, and pull-down (dim the rest of the lights) to a speciÿc
area when the desire IS to be theatrical, or just to direct focus without
giving away the multiple sources.
There are many more things you will notice when you examine the
physical realities of light, but these are the most common ones that have
to be managed in a lighting design. Understanding how a pool of light will
behave is a critical concept. Painters and graphic artists can make objects
“°oat” simply by not painting the area around the border of the object.
Sometimes you’d like to be able to have the lead singer or an actor doing
a monologue °oat in space. You may try to do it by using only a single
source like a followspot or a special (a light selected for that one purpose
only). And you might even have presented a reference image of a painting
showing what it will look like when you do. When you get into the space
you may be faced with the disappointment that your single source light
looks bold on the object, but you can see the rest of the pool on a wall or
the ground, and your subject cannot °oat in the way you imagined. There
are tricks to burying the light, such as choosing an angle from which the
rest of the pool will be out of sight behind another object, like a curtain.
In ÿlm and television, you may be able to choose an angle which will keep
the rest of the pool off camera.
Begin to build a mental or digital library of the behavior of light and
how light appears in different contexts. Understand how your audience’s
frame of reference or sense of period might impact their reaction to your
choices. Be such a keen observer of the physics of light that you know how
to get the result you want and predict when a light is not going to do what
you wish it would. Once you have mastered how light behaves before you
manipulate it, the more useful and interesting your choices will become.
C H A P T E R 2 19
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Figure 2.3 “Small Places”. A spotlight on Christopher (Hunter Hnat) in The

Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Notice the challenge of isolating
Christopher between the two objects
Photo by Tim Fuller
History Break: Honoring the “Founders”
Stanley McCandless (1897–1967) is often called the father of Ameri-

can stage lighting. He wrote a book in 1932 with the understated title A
Method of Lighting the Stage, but before McCandless there probably was
no “method” to speak of. He was educated as an architect (there was no
such thing as lighting school then) but he eventually taught stage lighting at
Yale for many years, setting in motion a kind of lineage on which numerous
Broadway, regional, and academic LDs’ (lighting designers’) lineage can be
traced back (including me and so now you).
McCandless’s techniques are the subject of many nerdy debates amongst

lighting people about their value or obsolescence. What I think you should
understand is that he was formulating systems almost a century ago while
theatre production was still defning itself. Of course, we should have pro-
gressed since then, but his method resonates into much of what we do. He
certainly deserves respect for his contributions.
When people talk about “lighting McCandless-style” or “using McCand-

less”, it is usually a shorthand way of describing the use of warm and cool
20 C H A P T E R 2
OBSERVE
contrasting colors (usually amber and blue) set at 45 degrees above and 45
degrees off center of the eye level of an actor standing at the center of an act-
ing area. The advantage of this method is that with these two lights per area
on separate dimmers, you can get natural, fattering face illumination on most
skin tones and even suggest night or day, happy or sad. This works because
the warm and cool complements will blend to neutral on extruded surfaces
like the nose, cheeks, etc., but fll the shadows with those warm and cool
colors on opposite sides. To indicate night or day, you would simply run one
brighter than the other so that the color contrast was more apparent. To put it
another way: if you want to indicate day, you can run the warm light brighter
(as key) and the cool light dimmer (as fll). For night, you can reverse it. The
method isn’t considered very sophisticated, but when you have a small inven-
tory or not much time to execute a design, this method can get you pretty far.
While we tend to credit McCandless with codifying the mechanics of lighting

design, one of his students is often credited with advancing its inspiration
and poetry. Jean (Jeannie) Rosenthal was born in 1912 and died in 1969. She
studied with McCandless in the early 1930s and went on to light hundreds
of dance, opera, and Broadway productions.
What I know about her comes from The Magic of Light, a gem for any light-
ing designer who read it (as I did) early in their studies. It was compiled in
1972 by her assistants˛three years after she died and provides a fascinating
snapshot of what lighting live performance was like in its early days.
Even if you don’t light like she did (and you probably shouldn’t because
this is the 2020s, not the 1930s), you hopefully can take to heart the ferce
loyalty that she had for the intentions of the material she was lighting. I like
to quote the following passage as an example of one way to navigate some
moments of friction in the theatre, and how things must have been for
Rosenthal and others in those days:
Jean was so open to the thinking, the intentions, of others, so ready

and so selfess in serving, as she expressed it, “the creative purposes
of other men” that they sometimes forgot her creative integrity. Her
invariable courtesy made her seem biddable, but she could, on occa-
sion, display the character of a miniature, gray-headed Italian donkey.
When she was sure she was right in terms of mutually conceived artistic
whole, she just stood there, polite and patient, refusing to budge no
matter how she was coaxed, bullied or stormed at.
Or she bided her time. Once in Stratford, Connecticut a rehearsal
of˛All’s Well That Ends Well, one of Shakespeare’s problem plays, with
C H A P T E R 2 21
OBSERVE
Figure 2.4 Richard Pilbrow (standing), Jean Rosenthal, and scenic designer
Tony Walton
Photo courtesy of Richard Pilbrow
disagreeable overtones, came to a halt when the director John House-

man˛bellowed, “Jean! Jean! Where are you I can’t see!”
Jean hidden behind her desk,˛stood up, and said meekly, “Here I am.”
“GIVE ME MORE LIGHT,” ordered John.
Jean˛murmured into an intercom and before I could blink the scene
went from dim to bright. “Thank you, boys,” Jean said quietly to the
electricians, “you’ve saved us about 20 minutes.” Then she settled
back, narrowing her eyes at the scene,˛ which was laid in the French
King’s Palace where he lay gravely ill. Studying the effect she remarked
sotto voce, “he looks wonderfully healthy don’t you think?”
Me: But what will you do?˛
Jean: Oh it’s all right I will put it back the way it was later.
The rehearsal went on brightly lit.
“I wish” Jean said˛wistfully, “I had a pom-e-granate.”
(The Magic of Light, p. vi)
In the days before computers, it might have taken a long time to make
an adjustment like that. Rosenthal knew how to get things done and she
knew when to (and when not to) suit up for the creative battle. “Mutually
22 C H A P T E R 2
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conceived artistic whole” is an expression worth pondering for any lighting

student. Rosenthal probably wouldn’t have put the lighting for that scene
back out of a need to have her way, but because it was what she believed
everyone (including the director) really wanted – maybe not in the moment
because there were other priorities, but certainly by the time it was ready for
an audience. And she was sure of it.
Another passage punctuates her life in her fnal days fghting cancer in 1969:
For 37 years, from the ages of 20˛to 57, Jean had lighted Martha Gra-
ham’s˛ballets. It was the frst work she ever created and it was ftting
that it should be the last. Martha Graham had created a new ballet,
Jean insisted on˛attending rehearsal in a wheelchair and on designing
and lighting the production. On April 20th,˛Archaic Hours°opened in
the Graham Repertory Theater at New York City Center with produc-
tion and lighting by Jean Rosenthal, and on May 1st Jean died.
(p. viii)
She lit until it was time to go.
A year after A Method of Lighting the Stage was published, a titan of

the industry was born “on the other side of the pond.” A discussion of
our founders must include Richard Pilbrow, born in 1933 and still going
strong today – “mainly writing”, as he mentioned in a recent exchange.
His is currently working on a book about the National Theatre (out
spring 2022, he hopes) and his last project with the consulting firm he
founded in 1957, “Theatre Projects” (TP) will open in Orlando next year.
Figure 2.5 Richard Pilbrow today

Photo courtesy of Richard Pilbrow
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Pilbrow’s presence is felt throughout the whole of arts and entertainment.

He was one of the frst lighting designers for the National Theatre Com-
pany (now the National Theatre) of London. He was the frst British lighting
designer to design a Broadway musical and one of the frst two British
lighting designers to be invited into United Scenic Artists. His books Stage
Lighting (1970) and Stage Lighting Design: The Art, The Craft and The Life
(1997) were textbooks for many students, and his 2013 A Theatre Project
is a goldmine of wisdom. The frm TP (mentioned above) has consulted
on countless projects all over the world. It is truly staggering to realize
the number of people this person has touched. I programmed for him in
the early 1990s barely out of college, and I fondly remember his sense of
humor. My hands were probably shaking with the nervousness of program-
ming for such a big name. We didn’t have tech table monitors at the time
and I remember that he asked me what the level of a channel was. “Full,” I
said. “Right,” he replied, in a chipper British accent. Then earnestly, he said,
“Can you make it brighter?” He enjoyed, I’m sure, imagining my young
wannabe designer brain racing as it tried to fgure out how I was supposed
to make something brighter that was already at full, for the great Richard
Pilbrow. Surely it was possible or he wouldn’t have asked me.˛.˛. right?
As recently as 2011, I saw him give a talk to a crowded conference hall at

LDI (Live Design International). I asked him if there was show that must not
be missed. He named the National Theatre’s production of War Horse, which
was touring the US at the time, and spoke eloquently about what the show
expected from the audience. It was distressing to him that audiences had
come to demand so much realism, so much information (visual and sto-
ry-wise), and that they were so unwilling to participate with their imagina-
tions. War Horse was to him an antidote because it demanded participation
and audiences were thrilled to give it. These things still matter to him.
Take a Breath: Refections and Trailheads
At certain moments throughout this book, I’ll invite you to pause and take
some time to refect on and embed in your memory what was covered.
You’ll want something on which to collect your thoughts and ideally be in a
quiet, comfortable place. Start by closing your eyes and bringing your atten-
tion to your breath, for just a few inhales and exhales, to settle any effort
of the mind. After you’ve done that, read each refection question one at
a time, then close your eyes for another few breaths to see what surfaces.
Make some notes, and when you’re ready, move to the next question.
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Refections:
• Lighting moments: Have you noticed anything new to you that was
always there?
• Quietive practices: What have you decided to try and how is your relation-
ship with it so far? What are some of the reasons to continue doing˛it?
• Light as it naturally occurs: What realities that you now know about the
way light behaves will infuence the way you might use it?
• Our founding lighting designers: Was there anything about them that
you would like to echo in your life’s work?
• What ideas in the chapter do you want to know more about?
Figure 2.6 Trailheads
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References and Resources

Boccia, Maddalena, et al. “The Meditative Mind: A Comprehensive Meta-Analysis
of MRI Studies.”˛ BioMed Research International, vol. 2015, 2015, p. 14,
doi:10.1155/2015/419808.
Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, www.contemplativemind.org/
practices/tree.
Fitzgerald, Deanna. “Contemplative Practices for Designers, Technicians and
Other Theatre Professionals.” TD&T, Feb. 2017: 44–56.
McCandless, Stanley Russell.˛A Method of Lighting the Stage. New York: Theatre
Arts Books, 1932.
“Mindfulness Meditation Courses with Dan Harris and Joseph Goldstein.”˛Ten
Percent Happier, www.tenpercent.com.
Pilbrow, Richard, et al.˛A Theatre Project: An Autobiographical Story. New York:
PLASA Media, 2015.
Rosenthal, Jean, and Lael Tucker Wertenbaker.˛The Magic of Light: The Craft and
Career of Jean Rosenthal, Pioneer in Lighting for the Modern Stage. Boston:
Little, Brown, 1972.
26 C H A P T E R 2
CHAPTER 3
Inquire
Light in Art
Impacts of Light for the Artist

If you have taken an art class in your past, you may have gotten a list of
Elements or Principles of Art or Design, or some list of things the teacher
thought was the crucial vocabulary for talking the visual experience.
We’re going to make our own lists for light, but let’s start with a list of
three broad things about light that I think visual artists have managed to
harness. I’ll call these Composition, Contrast, and Tone.
Ponder Hopper’s Nighthawks (Figure 3.1). Pretend for a moment
that you have special powers and can switch on work light or the sun.
Do that in your mind’s eye and imagine the event fully exposed. If it
were brightly, uniformly, and colorlessly lit from corner to corner in
the viewing frame, what would be visible? Now turn that light off and
experience the painting as Hopper choose to reveal it. What light is
left? And in a broad way, what is light contributing to your experience
of the depicted moment that wasn’t there when everything was uni-
formly exposed?
There is no one right answer here and you may note many, many con-
tributions of light. I’ll tell you what I experience. The varied intensity of
the light in different areas of the picture creates a compelling composi-
tion. Relatedly, that same variation creates a contrast between the event
taking place and the area where people are not. The high value of the
warm interior light contrasts the dim, greenish light outside, which itself
DOI: 10.4324/9781003022725-3 27
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Figure 3.1 Nighthawks, 1942, Edward Hopper

The Art Institute of Chicago/Art Resource, NY
creates a tone, or evocative atmosphere. The feeling I have is one of curi-

ousness – “What’s going on here?” “Why are these people gathering in
that place when the area around is at rest?” Light is probably not the only
thing in°uencing the tone. There is plenty about the objects to evoke, but
the point is that a sense of light is one important tool that Hopper used to
accomplish whatever we think he accomplished.
Take a break from reading for just a moment and use a search engine
to get a page of “famous paintings” or “art masterpieces”. I think you
will ÿnd that any time there is a sense of light in the work, a certain
kind of Composition, Contrast, and Tone are apparent. If those things
are difÿcult to talk about in a visual experience, chances are that a sense
of light isn’t being utilized. The moment you deliberately place light in an
experience, you will construct a composition, create contrast and evoke
some sort of tone.
Engaging the Observer

Why do we care? Let’s ÿrst draw a distinction between personal taste
and effective choices, which are not the same. As artists, we probably
should have taste preferences. But when we take on the responsibility of
design, taste is only part of an equation. The design equation favors effec-
tiveness. Design is by deÿnition purposeful, deliberate, and intentional.
There can be a sort of laziness in pulling the taste card when defending
a choice by saying, “I just really like this color.” I’m OK with it when all
observers consider it a self-evident truth, like in a concert when a lighting
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look transitions to something new and you hear a collective “ooh”. But
if that isn’t the case – if the choice isn’t as satisfying or exciting to your
collaborators and your audience as it is to you – then you’ll have to have
a better reason for choosing it. Liking or not liking something is tied heav-
ily to one’s individual experience and can be difÿcult to measure. Design
requires intention and so can be measured by whether or not it does what
it intended to do.
It probably wouldn’t surprise you to know that I don’t enjoy art that
doesn’t have a sense of light. This is my personal taste, not a judgment
on the value of the artwork. By extension, I don’t enjoy art that has
no apparent (to me) sense of Composition, Contrast, and Tone. Stum-
bling around the internet for famous artwork often brings to the sur-
face works that, by that criteria, you might understand why I would
ÿnd engaging: Nighthawks (Hopper, 1942), A Sunday Afternoon on
the Island of La Grande Jatte (Seurat, 1884), and The Arnolÿni Por-
trait (van Eyck, 1434). Conversely, there are plenty of masterpieces that
are brilliant but don’t immediately grab me: The Garden of Earthly
Delights (Bosch, 1515), and The Kiss (Klimt, 1908). Let’s compare two
of these masterpieces (according to the internet) to better understand
why light (effectively applied) changes the impact of an image (Figures
3.2 and 3.3).
Figure 3.2 A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, 1884, George Seurat

The Art Institute of Chicago. CC0 Public Domain
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Figure 3.3 The Garden of Earthly Delights, 1490–1500, Hieronymus Bosch

Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Both have a lot going on. I can easily lose myself exploring the Seurat
for a long time, while I have trouble ÿnding a place to start in the Garden.
This has nothing to do with the value of the work – I want you to re°ect
on why the choice to deliberately apply a sense of light can engage the
observer in a special kind of way.
Art, Reality, and Plausibility

Design and art are not the same thing. Lots of things can be art, but a
design must have intention. Does that mean a design isn’t an art? I cer-
tainly hope not, but it’s possible. A designer might fulÿll their obligations
if their design serves its functional purpose even if the design isn’t what
might be deemed artful. So, working in reverse, when is a design art?
When it evokes? Inspires? When an art critic tells you it is art? One thing
that surely elevates a lighting choice to “artful” is when it reveals truth, or
meaning, or feeling, in an unobvious way – when it shows us something
that we may otherwise have missed.
Use your search engine again to look up the “nocturns of Frederic
Remington”, a late 19th-century painter who had an afÿnity for the
American west.
You might be surprised that Remington’s chosen color of night is
usually green, or sometimes purple, but rarely blue as it has been con-
ventionalized. Remington’s depictions ring “true”, but likely create a
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Figure 3.4 Moonlight, Wolf, 1909, Frederic Remington

Gift of the members of the Phillips Academy Board of Trustees on the occasion of the 25th
Anniversary of the Addison Gallery. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
different emotional reaction than if he had chosen colors that were more
conventionally obvious. For me, his choices create an additional layer
of mystery that draws me in. When I look his nocturns, I’m never quite
sure if I want to joyfully breath in the clean crisp air or if I want to get
the heck out of there. It makes me want to know more. I used his colors
as inspiration for a design of The Voice of the Prairie, a story about
two young runaways in which the line between adventure and danger is
blurred. As the lighting designer, I wanted light to reveal events in that
same uncertain way.
A popular way to contextualize this concept is with the words realism
or naturalism, which can have all kinds of different meanings. I prefer
to think in terms of plausibility or even believability, which free us for
more interesting inquiry. Considering the color of night again, I was once
working on a small educational production of The Glass Menagerie in
which I had a tightly limited selection of colors to choose from in a stock
color changing device. For the night scene in which the family’s bread-
winner comes home drunk, what I didn’t want was a feeling of pretty
night. Something bland, almost colorless, particularly to emphasize the
dreariness that character felt about coming home, seemed more appro-
priate. Additionally, the playwright Tennessee Williams set the play in an
apartment surrounded by buildings and warm streetlights so it is unlikely
that the ambient light in the apartment would have been very colorful or
pretty. In other words, there was no reason, “realistically” or tonally that
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the scene should be lit in the go-to, conventionalized night color of blue.
All of the deep blue options in my color changing device were way too
pretty (to me), but there was a greenish yellow option that when dimmed
to a low level allowed us to see the shape of the objects onstage but wasn’t
comfortable. That’s the color I chose.
When you hear from the director’s table (and you will) the words,
“Is this the light for this scene?” it’s a terrible feeling. It means that the
director doesn’t get what you’re doing and isn’t on the same page with
you. Now you have to make a case. And if you don’t convince, you
may have to come up with something else. If you have not yet learned
to be comfortable with artistic friction, this is the moment when your
heart sinks. I thought the visual was perfect so I had to say, “Yes?”
with a little bit of wavering because I had never worked with this
director before so I wasn’t sure how this was going to go. The director
said, “But it’s night.˛.˛.” “Yes,” I said, upbeat. There was a pause. Then,
in a friendly tone, I followed: “Does it not feel like night?” He paused.
“But night is blue.˛ .˛ .” he said, trailing off. “Is it?” I responded. He
looked back at the stage and said, “Well, I guess I’m not sure now. I’ll
get back to you.” In the end, it created exactly the right tone for the
scene and he loved it.
If you keep your focus on the tonal objectives of the scene while con-
sidering plausibility, but dig past any obvious choices, you’ll get more
a more meaningful result and hopefully have design and art. But when
does plausibility matter? One of the reasons I prefer “plausibility” over
“realism” is that realism tends to matter far less often than plausibil-
ity. If we make choices that are implausible, that implausible choice can
become the focus of the experience instead of what was intended. Maybe
you’ve been watching a TV show or movie before during which at some
point you felt left behind. It’s when you blurt out loud, “Oh, come on,
that doesn’t make any sense!” (For me it’s usually: “How is that light
source coming from two directions at the same time?”) By contrast,
we may have also seen plenty of unrealistic things we didn’t question
because the artists were skilled in how to push boundaries while taking
the audience with them.
To illustrate it another way, using our previous example. What if
in The Voice of the Prairie I had chosen bright red as night for one
of the scary night scenes? I might have argued that red can create
anxiety and so that feels right for the scare scenes. Can night be red?
I’m sure we could find some examples where that would work, and
a memory play like Prairie should test the boundaries of realism, but
a choice that far from plausible for that kind of story will certainly
take at least some of the audience out of the experience. Could we get
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away˛with it in a movie like Sin City (2005), which has a particularly

stylized visual design based on a graphic novel? Absolutely. Plausibil-
ity depends on context.
Light as Storyteller
To go a little deeper into how light can help tell a story, let’s examine
another famous artwork. Consider a perhaps less obvious example of a
use of light, the iconic Grant Wood painting American Gothic. What are
some things you can say about what is happening in this moment? Can
you put a story to it, or at least a mood or theme? Ponder for a moment
before reading on.
Now consider the quality of light as Wood has chosen to present it.
Was your ÿrst reaction to think that light isn’t dealt with? If so, is that
because the artist didn’t know how to represent light in his paintings?
Consider again. Could it be similar to what you said about the story,
Figure 3.5 American Gothic, 1884, Grant Wood

The Art Institute of Chicago/Art Resource, NY
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mood or theme? Perhaps °at? Dreary? Colorless? Harsh? Is it a 100%

photorealistic representation of light in such a situation? Probably not.
If you do a web search for photographs of Iowa cities, you probably
won’t ÿnd any that have quite this tone. But is it plausible/believable? And
doesn’t the sense of light mirror the tone of the subject? I think so. I used
American Gothic as research for the early scenes of a production of The
Music Man. One of the ÿrst songs in The Music Man is “Iowa Stubborn”.
Can you imagine how the tone of that painting and the way light is used
can be used in a lighting design? Later, as music takes hold of the town,
light got more colorful.
We will revisit this idea many times, especially as we explore different
kinds of visual and experiential art forms. As you document “lighting
moments” for the project I introduced earlier, ask yourself what kind of
story that lighting moment could help you tell.
Light in Entertainment
In order to make a case, any case, you have to be able to answer, “Who
cares?” and “So what?” When I ask students why we need a lighting
designer, they will say things like, because it can help the mood, estab-
lish the location context of the story, etc. Yes, right, that’s true, but who
cares? If you’ve had a lot of exposure to good arts and entertainment in
your life, that question will surprise you. Maybe you thought everybody
experiences light the way you do. I promise you that you’ll be called on
at times to defend the importance of good lighting. I hereby initiate you
into this responsibility: from this moment forward, deciding to live a life
and career in light means you have to learn to help others understand its
signiÿcance.
Take a look at the split frame of The Picture of Dorian Gray (Figures
3.6 and 3.7) and it may seem like the case is easy to make. But you have
to remember that the people who need convincing don’t have this expe-
rience. Theatre artists have done their job well if the audience knows
nothing of what the stage looks like before they get there.
In the images of same Star Trek franchise in the years 1979, 1996,
and 2009 (Figures 3.8, 3.9, and 3.10), you may see how the capability
of ÿlm and light has grown over time. Until you experience them next to
one another, you may not know that there’s anything different about the
light in ÿlms made more than a decade apart. The sensitivity of record-
ing media has allowed for progressively more artful cinematography over
time, but for most people, light is just there.
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Figures 3.6 and 3.7 The Picture of Dorian Gray “Ghost Pyramid” under work-
light and under production conditions. Shown: Dani Dryer and Matt Bowdren
Photo courtesy of Christopher Johnson and The Rogue Theatre; photo by Tim Fuller
This is one reason the sel°ess and noble “old school” assertion of Jean
Rosenthal’s day, that lighting should be felt and not noticed, for many
has lost some of its nobleness. If we expect people to spend money on the
work we do, it can’t be too invisible. I’m not suggesting that it should
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Figures 3.8, 3.9, and 3.10 Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), Star Trek: First
Contact (1996), Star Trek (2009). Shown: Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner; Pat-
rick Stewart, Brent Spiner; Zoe Saldana
Paramount Pictures/Photofest ©Paramount Pictures
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be self-serving, but it should be deÿnable. Here’s a scene that plays out for
me on airplanes all the time:
NEW FRIEND WHO HAS YET TO LEARN ABOUT LIGHT: What do you do? (Or
what are you headed to [insert city] for?)
ME: I’m a lighting designer.
NEW FRIEND: I’m sorry, you’re a what?
ME: A lighting designer. You know, like for theatre? Shows? Sometimes
architectural projects.˛.˛. like when you buy a ticket and go to a per-
formance live?
NEW FRIEND: Oh. Nice. Huh. I didn’t know that was a thing. Did you go
to school for that?
ME: Yes, for several years. I have a graduate degree in it.
NEW FRIEND: Huh. Have you done anything I would have heard of?
ME: Do you know STOMP? Those guys who bang on the trash cans?
NEW FRIEND: Oh STOMP! Yes, I saw that somewhere! Those guys are
awesome! [Awkwardly looks away.˛.˛.] So do they let you go onstage
sometimes?
ME: [Sigh.˜.˜. preps to share my love of light.˛.˛.]
Maybe you’ll be spared this kind of conversation, but now get ready
for your biggest challenge yet: the producer (whoever is ÿnancing the
work). People who ÿnance art and entertainment have big upfront costs.
Until they have solid comparison experiences under their belt, they are
likely to try to cut the corner on lighting. And who can blame them? If
the people paying for the tickets don’t notice the lighting, why would they
want to spend a lot of money on it? Scenery is easy to quantify, costumes
are.˛.˛. well, they can’t go out there naked, can they? But lighting.˛.˛. Who
cares? Can’t someone just °ip the switches so we can see?
I’m not going to give you the answers in this chapter. It is something
you will develop for yourself as your relationship with lighting takes
shape. By the end of our time together, I expect you to be ready to cam-
paign for this amazing art form.
Developing Your Language for Light

One of the alluring things about light for you might be its absence of material
form. Being forced to describe it with concrete words sometimes takes away
the mystery we enjoy. You may even ÿnd that it disrupts your creative process.
It might help to know that a similar thing happens for people who create
movement. This might be why we sometimes hear about noteworthy collabo-
rations between choreographers and lighting designers. Many of us look for-
ward to working with a creative team that doesn’t mind waiting patiently for
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the product without interrupting us with discussion about how we’re going
to get there. If you feel that way, you are not alone, but there are important
reasons to be able to communicate about light, and in most situations that
communication will happen with words. One reason to work on this is that
in the early days of growth in any craft, keeping everything in your head is a
missed opportunity for development. Discussion with others offers a level of
clarity to your choices and provides you with an avenue for getting feedback.
Even if that weren’t true, communication allows us to collaborate. There is
no solo career path in lighting that I know of. You will almost always be
working with others who have a stake in your work because it impacts theirs.
Developing your ability to articulate your observations, describe your ideas,
and argue effectively for what you think is best is a professional responsibility.
Eventually you’ll ÿnd that your work is better and even more enjoyable when
you work with others who also communicate well. It becomes a dance of
ideas and progress in which the end result is more than the sum of its parts.
Each time someone writes a new book, they compile their own list
of vocabulary of a topic. In this book I will give you plenty of words to
consider and use, but we’re going to start a little differently and instead
reverse engineer our path to those words. We’ll start with the concepts
and let the words emerge from them. This method takes more effort,
but I think you will find it effort well spent. If this information is
Figure 3.11 My Language for Light Worksheet (blank)
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very new to you and you get lost in all the terminology, don’t worry, I’ll get
you to a list you can use as you digest all this information. Find Figure 3.11
and decide if you want to write in the book, or make a photocopy, or just
make your own paper or digital form, or use another tool if these ones are
not accessible to you. Choose a method that helps you think the most freely.
Pause and take a breath. Let’s go deep for this one. Take a comforta-
ble seat. After you are done reading this paragraph, close your eyes for a
moment and center yourself with some attention to your breath. Brie°y
scan your memory for some of the examples of light in art I’ve offered so
far in this book as well as moments you have observed light doing some-
thing impactful, perhaps in nature or a show, movie, concert, theme park
experience, or a lighting moment you have logged in the Lighting Moments
Project. When you feel focused on the task, open your eyes and note some
“Things Light Can or Should Do”, followed by words or phrases that
describe those things. Come back to the book when you feel like you have
gotten all you can for the moment. Try not to address the third or fourth
columns until later in the chapter when I invite you back to it.
Figure 3.12 shows my list for your consideration. Each idea overlaps the
others, of course. For instance, one reason you want to “establish informa-
tion” is to “help us believe what we are seeing”. Or maybe the reason you
want to “Ensure .˛.˛. depth of the environment” is to “Arrange compelling
Figure 3.12 My Language for Light Worksheet (partially ÿlled)
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visual images”. So this isn’t meant to be a linear list, but encompasses for
me the many contributions of designed light as I value them, as well as the
things I take responsibility for as the lighting designer. I can even turn these
into checklist questions that I refer back to before my design is ready to
be realized. For instance: “Do I have what I need to ensure that we will be
able to see everything that we need to see?” “Have I arranged things such
that I have the ability to direct what we look at? Or.˛.˛. drive the pace?”
And so on. If you have others I haven’t thought of, that’s great! These con-
cepts are not meant to be (and should not be) set in stone.
What about the “Single Word or Short Phrases” that turn these ideas
into concise communication tools? I have my “go-to” words, but let’s look
at what some of the people who have written about lighting came up with.
Helpful Vocabulary from Folks Who Thought a Lot About It

I ÿnd lighting designer, educator, and writer Linda Essig’s 2007 arti-
cle “Stanley McCandless, Lighting History and Me” to be a clarifying
commentary on the early evolution of the vocabulary of lighting for the
stage. She references a couple of people we met in our ÿrst History Break:
McCandless’s original method espouses only four functions of stage

light: visibility, form, naturalism, and mood (McCandless, Syllabus
2–3). Later texts by others essentially adopted or slightly adapted these
four functions to visibility, selective focus, modeling, and mood (Gil-
lette), or selective visibility, composition, revelation of form, mood, and
a ÿfth, information, meaning the conveyance of place and time-of-day
information (Pilbrow), or selective visibility, composition, revelation
of form, mood, and a ÿfth, “reinforcing theme.˛.˛. the compositional
revelation of the thematic forms of the setting” (Parker and Wolf 375).
Do these words relate to the ideas that came to you?

Deÿning these impacts of light as Functions has stuck pretty well over
the last century, but it’s a word that seems to cause a lot of confusion
for people just beginning to explore the vocabulary. Almost every author
immediately follows the Functions list with a second list of the variables
of controlled light, which most call “Qualities”, “Controllable Qualities”,
or “Properties”. In my experience, this can cause learners to become lost
in a sea of words they have only begun to explore. For this reason, I’m
going to hold off on this second list until later in the book, but let’s begin
to seed an understanding of why we have two separate lists. Think of
this ÿrst list of Functions as Impacts (my personal choice which I will
favor through the remainder of the text), purposes, beneÿts, objectives,
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in°uences, or simply uses. At the top of your worksheet, put the words
“Function, Impact” along with a couple of these alternative words and
mark the one that makes it clearest to you. The operative difference is that
this is a list of broad, core things that light does or can do to support a
feeling, theme intention, or story; not what you as the designer or techni-
cian can do TO light, at the practical level, to achieve those things. We’ll
explore that other list of controllable qualities, properties, and variables
in Chapter 4.
There are a couple of signiÿcant evolutionary shifts in this vocab-
ulary of Functions or Impacts that might be worth noting. Remember
that McCandless started us off with four: visibility, form, naturalism,
and mood. Parker and Wolf added “reinforcing theme”, Pilbrow added
“information”, and Gillette more recently added “given circumstances”.
As lighting as an art form matured, these adaptations serve to expand
the role of light in supporting and enhancing the story. Essig eventually
expanded her list to give us a banquet of the things light can do: Visibil-
ity, Environment, Image, Mood, Style, Modeling Form, Deÿning Space,
Visual Focus, and Pacing and Rhythm. These are rich words that signify
the growing depth of the potential impact of light. Do any resonate with
you?
The Functions/Impacts and Qualities of Light as we are discussing
them evolved in the theatre, but let’s survey how they are talked about
by some of the teachers in our other entertainment ÿelds, beginning with
ÿlm. Lighting in ÿlm is designed by cinematographers or DPs, which
stands for “Director of Photography”. Cinematographer David Landau
asks in his book Lighting for Cinematography: “What does lighting do
for cinematography?” and answers with these pairs of words: “Illumi-
nation and Selective Focus”, “Illusion of Reality and Modeling”, “Evoke
Emotion and Create Mood” and “Pictorial Beauty” (Chapter 1). These
are excellent pairings because they acknowledge the interconnectedness
of the ideas. For instance, you’ll ÿnd it hard to talk about Selective Focus
without talking about Illumination. And one of the reasons to have good
Modeling is to enhance the Illusion of Reality. And so on.
Though animation usually creates images with virtual light rather than
light from an actual source, light is still a big contributor to the suc-
cess of their work. In Lighting for Animation, Senior Lighting Technical
Directors Michael Tanzillo and Jasmine Katatikarn describe “The Role of
Lighting” in three primary ways: “directing the viewer’s eye”; “shaping
objects to create visual interest”; and “to create mood that assists the
storytelling” (Chapter 1). Does this sound familiar?
In Lighting for Digital Video and Television, John Jackman measures
good lighting for television in terms of “exposure” (enough light, but not
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too much, for the camera), “illusion of depth”, and “mood” and “feel-
ing”(Chapter 1). Exposure in this context is a technical term but con-
ceptually not that different from visibility and illumination. Illusion of
depth is another way to look at modeling or form and it takes on a special
importance in television because the device through which we experience
the creation is quite literally °at.
In architectural lighting, we ÿnd an even broader set of practical con-
siderations with artistry threaded through them. The IALD (International
Association of Lighting Designers) Lighting Quality Venn Diagram starts
with three broad categories of concern: “Human needs”, “Economics,
energy, efÿciency and the environment”, and “Architecture and other
building- or site-related issues”. There are several words in each list,
mostly practical concerns, but topping the “Human needs” list is again
“visibility”, along with “mood and atmosphere”, and “aesthetic judg-
ment”. Under “Architecture and other building- or site-related issues” we
once again ÿnd the familiar words “form”, “composition” and “style”
(website, “Quality of Light” page).
Every ÿeld makes use of light in similar ways, but with a slightly dif-
ferent perspective. We’ll next look at the commonalities and, as we do, I
encourage you to reference your worksheet and perhaps note some things
that relate.
“Visibility” or “Illumination” top almost all lists across ÿelds, and for
good reason. If the observers can’t see what we want them to see, it’s hard
to accomplish much else. This should always be thought of on a contin-
uum, though. The observer needs to see, but the designer, cinematogra-
pher, and/or the creative team decides what and how much they see with
regard to the creative goals.
Consider the 1966 Broadway thriller Wait Until Dark, masterfully
turned into a 1967 ÿlm with cinematography by Charles Lang. The story
is about a blind woman preyed upon by a group of con artists who think
her husband brought something valuable into the couple’s apartment.
Throughout the story, the men use the fact that she can’t see to deceive
her, but they fail to consider how her situation enables her to take in
information in other ways. As she begins to realize what is happening, she
knows that the only way she can gain an advantage is to eliminate all light
in the apartment. This script can be an adventurous lighting designer’s
dream to work on. The team has to spend a lot of time thinking about
what the audience needs to see and when they need to see it. Light and
the absence of light heighten the story. At a pivotal moment in the ÿlm
version, the darkness is sliced open by the light from the refrigerator as
its door swings open, but our heroine doesn’t know it. Then she hears the
rattle of the glass in the refrigerator and realizes she forgot that one light
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source.˛.˛. The creative team has to make decisions about how long the
audience can sit in the dark and how dark it can be as this terror plays
out. Audiences get restless when they can’t see what they want. But if the
team decides to let them see too much, they sacriÿce the impact of the
refrigerator light cutting into the heroine’s safe darkness. The questions
around how to lay out the journey of light should always be answered by
what best will achieve the artistic intentions.
“Ensuring that we see what we need to see” is of primary concern to
the lighting designer. What word did you pick to use for this? I enjoy the
poetry of Illumination, but my experience is that Visibility is clearer. The
word Exposure comes in handy too. A stage director once gave me a note:
“They feel really exposed.” By that he meant there was too much visibility
for the intimacy of the moment.
The idea of “directing the observer’s attention” is prominent across our
references as well. In an in-person live experience, the audience inherently
has a larger ÿeld of view than they do with the controlled frame of the
camera. This concept is most commonly called Selective Focus, but you’ll
need to spend some time clarifying for yourself what differentiates it from
Visibility. Parker and Wolf solve the overlapping nature by merging them
into “Selective Visibility”. Laudau calls them separate things, “Illumina-
tion and Selective Focus”, but talks about them as one topic.
The word Mood is one of those words that may seem simple but defy deÿ-
nition. This is what I would use for “assist in making us feel what the story/
Figure 3.13 Wait Until Dark (1967), directed by Terence Young. Shown: Audrey
Hepburn
Warner Bros/Photofest ©Warner Bros
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theme/intention intends for us to feel”. Mood and Visibility can sometimes

battle with each other, especially when equipment is limited. When you hear
someone say, “it’s just a little too moody”, often the reason they think that
is because they can’t see what they want to see. Conversely, when it doesn’t
feel “moody” enough, often it’s because there is too much light or exposure.
The concept of Revelation of Form or Modeling or Modeling Form is
on almost every list in some way, but is also difÿcult to describe. It is trying
to get at what I called “ensuring the three dimensionality of the objects and
the depth of the environment”. This is important for many reasons, such as
that it makes the picture seem more real, but also because it makes it more
interesting to look at. If you have ever used a camera °ash in a dark envi-
ronment and were disappointed with the result, this could be one way to
understand it. Bright light from the observer’s direction ensures that the sub-
ject is visible, but eliminates all shadows, perhaps making the subject look
like it was painted on cardboard. Cameras are so much more sensitive to
light now that we rarely have to use °ash anymore, but this °attening can
easily happen on stage, video or ÿlm if you don’t consider Form in your
design, or if you favor Visibility by leaning heavily on light from the front
(like a camera °ash does). In considering an effective word, I’ve found that
Modeling seems to work well in communication between seasoned visual
artists, but is the source of confusion for ÿrst-time learners. The word
Form doesn’t seem to have much meaning on its own, and though Revela-
tion of Form is beautifully poetic, it doesn’t °ow well in a conversation. I
haven’t seen this on anyone’s list and I’m not sure where it came from – I
think it may have been one of my students – but the word I’ve come to
appreciate is Sculpting. It is a word that even people who know nothing
about lighting can immediately understand, possibly because it echoes the
impact of the three-dimensional art discipline of sculpting.
Closely related to the ideas of revelation of form, sculpting, and deÿning
the space is Composition. While the word Sculpting usually makes us think
of individual objects, a cohesive Sculpting of all objects in a space will ulti-
mately sculpt the space itself. Done well, it will construct a certain kind of
full visual Composition. The word composition is technically a visual art
term that has to do with the arrangement of objects. Arranging objects in an
entertainment setting is usually done by the director or scenic/environmen-
tal/production designer, but how the lighting designer approaches Selective
Visibility and Sculpting will impact how the whole composition eventually
appears to the observer. And so Composition is the word I like for the task:
“Arrange compelling visual images in the observer’s ÿeld of view.”
After these common concepts, the vocabulary begins to scatter. The
next big thing we try to articulate is the way in which lighting can sup-
port the story, theme, or creative objectives. McCandless got the ball roll-
ing with Naturalism, which attempts to describe the way that light would
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really behave in this location, at this time of day, during this season, in this
climate, etc., and how that informs the observer. This assumes the point I
expressed earlier about plausibility – that if things are “natural” or plausible,
the observer will be drawn in and so the story will be supported. But having
things lit “naturally” isn’t necessarily the best choice for every piece of work,
so the word falls a little short. Pilbrow simply calls this “information” and
Essig gives us “environment”, which I think rightly suggest that the designer
has to consider the environment as a source of information, but what they
do with that information doesn’t necessarily have to be natural. I previously
used a hybrid “degree of naturalism/realism” but always have to spend a
lot of time explaining the many meanings of these two words in different
contexts. I think the newer Gillette/McNamara phrase Given Circumstances
is a great solution. I like this phrase for both of my objectives, “Help us to
believe what we are seeing” and “Help establish information necessary for
the story such as location, time of day, season and period.”
Essig’s idea of Pacing and Rhythm doesn’t appear on any other list but
captures one of the most relevant purposes of modern lighting design in
storytelling. In live performance, in which the audience shares the space
such that light changes in their full view, those changes must take into
account the pacing and rhythm of the created experience. A real-life illus-
tration of this is when light goes out at the end of scene or a song. Imagine
if the last moment is a strong joke or a big musical punch (known as a
button). How fast should the light shift from the current look to the next?
Probably pretty fast, perhaps instantaneously, or what we would call a
zero count or a bump. If the lighting designer hasn’t thought of that and
the audience is left watching the lights trickle out, the opportunity for
an instantaneous effect that the moment has set us up for is squandered.
Scaling up from that illustration, think about a concert, a musical theatre
show, or an immersive environment. Those can have hundreds and maybe
even thousands of lighting changes. Every one of them must be timed such
that they support the Pacing and Rhythm of the events taking place.
Figure 3.14 is what I have for my worksheet. Now let’s take some time
to address columns 3 and 4. Don’t worry about ÿlling in all the blanks
right now, just what °ows for you in this moment. Keep this worksheet
handy as you study light so that when you are re°ecting on the impact of
light in any moment, you can go back to these concepts and the vocabulary
that resonated with you. They will be helpful when you are having trou-
ble making choices or expressing your ideas. Practice your communica-
tion whenever you are looking at designed images. Magazine ads and TV
commercials are great to practice on because advertisers are VERY good
at using imagery to serve their purposes. No matter what the image, ask
yourself what the intention of the designed image is, consider its effect, and
then practice describing how the quality of light in that image contributes.
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Figure 3.14 My Language for Light Worksheet (mostly ÿlled)
Project: Stories with Light
Why?
Lighting can do more than illuminate, direct attention, or create an envi-

ronment, it can also help tell a story or reinforce an idea. How the lighting
designer does that isn’t always obvious.
What?
Look for examples of a theatre or TV show, flm, or event where you notice
that controlled light plays a part in the story telling. It might even be a com-
mercial. Below are some examples to get you started.
How?
As a small group discussion in class, or with your family or friends, explore

these examples and talk about your experiences. The people you talk with
don’t have to know as much as you do about light. People can easily begin
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to notice light once you’ve called their attention to it, so this can be an
opportunity for others to come to appreciate light.
When discussing, start at the beginning: What do you think is the intention?
What do you think the creative team agreed were the important things to
accomplish? It will be entirely speculative, but that doesn’t matter. Then con-
sider: How did light help (or not) to accomplish those things? Much like your
Lighting Moments Project, you may fnd that it’s easier to speak in terms of
what grabs your attention, but there is usually more to a design choice if you
dig for it.
Where you can access to media on this list will change over time and note
that some of the flm clips contain adult content (violence or strong sexual
themes). Some of it may be available streaming or at your library. You’ll
notice that the theatre shows I’ve recommended are movie versions. I sug-
gest them partly because light in live production is diffcult to accurately
capture, and obtaining good archival recordings is diffcult. The 2020 release
of the live capture of Hamilton may have created a permanent shift toward
solutions to that, but in the meantime, there’s a lot to be gleaned from qual-
ity movie versions of theatre shows.
Key to Icons
Theatre/Traditional Architecture
Performance
Concerts
Film
Themed
Television
Web search
Examples
The Road to Perdition (2002), the rainy alley scene at

approximately 1hr 38mins.
Refect on: selective visibility, color, movement, the
audio track, presence or absence of dialogue.
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Chicago (2002), “Cell Block Tango” at approximately

23mins.
Refect on: sense of realism; the use of color from
start to fnish.
Instagram: colorpalette.cinema (any image).

Refect on: perceived intention, color, color contrast,
and mood.
Up (2002), “Married Life” montage at approximately

7mins.
Refect on: color and light/shadow contrast relative
to mood.
“National Theatre Live War Horse Trailer.”

Refect on: realism and plausibility.
“NT Live: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-

Time Offcial Trailer.”
Refect on: light as a refection of the mind of the
character.
“Prince – Purple Rain live at Super Bowl” (2007).

Refect on: light and scale.
“Pirates of the Caribbean Ride – Magic Kingdom Walt

Disney World.”
Refect on: light and audience as part of the experience.
“Joan Marcus Photography” (www.joanmarcuspho-

tography.com).
Suggested method: scroll through the thumbnails
until something interesting gets your attention, then
try to fgure out what the story of the scene or show
is about just from the lighting.
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Measuring Success and Timetable: Success here is measured in how

much you can discern and how much more becomes clear to you over time.
If you can talk about one of these scenes through a good long conversation,
then watch it again a few weeks later and fnd new things to talk about,
you’re on your way.
Industry Perspectives and Quirks

We’ve covered the commonalities in how light is used and talked about
across the different arts and entertainment industries. Next up we’ll
explore quirks across the disciplines and get a few perspectives from peo-
ple who work in them. In this chapter we’ll explore the style differences
broadly. In Chapters 4 and 5, we’ll get into the technology and dig deeper
into how the ÿelds differ in more operational ways.
Theatre and Plays, Opera, Dance, and Musical Theatre

The traditional live performing arts widely vary in their approaches, espe-
cially from country to country, but relative to the other entertainment
ÿelds, the experience each provides is quite similar. Except for some inno-
vative exceptions, they take place in buildings designed to accommodate
live performance. There is usually a stage and a separate seating area,
often delineated by the physical framing device called the proscenium.
The seating is usually ÿxed (except in °exible spaces) and so the visual
perspective of the audience is predictable. There are usually options for
hanging lighting front of house (FOH) as well as over the stage area and
hopefully on the sides.
There are many exceptions, but one signiÿcant lighting difference
between Plays versus Opera and Musical Theatre often is followspots.
These are lights optimized for an operator to follow and highlight a per-
former while the performer is in motion. In other words, the pool of light
literally travels with the performer, rather than lighting being brightened
or dimmed according to where they are (which is the more subtle way to
direct attention). This allows for a high degree of selective visibility while
things are in motion, in Opera separating the principal singers from the
rest of an unusually large environment. In musical theatre, followspots
often help to draw the audience’s attention to something speciÿc while
huge dance numbers take place in the surround.
If the production’s goals are less about faces, and more about the form,
like in dance, lighting designers like to ÿll the wings (the sides of the stage)
and overhead with lights that can highlight the contours of the body. Front
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Figure 3.15 Dancers lit for their form

© Isaiah Love – stock.adobe.com
light is less common and often frowned on because it tends to °atten the
form. Followspots are sometimes used to highlight principal dancers.
One of the important differences within the traditional live performing
arts is relative scale. Dance and text-based Theatre tend toward more inti-
mate environments whereas Opera tends to go big because the music and
voices are big. This matters to the lighting designer because challenges vary
as the scale of the environment gets bigger. Smaller scale requires greater
precision in technique because °aws are hard to hide, whereas larger scale
usually involves greater organization and resource management.
Our ÿrst Pro-perspective takes us to a place many lighting students
want to get to, Broadway. Jessica Creager got her undergraduate degree
in 2013 and was assisting on Broadway a couple of years later. I asked her
to tell us how she did it and, as you will ÿnd, the only clear thing about
that journey was her desire to reach the destination.
Pro-perspectives: Jessica Creager, From Here to Broadway
I came from a small town in Arizona, arriving at La Guardia with a few

months of living expenses saved up, a signed lease for an apartment I’d
never seen, and a vague idea of what “freelancing” was. As I write this, I
am now, confdently, a freelance associate lighting designer, based in NYC,
working in commercial theatre, sometimes even on Broadway.˛.˛. and I often
ask myself, “How the heck did I end up here?”
My father was in the Army, so my childhood was punctuated by moving

boxes. Every waking hour outside of school was about soccer – playing,
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training, traveling. I didn’t know what “musical theatre” was until I was 15
or 16, but I knew all my favorite Disney movies had catchy songs. I was (am)
terrible at traditional art. My third-grade self-portrait haunts me to this day. I
“played” the trumpet for maybe six months. I learned how to read music on
the back of a Denny’s placemat, the only place open 24/7 in my hometown.
My frst cast album was a pirated copy of Spring Awakening.˛
I’m here to tell you that it’s possible to come from somewhere that feels like
nowhere, and get to exactly where you want to be.˛
I went to a university in-state because, frankly, I didn’t have anywhere else

to go. It turned out to be one of the best decisions I have ever made. Our
professors emphasized the importance of the summer stock experience,
using our time away from school to apply our skills in the professional world,
expanding our horizons, and bringing new knowledge back to the learning
community. I was offered a position as a lighting apprentice at the Santa Fe
Opera during the summer between my junior and senior year. It changed
everything. I spent the next fve summers at the opera as a lighting super-
visor, serving as an assistant for visiting designers. I cannot remove myself
from the valuable experience of this job. It turned me into the associate I
am today. The opera is in a unique position to provide young professionals
an opportunity with positions we might not be completely ready for; a safe
place to make mistakes, trip over ourselves, and grow into the too big shoes
handed to us. Many of us lived by the mantra, “fake it ’till you make it,”
and I dedicated myself to making it, fghting tooth and nail, standing up for
myself, and fguring out what kind of strength I needed to be the profes-
sional I aspired to be.
And now? I can’t believe it, but I sometimes work on Broadway. I sometimes
launch National Tours of smash hit musicals. I sometimes work on brand new
musicals. I sometimes spend hours drafting, generating paperwork, answer-
ing emails, and making phone calls. It’s the best.
What I wish I had known when I was a student.˛.˛. I wish I had known that this
job that I love (being an associate lighting designer) was an actual career path.
Make sure you explore things outside your school, because no matter how
good they are at what they’re teaching, there is a world of opportunity out
there that can’t ft in a classroom. I wish I had known that opportunity does
not exist equally for everyone entering the workforce at the same time. When
I arrived in New York, I realized that students coming out of the traditionally
high-ranking, high-output theatre schools, or certain summer stocks,˛had a
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leg up for success in this market. They had been groomed for these jobs in
ways that my school just couldn’t have done for me. That was a shocking real-
ization, and led me to believe I didn’t belong here, that this was all a mistake.
On the other hand, it also brought out that tenacity I mentioned earlier; now
I had to succeed, and I would fnd a new strength that this inequity had made
me see as a weakness. Draw on your tenacity or stubbornness and know that
plenty of people before you have closed these gaps. There are no guarantees
of success in this business, but determination counts for more than anything.
And even though I write this during the pandemic, when almost all live thea-
tre is shut down, I’m one of the lucky few still making a living.˛
My best advice to you .˛.˛. Make mistakes. Live with them, don’t let them
consume you. Accept change as it comes your way, see where it takes you.
Welcome quiet moments, give them space. Allow them to fll the dark cor-
ners you ignore during adrenaline flled hours. Allow your strength to be
balanced by your weakness. They work together in beautiful ways. Refect
on the spider web of people who made you who you are today. Remember
where you came from, to see where you’re going.
Concerts and Music Touring

Concerts and music touring have similar roots to traditional live perform-
ing arts, but now mood carries at least as much weight as illumination, and
often more. It’s not that people attending concerts don’t care about what’s
on stage – if that were the case, no one would bother with image magniÿca-
tion (i-mag), those live close-ups on giant screens – but seeing the performer
is just the beginning. Spectacle is often expected. Depending on the style of
the artist and how much money you have, sometimes the more spectacle,
the better. These are generalities, of course, since spectacle is a lot less called
for if you’re lighting a symphony or a chamber ensemble, but even in those
traditional styles, the visual environment is becoming more attended to.
When touring with bands or music-centered shows, there can be a lot
of variation in venues. The main reason bands tour is to sell their music,
so realize that the quality of the sound is the highest priority. The lighting
designer must be resourceful in order to recreate stunning visuals under a
variety of circumstances. Many lighting students want to go into this kind
of lighting design but there aren’t a lot of programs that train speciÿcally
for it. Never fear, though, any good lighting training program can get you
there. Our next Pro-perspective is from someone who hasn’t been in the
business for very long, but that’s why I wanted him to give his perspective.
As he writes this, he may only be a few years ahead of you but he’s ÿgured
some things out. Meet Sam Schwartz.
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Pro-perspectives: Sam Schwartz, Touring with the Band
During my senior year of studying theatrical lighting design not that long
ago, I went to a music festival with some of my friends. I had been looking
for ways to get connected to the concert world so afterwards I approached
the lighting director to see if he would answer some questions. After our
conversation, he gave me his contact information. Getting this was a crucial
step in my path because later that same year I noticed that he was doing
another show in my city. I reached out and was able to shadow him for one
of their biggest shows of the year. Little did I know this would be the turning
point for my career. I fnally understood what I had to do in order to break
into the business – put myself out there to meet as many people as possible.
I sent messages on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and via email. Eventually
I made contact with someone who remembered our conversation from four
years prior, and who offered me a summer internship right out of college.
It wasn’t long before I was making a living being sent out to light touring
bands and it has already taken me all over the world. I haven’t been out of
school that long, but it’s been an incredible ride already.
A few things I didn’t know when I set out, but needed to learn .˛.˛. A common
saying in the entertainment industry is that you’re only as good as your last
gig. It is essential to make sure you meet people on a gig. If you meet the right
people and perform well, it will lead to other jobs. From a skills perspective,
GrandMA is the industry standard console in music touring. Most schools
don’t have one, but there are lots of online tutorials, and a free offine version
of the full console that enables you to follow along with tutorials.
Next, know that you may execute 25 shows in 30 days, each in a differ-
ent city in the world. Every day seems to present a new challenge and just
when you think you’ve come up with a solution, something changes and
you need a new solution. Be ok with changing course quickly. Also, logistics
is everything, like fguring out the most effcient way to pack the truck. The
frst thing you need inside the venue at the next stop has to be the last thing
loaded on the truck. If you don’t get it right, it will be a miserable load in,
but the great thing about this area of the lighting industry is that you’ll have
another chance to try again the next night!
Live Immersive, Non-narrative, and/or Experiential Situations

These are not for the risk-averse. I’m lumping together three broad types
that can go together (a performance that is immersive, non-narrative
and experiential) or may stand alone or in different combinations. The
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commonality in these genres is a breaking of boundaries, and especially

the “tyranny of the proscenium”. Traditionally trained theatrical lighting
designers sometimes like the idea of this until they realize someone has
to ÿgure out how to rig and power the lights safely, often in places where
lighting equipment was never intended to be, and that they have much
less control over how the audience experiences their work. Many immer-
sive productions allow the experiencers to move from room to room and
there’s no telling which order they will go or which direction they will
be facing when they view the work. But when good resources are availa-
ble – like professional riggers and electricians or vendors who specialize
in ÿguring out that sort of thing – this kind of work can be exhilarat-
ing. Unbound from scripts, ÿxed seating areas, and formulaic hanging
positions, lighting designers can be especially creative. In fact, light often
becomes an in°uencing factor in how the experience is constructed. Con-
sider this Pro-perspective from Scot Gianelli, who has come to celebrate
the unknown.
Pro-perspectives: Scot Gianelli, Breaking the Boundaries
I always gravitated toward non-linear, abstract design, even though I grew

up in traditional theatre. I recall being profoundly affected by my experi-
ence attending the production Sleep No More, an immersive and interac-
tive interpretation of Macbeth set in a large warehouse in New York City.
This was the perfect marriage of artistic and theatrical craft with non-linear,
patron-driven engagement. I felt empowered by the deconstruction of tra-
ditional theatre layout and exploration of environments in which the design
and experience surrounds the audience from the moment they enter until
the moment they leave. This ultimately propelled me toward the events I
work on today.
On the surface, theatre and events may seem drastically different, and
though they differ structurally, they are fundamentally the same beast. In
both cases, the goal is to utilize design and presentation to tell a story to
an audience. As a lighting designer, the skills I’m required to bring to the
table change with every project, but increasingly tend to be more concep-
tual than technical ones. Day to day, I need to create concept renderings
of three-dimensional environments, convey and interpret design intentions
clearly with clients such as marketing agencies or producers, and perhaps
more than anything else, be malleable and adaptable to the rapidly chang-
ing and evolving nature of live events. This last point cannot be overstated.
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Every live event is different and the work required changes drastically and
frequently. The ability to adapt with every change and keep moving forward
will make or break a career.
Increasingly, experience-based events are becoming more experimental. They

redefne things by presenting something shocking, new, or re-imagined.
Because of this, I am actually less concerned with keeping up with specifc
technologies than I am with pushing myself creatively and being aware of
what emergent technologies can offer.
At the time of writing this, the COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally

altered the landscape of the entertainment industry. This period shows how
crucial it is for us as artists to stay adaptable, fexible, and ready to pivot our
work even as venues shutter and avenues for creative expression change
by the day. Our focus as artists should be to stay curious and creative, and
to forge new paths when the old or reliable ones close. Watch flms, read
books, go to museums, and be able to speak fuently about what you expe-
rience. Art is a universal language and will serve you regardless of what
projects you endeavor to create.
Television
TV can be recorded or live broadcast, can have audiences or not, and
can be shot in a studio, on a set, or on location, so we have to speak in
very broad generalities when we talk about it at this level. Prime time
and streaming content are beginning to look more “theatrical” every day
as technical innovation solves early industry challenges with color and
dimming affecting the camera. Film-trained cinematographers ÿll mod-
ern dramas like The Walking Dead with moody and memorable visuals,
sometimes drawing on the vivid colors and high contrast of the source
graphic art. Competition shows like The Voice, The Masked Singer, and
So You Think You Can Dance employ the latest automated and LED tech-
nology in the hands of concert lighting designers. Most sit-coms look
pretty much the way they always have, like Black-ish and The Big Bang
Theory with bright, even lighting that ensures the exposure you need to
clearly see facial expressions and physical comedy. What continues to be
true is that usually lighting choices are made according to what will best
serve the intent of the style, just with the camera as an added variable
and an added tool. In his Pro-Perspectives, theatrically trained lighting
designer/director Travis Hagenbuch talks about making the transition
into television lighting.
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Figures 3.16, 3.17, 3.18, and 3.19 Modern TV lighting examples: The Walking
Dead (AMC), Black-ish (ABC), The Voice (NBC), and So You Think You Can
Dance (Fox). Shown: Chandler Riggs; Anthony Anderson, Laurence Fishburne,
Yara Shahidi; Pharrell Williams
AMC/Photofest ©AMC; ABC/Photofest ©ABC; NBC/Photofest ©NBC; Fox Broadcasting/
Photofest ©Fox Broadcasting
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Figures 3.16, 3.17, 3.18, and 3.19 (Continued)
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Pro-perspectives: Travis Hagenbuch, From Theatre to Television
On my frst day as an intern on a TV show after moving to Los Angeles –

fresh off a theater education – I was surprised to see the LD watching a
music rehearsal with his back to the stage. It turned out he was watching a
video monitor, since the TV picture was more important than the live event
itself. My curiosity piqued, I dove in and learned everything I could about
making live event TV, most of which I learned on the job.
Making the leap is not diffcult in terms of skillset. Theater lighting knowl-
edge is assumed and is a great foundation for a transition into live TV. Prior-
ities tend to shift, but the basics are familiar. While carefully chosen colors
and gobos sometimes fall by the wayside, that effort is shifted into a further
emphasis on calculated angles, color temperature, and intensity to keep
cameras balanced and talent looking their best.
I found it invaluable to learn some ground rules frst, taught to me by men-

tors on award shows like The Oscars and The Emmys. While everyone loves
the visual impact of a big wide shot – also most familiar to theater LDs with
a tech table view – much of a show like The Oscars actually exists in close-up
shots of people. The details in those shots, from faces to backgrounds,
are hugely important. Making faces look their best for tight shots means,
among other things, mitigating the hard shadows inherent to long-throw
theatrical fxtures and carefully controlling color temperature. While maybe
not intuitive to the uninitiated, the practice becomes familiar after hours
spent staring at a video monitor, learning to identify and correct subtleties.
Once the basic rules of controlling light for camera are understood, the
possibilities to break them and be more theatrical are endless. Color and
exposure can be manipulated to support any concept if appropriate for the
moment. To quote Lady Gaga at a long-ago rehearsal, “Make me look beau-
tiful, then puke all over it.”
Days are long, but overall time is short. A large music show with 25 perfor-
mances is akin to teching a three-hour, arena-sized musical in three days
before your one and only performance gets broadcast to millions of people.
It’s exciting, but daunting. The tight schedule means that many things hap-
pen simultaneously during rehearsals. Time doesn’t allow for the specifcity
of command line syntax, so while the LD is reviewing the previous rehearsal
take with the director, producers, network executives, and artist, the pro-
grammers are furiously fxing cue notes in real time. The rest of the team
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are addressing focus notes, making sure the next performer’s look is ready
for rehearsal, and probably picking up dinner for those who won’t leave the
room for hours. It is a machine whose effciency only works when those run-
ning it have the experience to intuitively know the process and be quick to
identify and solve problems. When it’s all over, there’s no rush quite like the
ten-second countdown leading into the words, “And we’re˛live!”
Architectural Lighting
In architectural lighting, function rises in priority as it concerns itself with
physical structures and the space inside or around them, as well as the
observers and the users. In this way, observers become part of the envi-
ronment being lit. This may sound like immersive arts and indeed there
can be some overlap, but usually architectural lighting is meant to remain
for a long period of time, whereas immersive arts are usually event-based
and do not necessarily attend to the structure the event is taking place in.
Adequate light for particular activities such as working, reading, eating
or browsing may have to be considered in architectural lighting design.
Let’s pause for a fun project that will get you noticing architectural
lighting.
Project: Go Shopping! (But you don’t have to buy anything!)
Why?
This adventure will increase your awareness of how light is used in particu-
lar environments for specifc objectives, in this case, a shopping mall or a
commercial area like downtown. If you do not have access to such a thing,
one suggestion would be to go your local mall’s website or the website of
an area of neighborhood commerce, like “Downtown (fll in an interesting
city)”. Find the names of the stores or restaurants in that area, then do an
image search of those names until you fnd some that give you a sense of
light in those places.
What?
Choose a major shopping mall with department stores or an area of town

that has a wide range of business offerings. You will fnd more variety in
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the lighting if you choose an indoor space; however, outdoor spaces work
if you visit them after the sun goes down. If choosing a mall, you will have
more fun and have more to ponder if you choose one that is relatively
new. Older malls tend to be more generally lit and less designed. Compare
and contrast three specialty stores that are different from one another, as
well as the common areas, such as the hallways, entrances, food courts,
or streets.
How?
Refect on the following questions:
1. What is the intent of this store (or areas)? What are they selling and to
whom? How is light used to help accomplish that?
2. Is the lighting coordinated effectively with other visual or controllable
elements such as the environment, the displays, the sound, or the cos-
tumes/uniforms of the people working there?
3. Describe the special atmosphere of the store (or area). Does it affect you
emotionally? Aesthetically? Do you fnd it comfortable? Does that serve
the intent of the store or not?
4. Go back to the “Your Language for Light” words that you chose.
How are those lighting imperatives addressed in this store (or area)?
Are different parts of the store (or area) lit differently? Why might
that be? Is light used in an apparently intentional way? Is light used
successfully?
5. What would you change if you were the designer and why? Remember
to connect your ideas back to the specifc purpose or intent you believe
the stakeholders were focused on – if you want to change something
just because you don’t like it, but in a way that doesn’t necessarily serve
the intent of the store, ask yourself why.
Measuring success: Wrestling determinedly with the questions until you

have a thorough answer is the only marker of success on this one. There are
no right answers, only thorough observations and logical conclusions. Much
like the lighting moments, once you have completed this assignment, every
time you experience a designed retail space, you’ll see things you never
realized were there.
This project has evolved from one my teacher James H. Gage called: “The
Mall Project”.
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Architainment
Architainment lighting design takes architectural lighting and adds
some form of entertainment or theme inside or around a physical struc-
ture. Museums, attractions, and even casinos and aquariums are among
the things that can fall into this category. Architectural as architain-
ment lighting design focuses on all the same objectives that we’ve been
talking about with the added variable that the audience is in motion,
viewing from multiple vantage points, and may not experience things
in a predictable sequence. Light may be called on to direct not just the
audience’s attention, but also their movement. Re°ective glare and the
potential of blinding the observer have to be factored in, and from mul-
tiple directions. The effect on displayed objects may be a special con-
sideration. Paintings, for instance, can degrade from light, heat, or just
particular light wavelengths. Light can change the chemistry of water,
encourage algae growth and endanger animals in an aquarium. Design-
ers who work in architectural lighting as architainment can ÿnd them-
selves students of ÿelds they never imagined would be a part of their
work.
Consider the thoughts shared by Rachel Gibney in the next
Pro-perspective. She is now a senior associate with Available Light, a
company that works in fascinating environments. Rachel has had to
consider how light would affect many vulnerable subjects including ani-
mals at the New England Aquarium and even the Declaration of Inde-
pendence in the Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom at the National
Archives Museum.
Pro-perspectives: Rachel Gibney, Art and Function
Institutional libraries, science centers, commercial offces, hospitals, muse-

ums, parking garages, and aquariums are just a few examples of archi-
tectural spaces that all need a lighting designer. Architectural lighting is
all about creating moments. There are two sides to this type of lighting
design. The frst part is similar to theatrical lighting in that it is to provide
functional electric lighting within a built environment. The second part
is the design and working with natural daylight. It is about creating an
environment that is not just to be viewed but for people to live their life
in. When starting a project, one of the frst questions is always “What is
the function of this space?” Determining who uses the space and how
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they need to use it provides a baseline for the lighting design. From there
the design team determines the level of specialty lighting. For example, a
restroom usually isn’t the space that architects and owners want to spend
extra money for high-end lighting but a lobby, theater or building facade
may be.
A museum exhibit that is designed to be an immersive experience uses

the exact same techniques as theatrical shows. Angle, color, texture, con-
trast, composition, and digital control are all taught in theatrical light-
ing design but are also staples in architectural lighting. Throughout my
career I have programmed lighting to simulate clouds passing over the
ocean, a sunrise over the Arctic to signal a new day to a habitat of pen-
guins, synced cues and effects to multi-media presentations and focused
lights to perfectly reveal the ancient engravings on a stone tablet. All of
these examples use theatrical practices implemented in permanent instal-
lations. Gobos, color flters, shutters, moving lights and control technol-
ogy help to make an exhibit experience memorable. A theatrical trained
lighting designer is at a unique advantage as a simple gobo can be seen
as magic to visitors.
Unlike theatre, there are many rules, regulations and established recom-
mended design practices for architectural lighting. These standards are an
important part of the learning curve when it comes to transitioning from
theater to architectural lighting. These guidelines help designers establish
comfortable lighting that allows users to complete necessary tasks. In addi-
tion to learning the recommended design practices, there are many fxture
types and with specialty functions to learn, lighting calculations, drafting
programs and control protocols. An architectural lighting designer has to
keep up with the constantly changing availability of lighting fxtures to
develop the right toolkit for the job in order to design to the fullest. The
last notable difference is the challenge and opportunity of working with
energy codes. Although these can be aggressive, they push designers to
be more creative in their designs by utilizing natural available daylight and
effcient electric lighting. This puts designers in the forefront of actively
working towards reducing the carbon footprint and producing sustainable
buildings.
Functional and creative, architectural lighting design is the perfect blend of

art and science. I won’t fnd a cure for cancer as a lighting designer but I can
create beautiful, functional spaces for the people who will.
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Figure 3.20 Mississippi Arts + Entertainment Experience

Exhibit Design: Gallagher & Associates;˛Architect: LPK;˛Lighting Design: Available Light;
photo by Steven Rosen ©
Themed Entertainment
Themed entertainment shares many of the challenges and priorities of
architainment, particularly because the observers are usually in motion,
but in themed entertainment, a particular content or clear thematic ele-
ment will drive most choices. Often branded and highly controlled creative
material is involved. Lighting designers must consider all the same objec-
tives we’ve been talking about, but may also need to understand the style,
imagery, and even history of the source material. My friend and graduate
school classmate Steven Young shares his experiences with this exciting
and relatively new but rapidly growing ÿeld in this next Pro-perspective.
Pro-perspectives: Steven Young, A Thrilling Ride
I’ve worked at the design side of themed entertainment for just over 25
years, with parks around the world. I feel like I was pretty lucky to fall into
themed entertainment design when it was growing very quickly. At that
time, there weren’t schools or even classes in themed entertainment, unlike
SCAD North Carolina and CalArts now.˛
When I fnished grad school, I moved to California just as Warner Bros Movie
World was expanding their park in Australia and building a new park in Ger-
many. I was lucky to get a job with Tom Ruzika at the Ruzika Company, and was
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quickly sent to Australia to program the lighting for a backlot tour installation of
the “new” Batman movie’s Riddler’s Lair set, which was to feature a small show
with lights and music. The park had purchased the set after flming was com-
pleted and painstakingly recreated it inside a soundstage. The green vinyl of the
dome walls took a lot of backlighting to barely glow, and the inside was outftted
with High End Systems’ Intellibeams – the most popular and cost-effective fxture
of the time. The three-minute show took two weeks to program, and had over
200 lighting cues in it. It was a tremendous pain and I loved every minute of it.
Since that time, I have been able to work on parks and dark rides in Flor-
ida, Germany, South Korea, China, and Los Angeles. Disney has a great
internship program and hires new talent each year. Universal Studios also
looks for smart and gifted people to join their ranks. However, there are
dozens to hundreds of small companies that specialize in scenic design
for theme parks, project management for theme parks, and even lighting
design for theme parks. The Themed Entertainment Association sponsors
Next-Gen students, and hosts mixers and events that allow new young tal-
ent to become acquainted with industry professionals, and note the trends
and current state of the feld. Since I began my career, I’ve worked for no
less than fve companies specializing in lighting for themed entertainment.˛
Something I had not expected from the work is the time, patience, and
commitment themed entertainment demands. Projects begin in concept
and open to the public three to fve years later. Producing clear and concise
documentation that allows for a design to be properly executed by a wide
variety of people over the course of a project was never explained to me
in school. Lighting for a permanent installation requires a great deal more
infrastructure, and attention to detail that isn’t required in theatre. In the-
atre, moving a light from one pipe to another is easily done in a morning
work call. But moving a fxture in a theme park ride from one side of the
ride path to the other side of the ride path could take weeks, include engi-
neering, construction, painting, clearance testing, and client approvals, plus
costly change orders for electrical contractors and other trades.
But in other ways, college, and grad school specifcally, greatly prepared me cre-
atively for themed entertainment lighting design. I learned how to write about
lighting, and how to speak about my ideas to people who have no knowledge
of lighting at all. Being able to describe a space as warm and inviting – or scary
and foreboding – and then to be able to explain how exactly that effect can be
created has been invaluable. Thinking of architectural spaces and queue lines as
theatrical sets, and thrill rides as emotional experiences sets us apart.
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Film
Film is perhaps the most dissimilar of these many art forms in the oper-
ational way it uses lighting. Film is always a played-back experience and
rarely has to consider a live audience. The ÿnal product on a screen is
the primary consideration and great pains are taken to compose each
image exactly the way the director and cinematographer want them to
look inside the frame, based on what serves the story or theme. As you’ll
recall from our discussion of vocabulary, the broad objectives of light
in ÿlm are not that different from other forms, but in ÿlm the ÿeld of
view is highly controlled and anything not wanted can be kept out of
the frame. In almost all the other industries we’ve been talking about,
the audience has a large ÿeld of view which lighting must help to draw
down. In ÿlm, the camera or editing direct that focus more so than
changes in light in the environment. The ÿeld of view is contained to
the frame of the camera and what’s in that frame is what light must
compose and reveal.
Figure 3.21 Working within the camera frame

©shishkin137 – stock.adobe.com
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The Artistic/Aesthetic Standard-Bearers

In each of these ÿelds there are professional organizations who set
or in°uence the expectations for that ÿeld. For professional theatre
lighting designers, including plays and musical theatre, this organiza-
tion is United Scenic Artists 829 (USA829). USA829 is a professional
labor union and part of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage
Employees (IATSE). USA represents designers and craftspeople in many
areas of entertainment even beyond theatre, including ÿlm, television,
and industrial shows. Besides being a collective bargaining organiza-
tion that in°uences wages and working conditions, the members set the
artistic standards for the industry in that new members are admitted
by exam and portfolio review. There are limits on how many non-mem-
bers can work on a USA-represented show and how many USA-repre-
sented shows a non-member can do before being required to apply for
membership.
Opera, dance, and live immersive lighting designers are not neces-
sarily afÿliated with an professional organization, but many are United
Scenic Artists. Concert and Music designers are not generally afÿliated
with a professional organization unless they also do work that is USA829
relevant.
Film and sometimes television cinematographers and directors of
photography in the US are associated with the American Society of
Cinematograpers (ASC). Membership is by invitation, “extended to
directors of photography who have demonstrated outstanding ability
with distinguished credits in the industry and good personal charac-
ter” (ASC website). Members usually include the credential “ASC” after
their names.
Architectural lighting designers have various professional organiza-
tions and credentials. They often join IALD, which exists to promote the
value of good lighting design as well as the organizations’ members. They
take their responsibility to maintaining high standards and service to the
ÿeld seriously. Admission is by application and guidelines for admission
and progression in the organization are well-deÿned.
Themed entertainment designers are often part of TEA, the Themed
Entertainment Association. TEA is a relatively young organization but
made up of seasoned professionals from all over the world. They do not
formally set standards for the industry, artistic or otherwise, but the active
membership work to advance conversations and pride themselves on the
impactful experiences they create. Membership is by application and
except for students and loosely related academic organizations admission
requires current involvement in the “creation of compelling places and
experiences”.
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As we close on Chapter 3, I invite you once again to refect on and allow

your memory to etch into your consciousness what was covered. You’ll need
a way to make notes and ideally be in a quiet, comfortable place. After you
read this paragraph, start by closing your eyes and bringing your attention to
your breath. Take just a few inhales and exhales, to settle and make space for
these refections. After you’ve done that, read each refection question one
at a time, closing your eyes for another breath or two to fnd what surfaces.
Then jot some notes, and when you’re ready, move to the next question.
Refections:
• Light in art: In what ways do visual artists use light in their creations?
How can light help tell a story?
• Light in live performance and entertainment: Why should we bother to
design light?
• Your language of light: What words will be yours for “What Light Can
or Should Do?” How do those concepts relate to the art forms of live
performance, flm, television, animation and architectural lighting?
• Lighting design across the industries: How do each of these industries
incorporate light into their creations?
• The traditional live performing arts
• Concert and music touring
• Live immersive, non-narrative, and/or experiential situations
• Television
• Architectural and architainment
• Themed entertainment
• Film
• Pro-perspectives: What can you take away from each of these?
• Jessica Creager, Associate LD in NYC
• Sam Schwartz on touring with the band
• Scot Gianelli on exploring new opportunities for performance
• Travis Hagenbuch on transitioning from theatre to television
• Rachel Gibney on using design principles in architecture
• Steven Young on taking themed entertainment all over the world
• The artistic and aesthetic standard-bearers: USA, ASC, IALD, TEA .˛.˛.
Which organization or organizations will you look to to set the stand-
ards for your work?
• What ideas in the chapter do you want to know more about?
C H A P T E R 3 67
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Essig, Linda. “Stanley McCandless, Lighting History, and Me.”˛ Theatre Topics,
vol. 17, no. 1, 2007, pp. 61–67, doi:10.1353/tt.2007.0008.
Gillette, J. Michael., and Michael J. McNamara.˛Designing with Light: An Intro-
duction to Stage Lighting. Routledge, 2020.
Gillette, J. Michael.˛ Designing with Light: An Introduction to Stage Lighting.
Mayÿeld, 1978.
International Association of Lighting Designers. “Quality of Light.” www.iald.
org/Advocacy/Advocacy/Quality-of-Light.
Jackman, John. Lighting for Digital Video and Television. Routledge, 2020.
Katatikarn, Jasmine, and Michael Tanzillo. Lighting for Animation: The Art of
Visual Storytelling. Routledge, 2017.
Landau, David.˛Lighting for Cinematography: A Practical Guide to the Art and
Craft of Lighting for the Moving Image. Bloomsbury, 2019.
Marcus, Joan, joanmarcusphotography.com.
McCandless, Stanley.˛A Syllabus of the Course in Stage Lighting. Whitlocks Book
Store, Inc., 1927.
Parker, W. Oren, and Harvey K. Smith.˛Scene Design and Stage Lighting. Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, 1963.
Pilbrow, Richard.˛Stage Lighting. Drama Book Specialists, 1970.
C H A P T E R 3 69
CHAPTER 4
Gather
Orientation and Preparation

Chapter 4 gathers the tools and components of our industries and pre-
pares you to keep gathering long after you ÿnish reading. The informa-
tion contained could easily be several chapters (or even books), but I’m
going to keep it all together under “Gather” in order to encompass the
idea of gathering all this information as its own distinct part of the pro-
cess. There’s no need to take it on all in one shot and in fact I have broken
it into four large parts, each with multiple pause and re°ect points. Give
yourself time to take it all in and take lots of breaks. (Teachers, please
see the Appendix for “Suggestions for Scaling”.) Honor the magnitude of
what it means to gather information as a life-long practice, and what you
individually need to do to learn well. If the information begins to feel like
static, this is a sign that your mind is saturated. Stop and give your mind
a chance to digest and recharge.
To help, Part 1: The Basics will begin by introducing a project to help
you develop good habits for keeping up. After that it will point toward
the organizations and people who can answer questions, introduce you to
safety considerations, survey the most common “brushes” for “painting”
with light, and then talk about how we power them.
Part 2: Pause, Step Back, Absorb, and Re˛ect will be a fun break to
catch a breath and think some more about keeping up, with a History
Break and a related Pro-perspective.
That will prepare us for Part 3: The Big Bites – a deep dive into more
complicated lighting brushes and how we control it all.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003022725-4 71
G AT H E R
Part 4: The Wind Down will take us gently into familiar territory for
most – color – but in fresh ways, and ensure that you are ready to light
skin of all colors.
Are you ready? Let’s do this!
72 C H A P T E R 4
C H A P T E R 4 : PA RT 1
The Basics
Project: Current Events
Why?
As you start to get comfortable with current tools and defne your style, it’s
best not to get too settled in with them. Your work will stay relevant and
you’ll have the most satisfaction if you nurture a curiosity for what’s to come.
What?
Develop a list of websites, periodicals, and forums that you will check in with
periodically. Save a folder of digital bookmarks that you can pull up quickly
and add to it when you fnd other things. Sign up for industry newsletter
mailing lists and be sure to browse each email you get to know what’s being
talked about and what you want to investigate more deeply. Save things you
don’t have time to read in a digital reading list that you can pull up when
you’re waiting somewhere and fnd yourself scrolling.
How?
Though the work will be individual and life-long, this project works well as a
class conversation, especially when students are frst getting familiar with the
sources. Each person selects one website or periodical that they fnd most
interesting. They come to a small group prepared to talk about: (1) one recent
DOI: 10.4324/9781003022725-5 73
THE BASICS
article or post that revealed something interesting that they didn’t know about
and what excited them about it; and (2) what trend, technology, or issue is
dominating the headlines in that moment? If you don’t have a class to work
with, consider gathering some lighting friends and setting up current events get
togethers. Be sure to include people with backgrounds different from your own.
Here are a few of the many places to start in no particular order:
• www.livedesignonline.com serves all aspects of many entertainment

industries, has a print magazine and an annual national trade show. Try
their Live Design Wire e-newsletter.
• www.lightingandsoundamerica.com has a print magazine with great
images. Check out their LSA Online News e-newsletter.
• http://plsn.com stands for Projection, Lights and Staging News and has
a technical and touring lean. There is a print version and a newsletter.
• https://ascmag.com:American Cinematographer Magazine requires a
subscription, but their website has good free content to explore frst.
• www.iald.org: The International Association of Lighting Designers
(architecture) has a non-member newsletter.
• www.teaconnect.org: Themed Entertainment Association has an active
BLOG, webinars, and online social hours.
• http://esta.org/Protocol/protocol.html:Protocol is highly technical. If you
are thinking of going into product development or are the sort who
likes to take things apart, you will love this quarterly magazine.
• www.usitt.org/tdt:Theatre Design and Technology is a quarterly mem-
ber magazine from the United States Institute of Theatre Technology
available in print or online. USITT has an educational lean and so a great
starting place for students and teachers.
Measuring Success and Timetable: Success in this project is highly indi-

vidual. If you have something to contribute to a conversation about trends
in your industry whenever the opportunity arises and you have some sense
of what others are noticing, you’re on your way to a life-long practice of
keeping up. I suggest making a habit of browsing e-newsletters and head-
line pages each morning and reading a few full articles a month. In a class
situation, this project, done as a small group exercise two or three times a
semester at strategic moments, can provide opportunities for a refreshening
break from more challenging work.
The Technical Standard-Bearers

Government entities and professional organizations set technical stand-
ards for our industries. Let’s survey some of them.
74 C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 1
THE BASICS
The NFPA or National Fire Protection Association publishes the book

called the NFPA 70, the National Electrical Code, or NEC for short. The
NFPA writes code for just about any place electricity is used, so it impacts
how you use light in every industry we’ve been talking about. The NEC is
not meant to be a user manual, though. It only has a few chapters related to
entertainment applications and those chapters build on the chapters before.
Interpretation and compliance can be a tricky matter because not that
many people in entertainment have the training to understand everything
in it, and not that many people who have the training to understand what’s
in it have much experience with the entertainment industry.
Local governments can adopt the NEC or just parts of it. When they do,
the code is made into local law. The AHJ, “Authority Having Jurisdiction”
has the ÿnal say on interpretation. The AHJ is usually a city or organization’s
ÿre marshal or electrical inspector, and not many of them understand the
vocabulary of the entertainment industry. Stories of costly misunderstand-
ings or misinterpretations ÿll entertainment electricity training seminars.
Lucky for us, NEC Code-Making Panel 15 is a committee with members
from the entertainment industry who are trained in its complexities. These
members represent us in helping the code-makers understand our unique
environments. They often speak at entertainment industry conferences and
write about interpretation of the codes, compliance solutions, and changes
that happen over time. You can ÿnd their names on the NFPA/NEC website
and reach out to them. Steve Terry, the Director of Standards and Industry
Relations at Electronic Theatre Controls (ETC, an entertainment lighting
manufacturer) has been on the panel since 1994 and in my experience has
never been too busy to answer a question or give a talk to students. In fact,
Steve and his colleagues champion the idea that they would rather you
reach out to them with your questions than make a mistake that can be
costly to you and cause problems for the industry. Steve has been integral in
many aspects of standard-making in his long and illustrious career, as you
will see in the Pro-perspective he graciously agreed to write.
Like the NFPA, the American National Standards Institute or ANSI is
not an entertainment organization. Unlike the NEC, the standards it sets
have little to do with law, but are set by industry consensus. ANSI works
with relevant organizations to help set nationally recognized standards
for each industry. A standard titled “ANSI E.˛ .˛ .” would be a standard
developed for and by the entertainment industry under ANSI’s rigorous
standards for review. In this case, the standard would have been devel-
oped under the direction of ESTA/TSP, which is the ANSI-accredited
Technical Standards Program within the Entertainment Services and
Technology Association. A standard titled “ANSI/IES.˛.˛.” is one done in
conjunction with the Illuminating Engineering Society or IES, our next
technical standard bearer.
C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 1 75
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Many architects who work in lighting are members of the IES. Much like
IALD (described in the last chapter), IES deals with light just about anywhere
a permanent structure is involved.Though there is a great deal of shared objec-
tive, one way to differentiate the two organizations is that IES is focused on
technical standards while IALD is more focused on the resulting experience.
Besides TSP, ESTA (above) also runs a program called the Entertain-
ment Technology Certiÿcation Program, or ETCP. This is a comparatively
new organization that does not set standards but whose purpose it is to
credential the top entertainment technicians in the ÿeld by testing them
on standards and best practices. The “Entertainment Electrician Certiÿca-
tion” and the “Portable Power Distribution Technician Certiÿcation” are
not licensures and those certiÿed hold no legal jurisdiction. The programs
do, however, help close the gap I described earlier between the licensed
electricians who have to read the NEC cover to cover and people working
in entertainment who don’t have much reason to know about NEC topics
like “Article 326, Integrated Gas Spacer Cable”. (Yes, that’s really what
NEC Article 326 is about, and I don’t know what it is either.)
The International Association of Theatrical Stage Employees or
IATSE (mentioned in the last chapter for United Scenic Artists afÿli-
ation to it) and the National Association of Broadcast Employees and
Technicians-Communications Workers of America or NABET-CWA are
labor unions. They do not set technical standards, but they in°uence
workplace standards. Their negotiations with employers result in wage,
beneÿt, and work conditions agreements. Though IATSE began as a “The-
atrical Protective Union” in 1886, its long title now includes “Motion
Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts”. It has departments for
motion picture and TV production, tradeshows, communications, and
also departments for Canadian members, Education and Training, and
Political and Legislative activities. Both organizations require of their
members loyalty to the principles of collective bargaining.
Next we’ll hear from Steve Terry, who will not only show you “Why We
Need Technical Standard-Bearers” but whose story will give you hints about
how you too can make your mark in the rich history of innovation in our ÿeld.
Pro-perspectives: Steve Terry
In the last 35 years, the worldwide entertainment industry has undergone a

series of tectonic changes in technology that have created a level of techni-
cal sophistication in productions that we could never have predicted. Hidden
just below the layers of sophisticated new equipment is a powerful ena-
bling tool that allowed this change to happen: the appearance of industry
76 C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 1
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interoperability and safety standards. The story of how these emerged offers
powerful lessons about the economic and creative power of standards.
To understand this story better, let’s look at the history of the ANSI E1.11
DMX512 Digital Data Transmission Standard for Controlling Lighting Equip-
ment and Accessories. This standard was created in 1986 by a very small group
of industry professionals who were scrambling to bring order to the technical
and economic chaos caused by manufacturer-proprietary and non-interopera-
ble communications protocols between lighting consoles and dimmers. Small
rental companies got together and forced the creation of the standard using a
fast, “guerilla” development effort under the auspices of USITT. Viewed from
today’s perspective of DMX512, the goal of the 1986 effort seems almost
quaint in its simplicity and lack of sophistication. Why? Because over the last
35 years, DMX512 has arguably been the single biggest technical enabler of
the modern entertainment lighting industry – responsible for creating many
billions of dollars – that’s billions with a “B” – in products and services.
How did a lowly console-to-dimmer communication standard turn into such

a powerful economic and creativity-enabling engine? The answer lies on
multiple fronts.
First, key industry players recognized a big problem that needed fxing. This
inadvertently turned them into technical standard-bearers, as they wrote the
standard and then pushed it across the industry.
Second, those standard-bearers were solving a problem that everybody had.

The authors of the standard might have been the frst people to recognize
this, but it didn’t take long for the rest of the industry to adopt DMX512.
This is one of the most important lessons of standards development: make
sure the standard you are creating flls a real need, and is not simply an aca-
demic intellectual exercise.
Third, the creators of DMX512 put the standard into a “sweet spot” that
encouraged adoption by manufacturers with limited experience in digital
communications, because the standard was relatively simple to implement.
Fourth, though the creators did not know this at the time, the fact that
DMX512 carried non-specifc, untyped 8-bit digital data at a fast rate
allowed it to be repurposed by manufacturers for a wide variety of appli-
cations including color scrollers, projectors, automated lighting, and video
control – far beyond the original scope of the standard.
C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 1 77
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Fifth, and perhaps most important, the standard contained the “killer app”:
reliable interoperability between products of different manufacturers. This
allowed lighting systems to be assembled from best-of-breed products in
many categories. It was no longer necessary to buy a system from a single
manufacturer. This was the primary fuel of the DMX512 economic engine.
Over the years, there have been many valid criticisms of the technical def-
ciencies of DMX512:
“It’s not fast enough.”

“It lacks error correction.”
“It’s not bi-directional.”
But it turned out that those criticisms simply did not matter, because it had
the killer app of interoperability.
Ultimately, the work of standard-bearers created the ESTA TSP which has
delivered countless ANSI-approved standards over the last 25 years. These
standards cover safety, product performance measurement, interoperability,
and more. Every ESTA standard has been driven by the passion and com-
mitment of industry people: the modern technical standards-bearers. The
ESTA Technical Standards Program is one of the great success stories of our
industry, and it hews to my primary tenet of standards work. Perhaps this
could be one of the mantras of every technical standard bearer:
“Set standards that you can live with, before somebody else does it for you
and you can’t live with the result.”
An Introduction to Workplace Safety in Entertainment

Awareness and clear communication are necessary for workers to be safe
in any environment. Before and after performances take place, stages and
ÿlming locations bustle with activity. Scenery, pipes, ladders, power lifts, and
machinery roll on the ground or °y through the air. Cables are pulled through
walking areas. People are working overhead with equipment and tools. No
one should be in the area who isn’t performing a function and everyone per-
forming a function should be qualiÿed to recognize the hazards around them.
Once the performance or ÿlming begins, that bustle usually slows,
unless it is happening as part of the performance (a musical theatre scene
change, for instance). By then all equipment should be secured. All off-
stage/off-camera movement should be deliberately choreographed or in
the process of being choreographed during rehearsals.
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On traditional performance stages, the stage edge itself is a potentially

deadly hazard because the drop can be quite far, especially if there is
an orchestra pit. Many theatre veterans (including me) have unpleasant
stories about stepping off an edge themselves or watching someone dis-
appear into the darkness. Lighting focus sessions, when the space is dark
and people spend a lot of time looking up, is a particularly high-risk part
of the schedule, both because of the stage edge, as well as for collisions
with something unseen. Always prioritize awareness of your environment
and when that becomes difÿcult, stop. Allow yourself a quiet moment to
breath and recommit your attention.
Filming locations, whether in the studio or on location, can have all
of these hazards as well, though not usually stage edges or °ying pipes.
The presence of cameras, though, creates more trip and collision hazards.
Temporarily rigged overhead equipment can present an unobvious kind
of hazard in any location, but particularly when there are not engineered
hanging positions. On location ÿlming also means that people are work-
ing in an unfamiliar place and so those locations should be thoroughly
evaluated for risk ahead of time.
Dust and debris can be fuel for fire. Anything that conducts elec-
tricity or gets hot should be clean and in good condition. The area
around electrical equipment should be orderly so that hazards are
easy to spot. Visually inspect all equipment, including lights, cable,
Figure 4.1 A dark stage during focus

Courtesy of Adam Chamberlain
C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 1 79
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and connectors (also known as plugs and receptacles) prior to con-

necting to a power source. Equipment with broken parts or exposed
wire should be taken out of service immediately. Because entertain-
ment electrical equipment is moved around frequently, the point of
contact between strain relief mechanisms and the cable jacket can
become loose over time.
Safety clothing and equipment which is also known as PPE or Per-
sonal Protective Equipment varies by industry, but most people work-
ing with lighting equipment should have at a minimum a good pair of
heat-resistant gloves. Hard hats should be worn in situations where work
is happening overhead. Steel- or composite-toed shoes are required in
many work environments where heavy equipment or scenery is being
moved. Eye protection is a good idea when working with electricity and
glass, which can shatter. More hazardous situations may require personal
fall arrest equipment or even respirators, but these types of equipment
require special training and ÿtting and so should be purchased and used
under qualiÿed supervision.
Overhead rigging and counterweight systems also require special
training and supervision that are beyond the scope of this book. Be sure
you have been fully trained and understand the hazards of these systems
before you agree to operate them.
Take a Breath: Technical Standard-Bearers and Safety Refections
Pause here for a breath to let this frst section sink in before we explore the
basic technology. As always, take a comfortable seat, close your eyes to set-
tle, then refect and make some notes on the following prompts:
• The Technical Standard-Bearers: NFPA/NEC, ANSI, ESTA/ TSP, IES, ETCP,

IATSE, NABET-CWA, NEC Code-Making Panel 15
• Who may you need to look to for technical questions and standards
in the work you do now?
• Who may you need to look to in the future?
• Might you want to be involved in any of these organizations?
• Why do standards matter?
• Safety in Entertainment
• What are some of the common hazards you will keep an eye out for?
• What habits will you use to keep yourself and your fellow workers safe?
• Is there any further training you would like to have for the work you
are doing right now?
80 C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 1
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The Lighting Brushes
Controllable Qualities, Properties, or Attributes of Light

Chapter 3 introduced what are traditionally called the Functions of Light.
I suggested less confusing words for “function” like purposes, beneÿts,
objectives, in°uences, or impacts (my choice), with the operative differ-
ence being that we are talking about what light can do to have a certain
impact and not what you as the designer or technician can do to light at
the practical level to achieve those things.
Most texts call this next list of things we can do to light Controllable
Qualities. This is based on McCandless’ qualities: “Intensity, Color, Form,
and Movement”. Gillette changed “Form” to “Distribution” and broad-
ened its context. Essig called them “Properties” and expanded them to:
“Direction, Intensity, Shape and Distribution, Color, Quality, Movement
Through Space, Change”. I like Properties because it provides a better
contrast to any of the words we might use to describe the Functions or
Impacts.
For cinematography, Landau calls them attributes, as in “The Four
Attributes of Light”: Intensity, Angle, Texture and Color. Attributes is
another good alternative to Qualities because it re°ects the operational
nature of this list of controllable variables. Attributes also happens to be
used by some moving light manufacturers to describe all the things moving
lights can do (also called parameters). All of these words work (Qualities,
Properties, or Attributes, even Variables) as the title for this list. Most of the
Properties on these lists are self-explanatory, but we’ll deÿne them brie°y.
Intensity refers to how bright the light is, relatively speaking. Color is
a complex topic we will discuss in great detail later in the chapter, but for
now, think about Color in any ordinary way that the word has meaning
to you. Direction or Angle have to do with where the light is coming from
and in what way it creates highlight and shadow on the object(s). Shape
literally has to do with the shape of the light beam or pool of light and can
also refer to how hard or soft the edges are. Movement or Essig’s Change
refers to the lights changing in any way, as well as to light beams or light
sources physically moving in space.
Remember that these are the things we can control to serve our chosen
Impact objectives but they are not the objectives. To illustrate the differ-
ence and why it matters, often when young designers begin to describe
what they will try to accomplish with light, they will go straight to these
controllable Qualities/Properties/Attribute/Parameter/Variables. They
talk about the colors they like or how bright the lights will be or the
changes they will make happen. This doesn’t usually lend itself to a cohe-
sive design and it makes choices difÿcult to support when challenged. It
also doesn’t give fellow collaborators much to collaborate with you about.
C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 1 81
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It is great to be excited about a certain color, but it’ll be more effective

and supportable if that color choice comes from an intention you have
collectively established. Always start at the beginning: what is the story/
theme/intention, and what can light do to impact it? After that, you can
decide how you will manipulate/change/control the Qualities/Properties/
Attributes/Parameters/Variables of light to get there.
These Properties themselves are intangible “brushes”, which is why I
placed them in this location of the book, but you’ll see that each of the
physical lighting brushes (the lighting instruments themselves) we explore
next distinguish themselves by how they manifest these Properties. By
that I mean that they each have a relative intensity that they can achieve,
a color quality, a kind of shape, and some capacity to create change. Fig-
ure 4.2 puts all the Impacts and Properties that we have arrived at into a
graphic for you.
Figure 4.2 Impacts and properties of light word cloud
82 C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 1
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Consider the Source: Incandescent, Discharge, LED

The source type inside the lighting instrument or ÿxture (what you may
have called a light bulb in the past, but is correctly called a lamp) impacts
what you can do with it.
For more than a century, the electric light sources people were used
to were warm sources, meaning that light was generated by heating a
substance, usually tungsten. These kinds of sources are what we call
incandescent, which literally means emitting light as a result of being
heated. Discharge sources such as °uorescents, metal halide, and high- or
low-pressure sodium lights have been widely used in commercial spaces,
large spaces like gymnasiums, and in street lighting. They work by using
electricity to excite gas and are generally considered cold sources in that
no materials are being heated, even though some discharge sources do
in fact appear warm (like the street lights in Figure 4.3 and 4.4). LED
(light emitting diode) technology, also a cold source, has revolutionized
artiÿcial lighting in just about every application we can imagine. LEDs
have been around since the 1960s as indicator lights. It took some time
for industries to realize their potential and then make the technological
innovations both in terms of brightness and color rendition that made
them palatable to theatre artists.
Figures 4.3 and 4.4 The main lighting sources, and a key to the sources
C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 1 83
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It might be interesting to understand the lingering, historic resistance

to LEDs. The major technical obstacle manufacturers had to overcome
was their limited brightness and they did that. LEDs developed in those
early days could °icker on camera, but this too was solved with under-
standing and innovation around pulse width modulation frequency in the
lighting and camera frame rate. For designers though, it was the color.
Author Nick Moran wrote that at a conference, “designer Paule Consta-
ble said ‘They don’t smell right’, and most of the people in the room knew
what she meant” (Moran, p. 33). The solution to that came over time as
more LED colors were developed, making it possible to tune a ÿxture to
colors that “smelled right”.
You may have to spend more upfront on a good LED system than you
would an incandescent one for the same amount of light, but these costs
are offset by efÿciency, longevity, and certainly viewer satisfaction. We
can make pictures with LED technology that we couldn’t have imagined
in the past, keeping our designs fresh and exciting.
Conventional, Established Lighting Instruments

Conventional lighting instruments as they are known in the theatre
world, or what ÿlm and television lighting specialist Harry C. Box calls
“Established” in Set Lighting Technician’s Handbook, are our everyday
workhorses. We differentiate them from advanced technology lighting
instruments which contain electronics and usually require more training
to use. One way to think about the deÿnition difference between conven-
tional and advanced technology lights is that the controllable properties
or attributes of a conventional light usually have to be changed AT the
light itself. You can turn conventionals on and dim them remotely, but
they are otherwise static unless you physically touch them. Attributes in
most advanced lighting technology can be controlled remotely. Some are
physically static, but have attributes that can be controlled remotely, like
their color or beam size, which requires more technology onboard
the instrument. For the purpose of this conversation, we’ll ÿle those with the
advanced brushes.
For each of these types of instruments we’ll survey throughout the
book, icons are included to illustrate which industry or industries you
are likely to encounter them in. Icons are shown in the order of which
industries they are more commonly encountered in. A second set of icons
will show you if the source in them is typically incandescent, discharge,
and/or LED.
84 C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 1
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Key to Industry Icons: Key to Source Icons:
Theatre/Traditional Incandescent
Performance
Film Discharge
Television LED
Architecture
Concerts
Themed
ELLIPSOIDAL REFLECTOR SPOTLIGHT (ERS)

The ERS is probably the most prized lighting instrument
of the theatre industry and is used at least a little in most
other applications as well. Its highly evolved optics make
it precisely shapeable and °attering on all skin tones.
An ellipsoidal-shaped re°ector efÿciently collects all
light particles and projects them through a gate and then out
through a lens or lenses. This allows for the shape of anything
placed in the plane of that gate to be projected clearly in the
pool of light. Specially designed gobos or templates (thin pieces
of metal) can be inserted to project shapes or text. Unwanted
light can be precisely trimmed with the shutters, which are
metal blades inside the instrument, at the gate. When maxi-
mum control is desired, an ERS is a great choice. The down-
sides compared to other kinds of conventional instruments is
that they have more moving parts, so they take longer to focus
and can require more maintenance and repair. They also cost
more to manufacture, so they are more expensive.
C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 1 85
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Figure 4.5 The inside of an ERS
Figure 4.6 Ellipsoidal Re°ector Spotlights (ERS)

© aerogondo – stock.adobe.com
FRESNELS
Fresnels have been around the longest of the instruments
still in use. They get their name from their speciÿc lens
originally designed for light houses by Augustin Fresnel.
This stepped lens gives the beam of light a soft, but still
deÿnable shape. The variety of Fresnels are endless, but
most are easily identiÿable by that lens. They have long
been a workhorse instrument of traditional theatre, ÿlm, and
television applications. They don’t have many moving parts so
are fast to focus and not terribly expensive. The lens and lamp
are ÿxed together on a plate which you can slide back and forth
to change the size of the beam. If you want to shape the beam,
an accessory known as a barndoor can be added, but there is
nothing built into the instrument that can do it. Even with a
barndoor, the lens prevents a Fresnel from being anything but
soft. Architecture makes use of the Fresnel lens, but not gener-
ally the body that used in other applications.
86 C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 1
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Figure 4.7 The inside of a Fresnel
Figure 4.8 Various Fresnels

© Andrey Lapshin, © Victor – stock.adobe.com (added to and adapted)
PARS
PAR stands for Parabolic Anodized Re˛ector. The phys-
ical identiÿer for a true PAR is that the re°ector, lamp,
and lens are all sealed into one piece, though there are
many PAR-like options that are not. Typically, the PAR
lamp is inside a can-shaped body, which is why we
call this common instrument a par can. A number after PAR
(PAR64, PAR38, etc.) indicates its diameter. Unlike the body
of an ERS or Fresnel, a par can casing does little more than
hold the lamp and the electrical connections. This makes them
light, quick to focus, and relatively tough. They are popular
in concert and musical theatre situations because you can
have many of them in a line or array, allowing for a lot of
light and color at a low cost. The lamps can be swapped out
to change the ˛ood, or size of the beam, allowing for a lit-
tle more control. PAR arrays are used on ÿlm location shoots
as well, particularly when there is a lot of area to illuminate.
C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 1 87
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Figure 4.9 PAR and PAR-type instruments
Figure 4.10 PAR array

© PROBilder – stock.adobe.com
Fay Lights are a kind of par array designed to mimic daylight in ÿlm
applications. Architecture uses pars, but usually the small MR16 (mini-
re°ector), which is often used in track lighting or recessed downlights.
SURFACE AND AREA WASH LIGHTS

This is a catch-all category for instruments that can
give us a broad, not-well-controlled wash of light.
“Cyc” is short for cyclorama, the technical name for
the scenic fabric that used to wrap around the back of
theatre stages. Not many theatres have true cycloramas
anymore, but many live performance venues still have a °at
piece of light-colored fabric in the back of the stage that still
gets referred to as a cyc. Cyc lights hung at the top and the
bottom provide light and color for the environment’s back-
ground. Painted drops may also be lit with cyc lights. The
term backing lights refers to any instruments that illuminate
the background and is a term heard more commonly in ÿlm
and television applications.
88 C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 1
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Figure 4.11 A space light over a ÿlm shoot

© gnepphoto – stock.adobe.com
Chicken coops are unique to ÿlm and television and are so called
because they were originally constructed of chicken coop wire. They are
used when a broad area must be lit evenly at a relatively short distance.
Imagine a big box, perhaps as big as the area you need to light, ÿlled with
light bulbs or °orescent tubes and faced with a material that diffuses the
light to ÿll in the gaps between bulbs. If you’ve ever noticed a light over
a billiard table, the concept is similar. Space Lights are the same idea, but
are usually circular in shape while chicken coops are rectangular.
SOFT LIGHT
Most of the sources we’ve explored so far produce what
is considered hard light. It is bright and direct, ideal
for allowing the observer to view things well at a dis-
tance, giving a camera plenty of exposure to work with,
and minimizing ambient light. A camera, however, is
capable of giving the observer a larger than life view
of the human face. Though we may still want bright light levels for
that, we don’t necessarily want all the ÿne detail that hard light can
expose on the skin. For this application soft light is preferred. This can
be accomplished by putting accessories on hard lights or by using white
surfaces to bounce light indirectly on to the subject, or you can buy
instruments that are actually called soft lights. Soft boxes and diffu-
sion frames or cards are common accessory types, but there are many
homemade options as well. The idea is to break up and scatter the light
particles in order to reduce contrast and eliminate shadows, minimizing
perceived °aws.
C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 1 89
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Figure 4.12 Soft light used in web content recording

© artiemedvedev – stock.adobe.com
CHANGING GEARS INTO THE ARCHITECTURAL LIGHTING BRUSHES

As we come to architectural sources, we have to learn to think about the
instruments a little differently. Architectural lighting sources are usually
installed permanently rather than as part of a temporary event as in the
other industries. They are typically integrated in the architecture and have
no need for the bulky casings required in portable applications. Archi-
tectural designers tend to list light sources in descriptive terms (linear,
downlight, spotlight) rather than named kinds of instruments (fresnels,
ERS, etc.).
To illustrate, when I surveyed designers for this book about their work-
horse lighting ÿxtures, architectural lighting designers answered with:
“linear ÿxtures, spots, gobo projectors”, “Linear ÿxtures and adjustable
down lights”, and “recessed LED downlights, recessed and surface linear
LED ÿxtures, architectural indirect LED sconces, S4 Pars and ERS (events
only!)”. A “linear ÿxture” is (for me) a little harder to picture than a par
can or moving light.
Figuring that I just didn’t ask the question right, I asked a follow up
question and ended up with a list of their current preferred manufactur-
ers. So while theatre, ÿlm, television, and concert designers think about
specifying lighting instruments in terms of what we can picture hang-
ing on shop racks, architectural lighting designers think about sources in
terms of what they will do and where they will be installed.
90 C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 1
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LINEAR SOURCES
Linear sources are exactly as their name describes and
they are popular because they help deÿne space. The surge
of LED linear ÿxtures into the market has made stunning,
colorful pictures possible where we weren’t used to seeing
them before. Linear sources are all around us for more
practical purposes as well, like the °orescent tubes you
often see hanging over your head in ofÿces and classrooms.
Figure 4.13 Linear sources

Courtesy of ETC
RECESSED AND DOWNLIGHT SOURCES

A source can be recessed, but not a downlight, or a
downlight, but not recessed. It is also possible for this
category and the last to overlap – a recessed, linear
downlight for instance. You may have experienced any
combination in a hallway of a public space. Recessing
a light source protects it from damage and shields the
user from looking directly at the source, making them
an attractive choice.
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Figure 4.14 Recessed downlights

Courtesy of ETC
TRACKLIGHTS
Tracklights come in many varieties, in fact there are even
ERS tracklights. They often hang where something is
being highlighted, as in retail areas, lobbies, and muse-
ums. The deÿning factor is that they are mounted and
powered through tracks, allowing them to be moved
around by the end user. This makes them ideal in places where
the objects in the room will move around long after the lighting
designers and contractors are gone. Know that each track has
an electrical capacity and that if you try to jam too many lights on one
track, they will not come up to full brightness.
Figure 4.15 ERS tracklights

Courtesy of ETC
92 C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 1
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DAYLIGHT
No single light source takes up as much room in the Illuminat-
ing Engineering Society’s Fundamentals of Light textbook than
daylight. For architects, understanding the beneÿts and down-
sides of incorporating daylight into a design is a deep topic.
It can bring warmth, a natural feel, and energy savings into
a design. Daylight has been connected to health beneÿts and
more accurate color ÿdelity.
The downside is that daylight is difÿcult to control, somewhat
unpredictable, and in some circumstances can make energy costs
higher. Traditional performance lighting designers would love to
have daylight as an option, but the lack of control is usually a
deal-breaker in story-based design. It is possible to use it in a
theatrical experience, however, especially when experiences are
non-linear or in moments when control can be loosened. For
instance, at the Santa Fe Opera, the semi-enclosed audience seating area
faces a stunning desert landscape behind the stage. Audience members are
sometimes treated to spectacular pre-show sunsets when they can be plau-
sibly part of the opera about to be experienced. Film and television shoots
make use of daylight when they ÿnd it advantageous to do so. In fact, the
term Magic Hour is a ÿlm industry phrase used to reference that short
window of shooting time around sunset when atmospheric light is most
enchanting.
Figure 4.16 Filming with daylight

© bepsphoto – stock.adobe.com
C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 1 93
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Some questions to consider if you have the option to incorporate day-

light into your design.˛.˛.
Where will the sun be when the audience is experiencing the event or
the scene is being ÿlmed? Remember that not only does the sun move over
the course of the day, but its trajectory across the sky and the times that it
rises and set change day to day.
How predictable is the weather, and can you make the design immune
to the sun becoming blocked? Clouds unexpectedly moving in can delay
the schedule if the sun is being relied on. There has to be a plan B or the
budget must have room for nature’s whims.
Is this an indoor or outdoor experience and how important is that daylight
to the design? Concern for nature’s whims can be mitigated if you’re ÿlming in
an indoor space and using light through a window as an enhancement rather
than relying solely on it for illumination. In that case, if weather interferes, you
may be able to quickly recreate the desired effect with artiÿcial light.
How does the use of daylight impact energy consumption? This question
applies most to architectural lighting. If the space is experienced primarily dur-
ing the day in temperate climates, using daylight can reduce the amount of
electricity needed for lighting. But if the space is used primarily during the day
in a hot climate, energy saved on lighting could be lost to air conditioning costs.
Will objects in the space be affected by sunlight? The effect on collec-
tions (art, artifacts, animals, etc.) must be carefully researched when using
daylight. Sunlight can be destructive to delicate objects or stimulate plant
growth, so you must always do your homework.
Take a Breath: The Lighting Brushes Refections
Take another moment now for a breath to let this section sink in before we
take on Electricity. As always, take a comfortable seat, close your eyes to settle,
then refect and make some notes on the following prompts, one at a time:
• The controllable qualities, properties, attributes, parameters or variables
of light
• What are the Properties words that resonate for you that describe
what we do to – or control – about light?
• How will you decide what light can and should do for a particular design?
• The common sources of light: incandescent, discharge, and LED
• What kinds of considerations matter when choosing among them?
• The conventional, established lighting brushes: ERS, Fresnel, PAR, cyc/
strip/open lights, soft light, linear, recessed, downlight, tracklight, daylight
• How will you decide which to choose?
• Are there ones that are new to you that you’d like to try?
94 C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 1
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Powering It All: Entertainment Electricity Basics

Take some deep clearing breaths before this next expedition. Some people
love electricity and some people ÿnd it dry. If you ÿnd it exciting and it
comes easy to you, consider sharing your enthusiasm to help your fellow
learners connect to it. If you ÿnd it laborious, know that many students
before you have felt the same way and got through it just ÿne.
I think it might help to consider for a moment why we even include
electricity in a study of lighting, and what your needs are or will be around
this topic. As a lighting teacher, I have always struggled with how much
of this to teach and if you are a lighting teacher, you will have to spend
some time ÿguring this out too based your student population’s needs.
In traditional technical theatre training, we are teaching students to use
specialized tools and reconÿgure those tools in new ways for every pro-
duction or event. That should be a relatively straight-forward task, but in
my experience, the little bit of operational knowledge of electrical mate-
rials that students tend to get in their ÿrst days in the theatre is enough
to enable them to get creative with electricity but not enough to teach
them when they shouldn’t. As soon as the student learns how to put on a
connector, wire-nut a sconce to a cable on the back of a ˛at, or connect
lamp bases on a °ying chaser sign, they have enough knowledge to get
into trouble. The directors and collaborators around them will encourage
them to ÿgure out how to do things no one has trained then to do, but
academic organizations do not always have the necessary technical exper-
tise available, nor do higher education organizational systems provide for
the comprehensive training necessary to ensure that those things are done
correctly. As the demand for training grows beyond the traditional walls
of a theatre into the broader world of entertainment – all those other
industries we’ve been talking about like ÿlm, architecture, concerts, theme
parks, immersive experiences – more technical expertise is necessary.
In classes, I tend to err on the side of teaching students more informa-
tion than less – I call it their electrical understanding empowerment and
I start with the atom, which understandably makes my expert friends
roll their eyes. I do this because I don’t know if they’ll have access to
additional electrical training when they need it and I want them to feel
like they have a root understanding of it. There are many more resources
now though than when I started teaching, and many more experts aware
of this dilemma writing blogs and making themselves available to help.
So in this book I’m going to keep a more narrow scope and point you in
directions for deeper study. You will have to grapple with what training
you need next for your particular goals and how you are going to get it.
Some of this information that follows will help you right away. Some of
it you may never use again. And some of it will be planted in your mind,
ready when you need it.
C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 1 95
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Who Knows What?

An important disclaimer: I am not a licensed electrician or a certi-
ÿed entertainment electrician. What I know about this dense topic, I
know from my experience as a lighting technician, taking workshops,
and asking the experts questions. We’ll start by identifying who those
experts are.
The AHJ or Authority Having Jurisdiction (introduced earlier) has
the last word on electrical and ÿre safety rules. They are usually the
local ÿre or electrical inspector and in many universities are the uni-
versity ÿre marshal or risk assessment ofÿcer. As I said earlier, the rela-
tionship of the AHJ to entertainment venues can be a complicated one
since they do not always have thorough knowledge of the entertainment
practices and the use of our portable equipment. Their important job is
to prevent ÿres and protect lives, though, so resisting their directives is
not a good idea.
Licensed electricians have spent years of study, often in an apprentice
type of format before becoming licensed. You will most likely encounter
them if you have a facilities-related electrical problem or in some touring
venues where there are strict local rules about who can connect touring
lighting systems to building electrical systems. Licensed professional engi-
neers (PE) have a college degree in engineering and have passed rigorous
exams after years of work under other PEs. You are likely to encounter
them when planning renovations on a building.
ETCP or “Entertainment Technician Certiÿcation Program” certiÿed
technicians are speciÿc to the entertainment industry. “Certiÿed” is an
important difference from “licensed”, because it generally has no legal
standing. Their certiÿcation afÿrms that the industry has tested them and
that it ÿnds them qualiÿed to do technical work at a very high level in
the entertainment industry. The program began in 2005 as an effort at
accountability within the industry and those that have the certiÿcation
logged considerable work experience before they were even allowed to
sit for the test.
Ohms, Amps, Volts, and Watts/Resistance, Current, Potential, and Power

The cartoon in Figure 4.17 illustrates fundamental electrical terminology.
Electricity is generated by a source – the power company, a battery, or a gen-
erator – resulting in electrical potential or electromotive force (expressed as
E or V for Voltage), which we measure in volts (v). The electrical conduc-
tors through which the electricity will °ow have resistance to that force
(expressed as R or ˝), which we measure in Ohms (˝). That resistance
slows down the intensity or °ow of the electricity, which we call current
(expressed as I or A) measured in amperes or amps (a). The load draws
96 C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 1
THE BASICS
Figure 4.17 Cartoon of electrical principles

© VectorMine and © zaieiunewborn59 – stock.adobe.com (with alterations)
a certain amount of electricity required for it to operate properly, which

we call Power (expressed as P or W), measured in Watts (w). All of these
concepts are interrelated and have formulas that express their relationships.
The Electrical Formula Wheel in Figure 4.18 articulates those formulas.
Figure 4.18 Electrical Formula Wheel
C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 1 97
THE BASICS
Delivering Electricity
Electricity is delivered from a source to a load in two ways: AC or DC,
which stand for Alternating Current and Direct Current. They both
follow similar principles and both can be hazardous if not used cor-
rectly. AC is what is delivered through the outlets in homes or plug
boxes in entertainment settings. DC is what you get from batteries, or
when AC is converted for small electronics, like your laptop or your
phone charger. In entertainment, when you connect a load to a building
lighting system, you are connecting to AC power. You’ll encounter DC
power most often in wireless items that don’t require a lot of energy
like hand props, costumes, and other moving things where having cable
is inconvenient.
Conductivity, the Complete or Closed Electrical Circuit and Why it Matters

Consider a light switch. What might be happening behind that little
rectangle on the wall that allows electricity to °ow to a light or not?
The answer is that the switch opens and closes the electrical circuit.
The word circuit has origins in to come around or to enclose or encom-
pass. When you move a switch into the off position, metal components
known as contacts in the switch separate (open), breaking the circuit or
circle. When this happens, electricity stops °owing because the contacts
no longer have enough contact with each other to conduct the electric-
ity. Opening the circuit is the safest and surest way to stop an electrical
emergency. When electricity does not have a complete circuit path, it
does not °ow.
Circuit breakers, known technically as overcurrent protective devices,
are designed to accomplish this interruption automatically in that they
are spring loaded and calibrated to switch open under when too much
current (amps) °ows through the circuit. Fuses do the same thing, but
instead of having contacts that are resettable after a fault, there is a mate-
rial in the fuse designed to disintegrate one time under an overcurrent
condition, opening the circuit.
Hot, Neutral, and Ground

Inside each cable in a typical entertainment system there are three wires,
a hot wire which is black, a neutral wire which is white, and a green
equipment grounding or ground wire. This is an area of study ripe for
confusion because the neutral and ground wires are both connected to
ground, but the neutral is a normally current-carrying conductor and the
ground wire is not. When an AC system is functioning correctly, current
is generated ÿrst via the hot wire through a lamp or other load, with
98 C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 1
THE BASICS
the neutral completing the circuit. Understand that because it is AC or

alternating current, it begins to alternate direction in this closed circuit
immediately, so be sure to think of the circuit path as going in both
directions. The green wire is connected to the metal parts of an electrical
system, like the metal instrument body and the metal plug boxes. It car-
ries no current and serves no operational function until and unless there
is an equipment malfunction. If the electricity running through the nor-
mally current-carrying conductors (hot and neutral) accidentally comes
in contact with the metal parts of the system (we call this a fault), the
green wire carries current to the ground causing the overcurrent protec-
tive device (breaker) to trip.
There is a real-life example I encountered many times earlier in my
career that illustrates this pretty well. A par can body can become elec-
triÿed when untrained users replace the old wires inside the can, think-
ing it would be easier to replace the lamp if those wires were longer.
The extra length allows for a wire to become pinched when the back of
the par can is closed down on it. The insulation on the wire then wears
off, connecting the electricity being conducted through those wires to
the body of the instrument. The body of the instrument then becomes
part of the electrical circuit as does anything metal it is connected to
(like a pipe it might be hanging on and the metal plug box attached to
the pipe).
Figure 4.19 PAR can fault potential
C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 1 99
THE BASICS
But because the green equipment grounding wire is standing by for just
such an event, in a properly maintained electrical system, the circuit
breaker trips, the circuit opens and electricity stops °owing.
This knowledge point is an opportunity for student confusion, so let’s
address it brie°y. As I said earlier, the reason a breaker trips is that it is
designed to do so when too much current (amps) °ow through it. So you
might be wondering: why does current rise when it goes through the green
grounding wire? This is when our electrical formulas and an understanding
of basic algebra help us. Ohm’s law (R = V/A) tells us (among other things)
that if resistance goes down and voltage remains constant, then current
must go up. The faster and more efÿciently the resistance drops, the faster
the current will go up. That may sound dangerous, but since that is what
the breaker is waiting for, it’s a good thing. So the green grounding wires,
because they do nothing else but keep the metal components of an electrical
system connected to the ground, have super low resistance to electrical cur-
rent, ensuring that if there is a fault the breakers will trip as fast as possible.
The Power Formula

The Power Formula is W=V x A and can be used to ÿgure out how many
Watts-rated instruments you can connect into a circuit that is rated by
its current capacity in amps. If Volts is a nominally constant 120V and
you want to plug a number of 1000w par cans into a circuit rated to trip
at 20A, you can juggle the formula around to ÿgure out how many pars
can go into one circuit before the breaker trips, or how many circuits you
need to power any given number of pars. It’s a way of reconciling apples
and oranges, or things that are measured in Watts with things that are
measured in amps. Entertainment technicians like to use the term West
Virginia to remember that Watts = Volts x Amps.
This formula only works consistently with simple resistive loads like an
incandescent light bulb and won’t necessarily work on complex loads like
LEDs, moving lights, or many things that have electronics in them – the reason
for which is beyond the scope of this book. Fear not, though, because those
more complex loads are often speciÿed for their maximum current draw in
amps, just like your breaker, so you don’t need a formula. In other words, if
the circuit breaker is rated at 20A, which is to say that it can conduct 20 amps
of current before it trips, and if you have a device that is speciÿed to draw a
maximum of 8 amps, then you know you can probably plug at least two of
those devices on that circuit without the breaker tripping. As a general rule,
though, for reasons outside the scope of this book, 80% loading is advisable.
Because some of my students have diabolical minds that ask, “Why
can’t I just get a bigger breaker?” the answer is that maybe you can, pos-
sibly, but then all components in the circuit that that breaker is protecting
100 C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 1
THE BASICS
(remember, a breaker is an overcurrent protective device) have to be sized

up (in terms of current-carrying capacity) as well (the cables, the wiring
devices, etc.). If the breaker doesn’t open the circuit when there is more
current being conducted in that circuit than the components in that cir-
cuit are able to conduct, then there is a possibility of ÿre.
Perhaps pause and read that last paragraph a couple more times, espe-
cially if you are someone who may teach others, because this is exactly
the common launching pad that enables the new technician – someone
who has a little information, but not enough – to °irt with disaster. Never
try to go around these safety devices (overcurrent protective devices OR
grounding conductors) or you invite a ÿre. If a breaker is tripping due to
excessive loads, separate your loads onto other circuits. If you don’t have
any more circuits, you’ll have to reduce the number of loads you are using.
Common Cable and Connectors

Figure 4.20 is a not-as-scary-as-it-looks photo of an old mousepad made
by a long ago vendor. It is a handy cheat sheet of information we have
already discussed, information we are about to discuss, and information
Figure 4.20 Secoa mouse pad with entertainment electrical information
C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 1 101
THE BASICS
you might like to have in the future. I want you to have it because when-
ever I look at it, I marvel at how much information they arranged into so
compact a space. The lower right title block shows that they meant for
it to be shared freely. Maybe snap a picture on your phone and keep it
somewhere handy. Barbizon Lighting Company makes a handy Electri-
cian’s Pocket Book that has a lot of this information in it and more, so
you might want to search for one of those as well.
Back to our handy mousepad photograph, in the upper right-hand corner
is a diagram of the pin arrangements for common cable connectors, our next
topic. The lines across the top are showing you what we called the hot con-
ductor, followed below it by what we called the neutral conductor (the nor-
mally current-carrying grounded conductor) or system (“Sys”) ground on
the mousepad drawing, and below that, the equipment (“Equip”) ground,
which would be the green grounding conductor we’ve been talking about.
Vertical lines connect those conductor lines down to the pins of most
common connectors used in entertainment. The three on the left are the
ones you are most likely to encounter: the parallel blade connector (com-
monly called an Edison), the locking-type connector (which you twist
to lock), and the stage pin connector. All three connectors are found in
entertainment applications, though the locking-type and stage pin are the
ones more commonly used on the traditional portable stage lighting instru-
ments like the ones we surveyed in the previous section. Parallel blade or
its counterpart the T-slot (which looks similar, but the neutral blade or slot
is rotated 90 degrees) are more commonly used on accessories or advanced
equipment like we’ll discuss in Part 3 or in smaller venues or studios. Both
stage pin and locking-type connectors have their advantages and disad-
vantages and technicians have lively debates about which they prefer. The
locking-type connector doesn’t slide apart like the stage pin can, but the
pins are more likely to get bent. The stage pin has a lower proÿle and can be
dressed more easily in a cable bundle but the pins have to be maintained so
that they don’t slip apart too easily. This should be done with a tool called a
pin splitter but a technician in a hurry will sometimes do it with a knife or
screwdriver, which can break the pins off, destroying the connector.
Figure 4.21 Connectors: Eddison, locking, stagepin
102 C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 1
THE BASICS
As you may have guessed, the last two connectors on the Secoa draw-
ing are used for higher power applications, as indicated by the rating 60A
and 100A, whereas the smaller stagepin is rated 20A, typical for stage
dimmers. The 60A and 100A connectors are found more commonly on
large-scale ÿlm or television shoots, but less frequently in theatre. Notice
that even though they are shaped similarly, the pin assignment on those
does not follow the same pattern as the 20A stage pin connector.
One of the things new lighting technicians ask is, why do we have to use
the heavy cables that we use? There are thinner cables that would work,
but the code-makers know that we are particularly rough on our porta-
ble equipment. Detailed National Electrical Code interpretation is beyond
the scope of this textbook, but know that it requires us to use “extra-hard
usage” cable for most portable stage equipment which equates to what is
called Type SO cable, except in special applications where the cable is pro-
tected, in which case “hard usage” or what typically equates to Type SJ cable
can be used. These are the bulky cables we complain about. Thanks to our
expert advocates on NEC Code-Making Panel 15, the 2020 NEC relaxed
the requirements for extra-hard usage cable and now allows us to use SJ in
more places. Durability is the goal here. The rules are intended to ensure
that cables will survive all the abuse we heap on them. Have you ever read
the warning label on a thinner store-bought extension cord like the one in
Figure 4.22? If you’ve done any (maybe all) of those things to a cable in the
theatre, now you know the answer to the question that starts this paragraph.
Figure 4.22 Close up of the label on a typical extension cord
C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 1 103
THE BASICS
Take a Breath: Electricity Essentials Refections
Allow yourself a fnal moment of Part 1 refection so that Electricity can sink
in before we move into a much needed diversion in Part 2. As always, take
a comfortable seat, close your eyes to settle, then refect and make some
notes on the following prompts:
• Electricity essentials: the “experts”, conductivity, circuits, Ohm’s law,

AC/DC, grounding, the power formula, cables and connectors
• Who knows what? Who will you call on when you need help?
• Which concepts apply to the work you are doing right now?
• Is there anything you’ve been doing with electricity that you didn’t
realize was hazardous?
• What will you need to explore more deeply as your career transitions?
• Where will you look for the knowledge or training about electricity
that you need to grow in your career choice?
104 C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 1
Pause, Step Back, Absorb,

and˜Refect
That was a lot of technical information, so let’s have an ample diversion

before taking on advanced technology. In Part 2, we will ponder some
more about keeping up, have an inspirational History Break and hear
from a Pro who has spent a lot of time ÿguring out how to help people
keep up with the technology.
Take a Breath: Strategies for Keeping Up with Technology Innovations
“Project: Current Events” earlier in the Chapter is Strategy #1 for keep-

ing up. If you haven’t done so yet, take a moment and sign up for every
e-newsletter you can. Be sure to look at realized production/project photos
and consider how audience tastes and expectations are changing. Pay atten-
tion to equipment and technology developments so that you know what
resources are headed your way and what manufacturers think the industry
wants them to solve.
Strategy #2 is to seek out a local shop, vendor, or larger venue and try to nego-
tiate some time with them. If they are not able to hire you and your fnancial
situation allows for it, you may be able to negotiate a work trade. Maybe you
can clean rental equipment in exchange for some time with the equipment,
or even just convince them to let you observe what the technicians are doing.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003022725-6 105

PA U S E , S T E P B A C K , A B S O R B , A N D ˛ R E F L E C T
Maybe the local producing venue or roadhouse will let you observe a focus
session or a technical rehearsal. Some people have a soft spot for eager stu-
dents, so just be respectful and give it a try. There are defnitely people out
there who don’t like to be bothered, but don’t worry about them. If someone
is dismissive, shake it off and fnd someone else to ask.
Lastly, Strategy #3 is attending industry trade shows, conventions, and con-

ferences. This requires some fnancial and time commitment, but if you can
swing it, they are a gold mine of all the technology coming onto the mar-
ket, as well as an opportunity to make contacts, update your perspective
and continue your education. Many events have work exchange programs
to offset costs and some companies even offer competitive sponsorships.
However you can get there, it will be time well spent. One of the most
popular and cost-effective ones is Live Design International (LDI). It is held
in Las Vegas in the fall, which makes it easy to get to and from, because
Las Vegas knows how to do hassle-free travel. It may be possible to fnd a
cheap roundtrip, non-stop fight to Vegas from your city. From some places,
you can take the frst fight of the day, share a ten-minute cab ride to the
convention center, spend the day exploring the expo foor and then fy home
that evening. Of course, if you can stay longer and can afford to go to pres-
entations, events and Vegas shows (which are of a scale unlike anything
else in the world), then do, but strategies like this can give you quite a bit
of bang for your buck. Other annual events to check out in no particular
order are: the PLASA Show, “the international event for the entertainment
technology industry”; Prolight + Sound at Messe Frankfurt fairground in
Germany; InfoComm, “the audiovisual and integrated experience event”;
the NAMM Show (National Association of Music Makers) and the NAB Show
(National Association of Broadcasters), “where content comes to life”. IES,
IALD, and USITT all have yearly conferences with expo foors and educational
sessions.
History Break: Tharon Musser and the Exceptional Year for Lighting,
1975
In 1975, a “short, blunt, straight-spoken, cigarette-smokin’, scotch drinkin’

lady from Appalachia” (Unruh, p. 61) grabbed theatrical lighting design by
the ear and hauled it down a fresh path. It would have been an extraor-
dinary year for the Broadway musical even if it weren’t for what she did.
Chicago and A Chorus Line fought it out for the Tony awards that year,
106 C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 2
possibly a sign of a sort of new renaissance for the Broadway musical that
year. Chicago had 11 nominations and A Chorus Line had 12, with both
lighting designers nominated. In the end, A Chorus Line took home nine and
Chicago went home empty-handed, which should cause you to take notice
if you know how popular Chicago is. The Appalachian woman who took
home the Tony for best lighting design for Chorus Line that year was Tharon
Musser. Her determination to realize that design is legendary.
Musser’s impact was so far reaching that until 2007 when USITT and Delbert
Unruh published The Designs of Tharon Musser, what I knew about her
were the stories shared by some of the “Musser University Alumni” – a couple
dozen lighting professionals who assisted her for nearly half a century and
went around telling the stories. Published interviews and information about
her weren’t common when I was starting, but the stories people passed
around made us all feel like we knew her. When The Designs of Tharon
Musser was published, those stories of a most unlikely Broadway star were
captured forever.
Figure 4.23 A Chorus Line (1975–1990 Broadway), music by Marvin

Hamlisch, lyrics by Edward Kleban, book by James Kirkwood, Nicolas
Dante, directed and choreographed by Michael Bennett. Shown: replace-
ment cast
Photofest
C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 2 107
Musser grew up in the 1920s in Roanoake, Virginia, in a childhood lit by

gaslight and candles. She found theatre at Berea College on a work assign-
ment. The Dean of Yale School of Drama rejected her frst application to
graduate school but, with help from Yale’s technical director, she got in
anyway and studied with Stanley McCandless. She challenged his methods
so contentiously that she later said she only fnished because she wasn’t
a lighting emphasis (she was offcially a technical director). “According to
Betsy Adams, Musser’s assistant from 1984 to 1985, Musser recalled that
McCandless told her she would never be a lighting designer. Nevertheless,
Musser learned from McCandless the essential requirements for successful
lighting design” (Unruh, p. 14).
Refect on this for a moment. Recall what I said in Chapter 2 about how
artists must root themselves in the facts and foundations as they are cur-
rently known and practiced, and from there develop their own expressions,
which might break those old ideas or transmute them. Tharon Musser, who
designed over 150 shows on Broadway, and was nominated for ten Tony
awards for best lighting design, winning three of them, started by mastering
the basics of the time while she fought them. This is an important contem-
plation for students and the teachers who guide them. Students question
and resist. It’s OK that they do and not worth taking personally.
So what about Musser and 1975? A Chorus Line was about to move to
Broadway and this seasoned designer decided this was her chance to get the
computer, or memory control board, on Broadway. Professionals working
in the feld at the time argue the signifcance of this moment because the
memory board was being used in places other than Broadway and it would
have happened eventually. But what has always struck me about this story
was the respect with which she approached the battle with the stagehands
whose livelihood depended on the manual work of the day. The story goes
that Musser set up a demo for them and eventually they conceded that it
was worth doing, but that they couldn’t do it manually.
I think it’s hard to overstate what this did for the artistic potential of lighting
or the respect that the union stagehands must have had for her and her
work in allowing it to happen at that time. It’s not that a beautiful design
can’t be done without a computer (it most certainly can), but this innovation
unleashed the imagination for our art form. In fact, the computer light board
allows us to do spectacular things designers couldn’t have dreamed of in
the 1970s AND make the nuanced moments that seem simple, but require
intricate programming to get them to look that way.
108 C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 2
If that’s not exciting enough for you, the story doesn’t end there. This
computer light board, which they had named Sam, blew up during pre-
views. Musser, two assistants and two operators scrambled madly to
recreate most of the design on manual boards while Steve Terry (whose
Pro-perspective you read earlier in the chapter) spent a week soldering
Sam back together.
When Tharon Musser passed away in 2005, Broadway dimmed its lights for
her. There is much more to tell, enough to fll a book, in fact. I encourage
you to check the nearest university library for a copy of The Designs of Tha-
ron Musser.
Our next Pro-perspective is by another friend and in°uential teacher.

Richard Cadena has written several books and taught countless tech-
nicians. His humor, warmth, and bear hug embrace of all the amazing
things technology can do are infectious. I asked Richard to share wisdom
on this topic of keeping up. He is another prominent ÿgure never too busy
to answer a question.
Pro-Perspectives: Richard Cadena, Author and Trainer: “The Future of

Automated Lighting Technology is Here”
Few things in life are more exciting than the anticipation of a live event
when the house lights go down, the crowd roars, and you get to press the
Go button on the lighting console with the frst downbeat. But getting to
that level can be challenging, especially when it comes to keeping up with
the technology.
Automated lighting hardware has steadily advanced since the technology

was introduced in the 1980s, but it might be starting to plateau. Soft-
ware, on the other hand, is just beginning a meteoric ascent. Heated com-
petition between manufacturers spurred innovation that led to brighter,
smaller, and more affordable (relatively speaking) fxtures, and that trend
continues today, mostly due to a rapid rise in LED technology. But it’s
starting to level off. At the same time, the control and management of
data for automated lighting systems is becoming increasingly powerful,
but also more complex.
C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 2 109
DMX has been around since 1986 and it is still the most common protocol
used to control automated lighting. Remote Device Management (RDM) has
been around since 2006 but is just starting to gain widespread acceptance
now that there are a number of handheld tools that can be used with the
protocol in order to remotely confgure and monitor lighting fxtures. It’s
likely to be more commonplace in the future, and so will many other soft-
ware tools.
There’s another software tool that has the potential to make a great impact
in the design and management of lighting systems. It’s a new open protocol
called General Device Type Format (GDTF), and it allows users to exchange
data between CAD (Computer Aided Drafting) software, fxtures, and con-
trollers so that the job of designing and confguring a large lighting sys-
tem is consolidated with as little redundancy as possible. Manufacturers can
develop GDTF fles for their fxtures and put them on their websites where
you can download them and import them into a CAD program like Vector-
works. The fle then brings with it all of the information about that fxture,
like the 3D CAD block and the DMX channel map, that you need to create
your plot and design your lighting rig in a 3D virtual format. Once you have
a fnished design you can export an MVR (My Virtual Rig) fle and import it
to your lighting console, and the console will then know the position of each
luminaire in 3D space and know how to control them correctly.
This may be the beginning of a new age of powerful software tools. Aug-
mented reality and virtual reality will soon become vital tools in the industry
to help to speed the design, programming, focus, and operation of lighting
and automated rigging systems. Software like ETC’s Augment3d and Vector-
works Spotlight AR tools have just appeared, and other developers are likely
to follow suit. Technology also exists that could enable voice commands,
and it’s a matter of time before other new technologies fnd their way into
our little industry. ESTA, the entertainment industry standards-making body,
has begun studying the possibility of creating a similar industry standard
protocol.
All of this points to the fact that those who are open to learning new tech-
nologies and can adapt quickly will be the ones who get to design, build,
troubleshoot, and develop systems for live event production. They are also
likely to be the ones who are fortunate enough to press the Go button on
the frst downbeat of the biggest shows around. And if there’s one thing
that never changes, it’s that pressing that button will always make the hair
on the back of your neck stand up.
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Now that we’ve had a moment to digest the basics and get excited about
all the things to come, let’s go back to the lighting brushes. Part 3 will take
us into the more complicated (but many would say, more fun) advanced
technology, and how we control it all.
The Lighting Brushes for a New World, Advanced Technology

Anything we read about advanced technology may be old by the time we
read it. For that reason, I prefer to focus on the vocabulary of it, reasons
for making different kinds of selections, provide some understanding of
how to evaluate innovations as they occur, and encourage you to do as
much of what I described in the “Keeping Up” section as you can. Light-
ing is an industry that you’ll have to work to keep up with, but it proba-
bly will never bore you.
As mentioned previously, for the purposes of our conversations, the
way we differentiate conventional/established vs advanced technology
lighting equipment is that most of the properties, attributes, or parame-
ters of advanced technology are controlled remotely; and now what we
might call an instrument is more likely to be called a ÿxture. The remote
manipulation part requires onboard electronics and a control signal to
communicate. Most have onboard intensity control and most should not
be powered through dimming circuits. Advanced technology by this deÿ-
nition includes a huge range of products, including moving lights, color
changers, and often things like atmospheric enhancement devices are
thrown in that aren’t lights at all, but make a big impact on light.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003022725-7 111
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Figure 4.24 A technical rehearsal of a production using advanced lighting technology

at the University of Arizona. Tori Mays, lighting designer; Connor Greene, program-
mer; scenery by Joe Klug and costumes by Ryan B. Moore. Also shown: Christie Kerr,
Tim Wils, Megan Mahoney, Aidyn Corkell, Zachary Zupke, and Michael Schulz
Moving Lights
For most entertainment applications, moving lights or movers are still
part of a blended inventory with conventionals, but there are a few users
who have shifted over to them completely. This trend is likely to continue
and may eliminate the need for dimming systems one day. As you learn
about the advantages and disadvantages of this technology, try to imagine
why some producing organizations are eager to do this and others are not.
Advantages of moving lights:
• A single light can serve a different purpose in just about every moment
of the show while a conventional light can only do what you initially
set it to do
Figure 4.25 Moving lights hang in progress

© Purple Moon – stock.adobe.com
112 C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 3
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• They don’t need to be focused (at the light)

• Changes can be made remotely and quickly – you don’t have to drag
a ladder or lift out, or wait for a break in rehearsal
Disadvantages of moving lights (relative to conventionals):
• More expensive (but remember that they can do more than one thing
throughout a show)
• Take more time and training to program
• Repair and maintenance require more specialized skills
• Sometimes we lose control of them, causing a moving light to steal
the scene
• Can be LOUD, even when they are not moving, because of their cool-
ing fans
• The motors cause variable power draw, and the more things a light
can do the more power has to be dedicated to it
The disadvantages list is longer than the advantages, but as moving

lights get cheaper, more reliable, quieter, and draw less power, the advan-
tages start to win out in more situations.
Movers really got their start in concert lighting and there are lots of
reasons for that beyond the exciting movement they can create. Ponder
the advantages and disadvantages relative to concert lighting. Bands move
in and out of performance venues quickly. What songs they perform on
any given night and in what order may change. The environment is inher-
ently loud. Because you don’t have to spend time focusing them, just a
small number of well-trained technicians who know how to program and
repair can direct local hourly labor to install and remove it. The gear can
be rented, so it won’t be the producer’s problem when it becomes obso-
lete. And if the band has a high proÿle, the tour might be able to get the
newest technology. Knowing this, the advantages start to matter more.
Text-based theatre, dance, opera, and academic institutions have all
been slower to embrace movers for reasons you might imagine. Ponder
the pros and cons again before you read on. These performance styles
shell out money on lights infrequently and keep them in their inventories
for a long time. They either produce shows over long periods of time or,
as in dance, have short tech periods and use standard or repertory plots.
Noise can a big factor in these styles, especially in opera. In this scale of
organization, having to repair lights or take them out of inventory for any
amount of time can have negative ÿnancial repercussions.
Moving lights aren’t often incorporated in architecture because the
installations are meant to be low maintenance for users with little tech-
nical training. The exception to that would be architainment or themed
entertainment, where technically skilled staff are likely to be on payroll.
C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 3 113
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Movies and television also have been slow to embrace moving lights,
except where theatricality seeps in. Movie versions of musicals famously
bring together theatrical lighting designers with cinematographers with
thrilling results, like in Chicago (2002) or Dreamgirls (2006), but this
is still not the norm. They have become relatively common place in
non-narrative television, like awards or reality competition shows.
Parameters of Moving Lights and a taste of DMX512

The most common controllable properties, parameters, or attributes of
moving lights (things that they can do) are:
• Pan (moving on a horizontal axis)

• Tilt (moving on a vertical axis)
• Zoom (size of the beam/pool)
• Soft/hard edge
• Color change
• Gobo change
• Gobo rotator
• Iris or shutter (beam shaping)
• Strobe
To control moving lights or other advanced devices with a light board/

control console, manufacturers create data proÿles that can be imported
into most lighting consoles. This simpliÿes programming in that you can
choose parameters from labeled menus to adjust them. You can create
your own proÿles and trouble shoot if you understand that each device has
a parameter “map” or what we call a DMX address map. DMX512 has
come up few times now and we’re getting very close to a more thorough
explanation of it, but for now just know that it is an electronic language
used to allow devices to communicate. Each parameter or variable of a
device corresponds to a relative number or set of numbers on its address
map. You might think of the addresses as the place you send a message to
that parameter to instruct it what to do. I say that the numbers are relative
because they will change depending on what the user selects as the starting
number, but the addresses for the attributes will always be in the same
sequential order for a device, because it is ÿxed by the address map.
To illustrate, if the user sets the starting address of the device to 001, then
the ÿrst parameter will be controlled by sending information over address
number 1 and the second parameter will be controlled over address number
2, and so on. But if the user sets the starting address of the device to 101, the
ÿrst parameter will be 101 and the second parameter will be 102 and so on.
Or if the user is diabolical, they might set the starting address at 42, making
the ÿrst parameter controlled by address 42, the second by 43, and so on.
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Figure 4.26 A technician changes a mover address

© guruXOX – stock.adobe.com
After that explanation, you may be asking yourself why you would ever
want to change the starting address and the answer is that if you want
to control your devices independently from one another, the starting
addresses have to be different. If you have two moving lights and you set
them both to the same starting address, you have only one place to mail
the instructions to, so they will always do the same thing. In fact, the user
has to be careful that the addresses don’t overlap because, if they do, one
address number would control different parameters on different lights.
Types of Moving Lights

Movers can be further separated into two categories: moving head and
moving mirror, also known as a scanner. A moving head has a ÿxed base,
but the entire rest of the light moves. A moving mirror light or scanner has
a ÿxed body and only the mirror moves.
With the falling prices for moving head lights, moving mirror/scanners
are used less, but they have their advantages. The most common place to
encounter them is in clubs because they pack some nice effects in a small
body and the mirrors can move very fast.
Moving head lights can be separated into spot (also known as a proÿle)
and wash ÿxtures, corresponding roughly to what you can do with ERS
type instruments versus Fresnel or PAR instruments. You can sometimes
tell the difference by inspecting them. The spot/proÿle ÿxtures, like ERS,
pack more options into the body and so are usually longer. The wash
ÿxtures, like Fresnels, don’t have as many components and so tend to be
boxier shape. It is always good to check the speciÿcations before making
any assumptions.
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Moving lights can have any of the main lamp types: incandescent
(much less common now), discharge and LED. Theatre/opera/dance
designers often choose incandescent ones when they want to mix them in
with incandescent conventionals. Given the choice between incandescent
and discharge, concert designers usually prefer discharge because they
tend to be brighter. If you can afford good LED ÿxtures that are bright
and do faithful color rendering, and are quiet, they’ll do a great job in
almost any application nowadays.
LED Lighting Fixtures

Take a moment to recall some things you remember about LEDs from the
earlier section Consider the Source. LED stands for Light Emitting Diode
and they are a kind of source, not an instrument type, but because of the
complex electronics required for them to operate, whenever they are in
an instrument, the instrument goes into the advanced technology column,
whether they are a mover or are static. Just like moving lights and other
devices with complex electronics, they should usually not be powered
through dimming circuits. LED instruments have DMX address maps just
like movers, and that will be true whether they are automated or static.
Each of the diode color groups in the light usually will correspond to an
address.
Figure 4.27 ETC ColorSource Fixture Family (LED)

Courtesy of ETC
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Color Changers
Color changers come in many varieties. Some are accessories you add to
an instrument and some are inside it. For static ÿxtures it is still common
(though becoming less so) to add a color changer in the front color acces-
sory slot of the light. As the name suggests, a scroller is a kind of color
changer that has a scroll or string of color ÿlters taped together and rolled
onto tubes. The tubes are attached to motors allowing you to remotely
wind and unwind them, moving the different colors through the light
beam. The intensity level on the light board tells the device where on the
string to scroll to. This technology is becoming obsolete as LED ÿxtures
take over the market with their onboard, almost limitless color changing
capability, but many companies still have them.
Other Kinds of Advanced Technology and Accessories

Color changing accessories allow users who have no need for or don’t
want to spend money on moving lights to add color changing capabili-
ties to their conventional inventory. A la carte accessories also exist that
enhance static instruments in other ways. Moving mirror devices can be
added to the gel slot of an instrument and allow the user to move the light
by remotely moving the mirror, much like in a scanner ÿxture. There are
also devices you can retroÿt onto an ERS that allow you to pan and tilt the
entire light remotely. You could conceivably add an automated yoke or an
automated mirror plus a scroller, along with an automated iris which can
change the size of the pool of light, and you pretty much have the best fea-
tures of a moving light, but for much less cost. If any one of the accessory
devices malfunctions, you can change it out, rather than having to take the
entire light out of service. As with scrollers, though, the descending cost
of moving lights is making this a la carte technology a thing of the past.
Figure 4.28 LED walls onstage preparing for image mapping

© Purple Moon – stock.adobe.com
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Figure 4.29 LED walls being used in a studio

© daniilvolkov – stock.adobe.com
One of the most exciting lighting innovations storming into entertain-

ment is the LED panel. Video content can be digitally fed into LED panels
to create a vibrant environment or background. There are a lot of reasons
to resist these in live traditional theatre, such as that their vibrance in the
hands of the unskilled designer or programmer can tend to dwarf per-
formers. For many live applications, though, LED panels can make magic.
Perhaps the most interesting place they are ÿnding a home recently is in
ÿlm, where they are being used both to look at AND as a light source, as
in 2017 re-make of Murder on the Orient Express during which most of
the story takes place on a moving train. The creative team placed LED
panels along the entire length of the train just outside of the windows. If
the train went through a tunnel or a wooded area, for instance, not only
would you see the tunnel or trees through the window, but the darkening
change in the video content would darken the light on the objects inside
the train. Search the internet for “Mandalorian stage”, which will bring
you to several videos explaining how that television show creates their
environments with LED virtual sets.
Projections and Other Digital Media in Live Performance

Projections, digital content and the rapidly emerging ÿelds of virtual, aug-
mented reality, and cross reality (VR, AR, and xR), as well as holographic
content and human-computer interaction (HCI) are providing oppor-
tunities for experiences we could never have imagined until recently.
Though designers like Wendall K Harrington have done beautiful pro-
jection designs on the stage since the late 1970s, live performance has
had a complicated relationship with media content for a long time. Often
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projections are used as a way of saving money on scenery or to avoid

making intentional decisions ahead of time. As more and more talented
media designers come into the industry, though, projections and digital
content are fulÿlling their unique potential within the live performance
design aesthetic rather than being a substitute for something that isn’t
there.
For lighting designers, projections can offer fresh opportunities for
collaboration but also a host of headaches. Producers will often try to
saddle the lighting designer with projections in order to avoid paying for
another designer. The projector is really just a light, right? Certainly excit-
ing compositions can be made by using projections as light sources, but
most projections are meant to be looked at, rather than to reveal the space
or objects in the way that light does. Content can be time-consuming
and expensive to put together so it is not always possible for a designer
to wear both hats. The inÿnite possibilities created by deciding to have
media content in a show can make it hard to arrive at a cohesive design.
If neither the scenic designer or the lighting designer have the knowledge
or have been contracted to do projections, then a qualiÿed projections
designer should be hired, preferably someone who has training in live
entertainment design. Aspiring lighting designers can strengthen their
employment prospects by learning to design projections and so I would
encourage you to learn as much as you can. Keep in mind that just as you
have the ability to both enhance or damage a scenic or costume designer’s
creation with lighting, a projection designer can easily support or wreak
havoc on yours.
So what is this con°ict all about? From a technical perspective,
designed light in the environment and light from the projectors tend
to compete with one another. Light in the environment, especially if it
is angled such that it lands on or bounces onto the projection surfaces,
can wash out the projections. If the lighting designer hasn’t thought
things through, very often they are forced to light more dimly than
intended. In a con°ict, projections tend to get favored over lighting,
probably because they usually take up a greater part of our ÿeld of
view. Even if you have no intention of designing projections, the more
you understand about them, the better prepared you’ll be to collabo-
rate successfully.
From a design perspective, consistency between projections and light-
ing is necessary to avoid compositions that don’t quite make sense. The
color, direction of highlight and shadow, and the general brightness should
usually be consistent from the lit environment through the projected envi-
ronment. Multimedia content can be changed more quickly than most
conventional light plots so if the designers aren’t on the same page they
can easily be working at cross purposes.
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An example of where this has gone awry for me was a production in

which I set up my plot to illuminate the stage environment (a beach with
palm trees) in a way that mimicked the sunlight in the projected images
that the scenic designer had selected. At one point during tech rehearsals,
the director bumped into an image he liked better, and had the projections
operator replace the one we had been working with this new one. Though
this kind of thing does happen with painted scenery, it never happens that
fast because of the time and expense associated with re-painting scenery.
In the new image, the sun was coming from the opposite direction and
the light in general had a different color quality. This meant that my high-
lights and shadows were going in the opposite direction and the colors
were not consistent between the three-dimensional environment onstage
and the two-dimensional background. The director was convinced that
it mattered more that the background image was “right” than that the
lighting onstage matched it, so I had to adapt.
In environments where labor and time on stage is expensive, such
derailments can be costly. If they are too costly, the lighting designer may
be left looking like they were the one who didn’t know what they were
doing. Collaboration is key.
Atmospheric Effects
Remember that light has to re°ect off something solid in order for us to
see it. In Figure 4.30, those beams in the air are only visible because there
is haze in the air, deliberately put into the space to reveal them. Hazers,
Figure 4.30 Atmospheric effects reveal the light in Noah Dettman’s design for
“Surface” for the University of Arizona’s Advanced Lighting Design class
Photo courtesy of Cy Barlow
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foggers, rain curtains and other atmospheric effects devices can bring atten-
tion to light in a way that makes light the subject. This is an aesthetic choice
that must be made carefully as it will pull attention from anything else on
stage. Revealing the beams often draws your attention to the source, rather
than to what is being lit. That’s OK as long as that’s the intention.
There are many options for atmospheric effects. Designers have to con-
sider how dense they want the particulate, how long (or not) they want
it to hang in the air, how much control they have over air °ow in the
space, etc. Producers must consider the health and safety of actors, crew,
and audience when deciding to use it. Actors’ Equity Association (the
professional actor’s union) can be a good resource for best practices as it
helps set safety standards for its members. Be sure to communicate early
in the process if you want to use atmospheric effects to ensure that your
artistic collaborators are onboard with this aesthetic choice and that your
technical collaborators are able to ensure proper protocols.
Take a Breath: The Big Bites Refections
Let’s have another mini-break to absorb the Advanced Lighting Brushes big
bites. When you feel settled, read each refection question one at a time,
then close your eyes for another breath or two to notice what surfaces. Jot
some notes and, when you’re ready, move to the next prompt.
• Advanced lighting brushes: moving lights, LED fxtures, color changers,

accessories, LED panels, projection, digital content, VR, AR, xR, HCI,
atmospheric effects
• What are the things to consider when using each of these advanced
tools?
• What kinds of advanced technology excite your imagination the
most?
• How will you take this new knowledge into your next design?
Controlling It All: The Evolution of Lighting Control

Someday when you’re scrolling mindlessly, take some time to geek out
on the websites of Dr. Eric Trumbull (Introduction to Theatre: A History
of Stage Lighting) and Bill Williams (A History of Light and Lighting). I
think it’ll be a surprise to you how far back in history we can trace ideas
about controlling light for artistic reasons. As far back as 1638, architect
Nicola Sabbatini suggested dimming light in the theatre by using pulleys
to raise and lower metal cylinders over candles. It may be an unusual
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place to start, but understanding what was solved and when will help
make sense of the technologies as they increase in complexity.
Dimmers
Fast forwarding three centuries after Sabbatini’s clever cylinder pulley
system, we arrive at electric dimming technology. A dimmer is a device
that controls the intensity or brightness of a light source. Until recently,
dimmers were primarily in the realm of live entertainment. Film and tel-
evision originally needed strong illumination levels for both visibility
and color accuracy, so they avoided them. Architectural lighting usually
doesn’t change much moment to moment, so they didn’t have much need
for them either. All of this is changing, but imagine what live entertain-
ment experiences would be like if the lights could only be on or off.
It didn’t take long after electric light was invented for people to start
trying to dim it and the ÿrst effective technology was the saltwater dim-
mer. If you recall our electricity discussion, you might wonder if that was
such a good idea. It probably wasn’t and it was replaced soon after with
the resistance dimmer and later the autotransformer dimmer. But it
wasn’t until the 1970s that we got where we are now, the SCR or silicon-
controlled rectiÿer dimmer.
Saltwater, resistance, and autotransformer dimmers all dimmed lights
by mechanical means, which meant that an operator had to physically
move handles at the dimmer. Electronic technology and the SCR changed
all that. Rather than driving or stepping down the voltage, the SCR works
by rapidly switching it on and off which affects how bright we perceive
the light to be. The most industry-changing advantage of this electronic
technology is that dimming could be achieved through an electronic sig-
nal command rather than a mechanical lever so dimming and control
could be separated. The SCR dimmer is also considerably smaller, which
meant that way more dimmers could ÿt into a much smaller container.
This new technology opened the door to amazing functionality that con-
tinues to evolve today.
Control Boards and Consoles

Once we could separate dimming and control effectively, the lighting con-
sole (also known as the board or the desk) technology race was on.
Let’s pause here to address the common beginning lighting student
question: “Circuit, Dimmer, Channel, Group, Submaster.˛.˛. what does it
all mean and why do we need so many numbers?” By now you may be
bumping into these terms in your work and an explanation will provide a
good contextual understanding of why light boards work the way they do.
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Figure 4.31 An ETC lighting control console

Courtesy of ETC
The circuit number is the number on the physical outlet that you plug
the light into. It isn’t that different than an outlet in your house, if the
outlet in your house had a label on it that corresponded to a number on a
breaker in your breaker panel. It's a number that’s given by the electrical
engineer who speciÿed those circuits.
Figure 4.32 Circuit, dimmer, channel, group pyramid
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Figure 4.33 Stage pin and locking connector circuit boxes

Courtesy of ETC
The dimmer number refers to a physical device that changes the inten-
sity of the light. It might be the same number as the circuit, but it doesn’t
have to be. In the early days of dimming technology, dimmers were much
more expensive than circuits, so it was often the case that a venue would
have many more circuits than dimmers. In such a conÿguration, a hard
patch panel allows the user to connect different circuits to any dimmer.
Patch panels aren’t seen much today, having long since been replaced with
dimmer per circuit systems in which each circuit is hard wired to its own
dimmer.
Things would be much simpler for technicians if we left it at that –
that is, if we as designers would just call up a light by its circuit or dim-
mer number. But these numbers have no relationship to what the lights
plugged into them are going to do for a particular production. For that
we create another layer of numbers that are organized around the design,
which we call a channel or control channel. Channels are virtual and held
only in the control console programming.
As plots get bigger, another layer of numbering helps speed things up
even more, groups. Groups are collections of channels, also virtual, that
the lighting designer can use to call up many channels all at one time.
Submasters too are collections of channels and have been around longer
than groups, but I think it’s easier to understand them in reverse order.
Submasters correspond to physical sliders, often called faders, on the light
board. They relate back to the earliest light boards when each channel
had a physical fader, so you needed another set of faders if you want to
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group them. As light plots got bigger, channel faders became impractical,
but submasters retained their usefulness. A common use is to put work
lights on a submaster and label it clearly so that anyone can slide that
fader up and get light, even if they don’t know the channel numbers or the
command syntax of the lighting console.
The last related word we need to.˛.˛. well, address.˛.˛. is address. In
the beginning, all lighting devices were plugged into dimmers and so
each one only needed one dimmer and one instruction to be sent to
that dimmer to control the light. As Steve Terry explained earlier in
his Pro-perspective, industry experts quickly had to come up with a
digital language protocol, or set of rules by which these instructions
would operate. They called this language DMX512 and it eventually
evolved into DMX512-A. The protocol worked well for what it was
designed to do but people quickly realized that they could control any
electronic device, not just dimmers. Other devices emerged that used
this protocol, which now meant that when we send a command via a
particular “dimmer” number on the light board, what is on the other
end might not be a dimmer at all. To mitigate confusion, we started
calling those numbers addresses instead of dimmers. As I said earlier,
it may help to think of each thing you want to control – whether it
be an actual dimmer, or a scroller, an atmospheric effects device, or a
parameter inside a moving light – as having its own address, or location
where the instructions get mailed to. When the light board sends out
an instruction to address 001, what receives it might be a dimmer or it
might be something else.
DMX512-A
DMX stands for Digital Multiplex and 512 is the number of addresses
or packets of command instruction that can be sent on a single DMX
cable. It didn’t have to be 512, it could have been something else, but
engineers who thought a lot about it chose this for technical reasons
that are beyond the scope of this book. A group of 512 addresses is also
known as a universe. If a light board had three DMX outputs (which was
common for a long time), it could control three universes totaling 1,536
addresses (512+512+512). Nowadays data more often runs through an
ethernet network, which can handle way more universes, so universes
now tend to be virtual (as opposed to being related to a single cable).
We still break them down into groups of 512, and more often than not,
we are converting back to DMX before we get to the device. We will
explore the other protocols that will someday make DMX512-A a relic,
but for now it’s still here and we still need to know some of the critical
best practices.
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Figure 4.34 and 4.35 Hands on a Hardbody at the University of Arizona. Wire-
less DMX was used to control the lights on the truck so that it could move
around stage without cables. Both the lights and wireless DMX receiver were
powered by 12V batteries easily hidden inside the truck. Shown: Adia Bell, Brett
Parker Dixon, Connor Grifÿn, Keenan Larson, Daniel Lopez, Devon Prokopek,
Dominique Ruffalo
126 C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 3
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DMX512 Recommended Practices

Our technical standard-bearers publish documents of recommended
practices and so you should familiarize yourself with the current prac-
tices before arranging your devices. These documents advise on rules like
the maximum number of addresses that should be carried over a cable;
the maximum number of devices on a universe before you need a signal
repeater; the maximum number of feet of cable on a universe; how con-
nections should be made (daisy-chained and not with a Y-connector); and
tell you that you should always terminate.
Termination is a practice of capping the end of that series of devices
with a resistor. The resistor absorbs the command signals when they get
to the end of the series, so that they aren’t re°ected back, eliminating
electrical noise and interference with instructions. Some devices have
onboard termination which you can set and others have to have a special
but inexpensive device called a terminator inserted.
If you’ve been around theatre lighting for a bit, you may say: “Wait!
This sounds like a headache, isn’t there wireless DMX?” Yes, there is! And
it works well for small devices like DC light bulbs in set practicals. There
are some large-scale examples with proprietary technology like the LED
costumes in Cirque du Soleil’s Michael Jackson One show in Las Vegas.
But remember that DMX is solely a communication protocol; the device
still needs power and so does the wireless DMX receiver that you’ll have
to put with it. The smallest light bulbs and the smallest DMX receivers
don’t need much power, but if you want the power to be wireless too, you
need a battery. The more power you need, the bigger the battery has to be,
which can be a problem if you want to put it in a costume.
The Alphabet Soup of Lighting Systems Control

Lighting Systems Control is another vast topic that points to many
employment opportunities. What follows is a mere introduction to the
dizzying acronyms, mostly to demonstrate they aren’t as complicated as
they seem. You can easily ÿnd more detail on the internet or by taking a
class, but hopefully this will help to orient.
Since you now know that DMX512 was designed to operate only on a
certain kind of cable and only in one direction – meaning that a control-
ler can send instructions to a device, but not the other way around – you
might anticipate what needed to be solved next. This led to the small but
signiÿcant shift when DMX512 was revised to DMX512-A and became
bi-directional. This then led to the next important acronym, RDM, which
stands for Remote Device Management. RDM is not a protocol or lan-
guage in itself, but an enhancement to the DMX protocols that allow
conversations between devices and a controller. RDM controllers also
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make it possible to change addresses remotely and for devices to tell the
controller about themselves and problems as they occur.
The explosion of acronyms really came when the industry moved to
running control over ethernet. New conÿgurations allow for thousands
of DMX universes to be controlled over one ethernet cable instead of
the single universe that can go over a DMX cable. The majority of the
acronyms we’re trying to keep up with today are simply different lan-
guage protocols for communicating with DMX devices over ethernet.
Art-Net, sACN, ETCNet, ShowNet, even GrandMANet are all simply
DMX-over-ethernet protocols. Most of them are manufacturer-speciÿc –
ETCNet is ETC’s, ShowNet is Strand’s, GrandMANet is GrandMA’s and
so on – but Art-Net is an open protocol and so is sACN, an ANSI stand-
ard. The “s” in sACN stands for streaming and it is an industry consensus
protocol for streaming DMX over a network. sACN doesn’t allow for
remote device management and so the last important innovation acronym
you’ll need to know is called RDMNet and it is simply another protocol
enhancement that allows remote device management within sACN.
Take a Breath: Controlling It All Refections
Let’s take another mini-break to absorb the Lighting Control big bites. When
you feel settled, read each refection question one at a time, then close your
eyes for another breath or two to allow things to surface. Jot some notes,
and when you’re ready move to the next prompt.
• Entertainment lighting control: dimmers, control, consoles, all those

numbers (circuit, dimmer, channel, etc), DMX, the alphabet soup of
lighting systems control (RDM, Art-Net, sANC, etc.)
• Why do we bother to control light?
• What do you need to know about dimmers, addresses, channels,
and control for the work you are doing now?
• What will you need to learn as your career progresses?
128 C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 3
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Color
What is color? To answer that, we have to ask: what even is light, for that mat-
ter? Color and light are technically a speciÿc kind of electromagnetic wave,
which are moving around us all the time. In Figure 4.36, we can observe that
Figure 4.36 The electromagnetic spectrum and the visible spectrum

© Peter Hermes Furian – stock.adobe.com
DOI: 10.4324/9781003022725-8 129
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at certain frequencies, we can use them to see through things, as in an X-ray.

At other frequencies, we can use them to heat things, as in a microwave. We
can use them to send video and sound, as in over-the-air broadcast. Within
that vast spectrum there is this small sliver of waves that we can actually see.
This is what light is and more importantly what color is. The frequency of the
waves re°ecting into our eyes dictate what colors we perceive.
Where is white? You may remember from your science high school
class what happens when you put a prism in a beam of white light. It
splits into colors. The reason there is no “white” light in the spectrum is
that we only perceive white when the whole spectrum of frequencies is
present. We see color when the spectrum is ÿltered in some way.
So then, technically speaking, color represents our ability to perceive
wavelengths, but I think lighting designer Stan Pressner said it best, that
color perception is a combination of “physiology, psychology and voo-
doo”. This is a great way to capture the truth about color perception as
part science, part individual experience, and part mystery.
Let’s say we have a full spectrum light source, which just means it
appears to emit all frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum of color. In
this case, the sun perhaps. Let’s say it hits a red object. Provided our eyes
have full color sensitivity, the red object re°ects all wavelength frequencies
in the red range of the electromagnetic spectrum, but absorbs everything
that is not red. It absorbs the blue, green, yellow, and orange parts of the
spectrum, so we do not see those colors, but we see the red that is re°ected.
This is why objects that have color like, say, your t-shirt in the middle
of the summer, get hot when the sun hits it, but things that are white stay
cooler. The color of the object is literally absorbing electromagnetic color
waves and being warmed by it.
Figure 4.37 White light becomes color through a prism

© miladrumeva – stock.adobe.com
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Figure 4.38 Absorption and re°ection of color in light

© designua – stock.adobe.com
This is an important thing for lighting designers to understand because

when we put a color ÿlter – or what is usually called a gel into a light –
we’re not so much changing the color of the light as we are ÿltering out
what we don’t want. There will be less light on the other side of the ÿlter
than what we started with. It’s also part of the reason that gel fades, or
even burns through in really saturated colors. The more color they have,
the more the ÿlter will heat and eventually the color fades. This is part
of the reason architectural lighting uses glass color ÿlters – they stand up
to the heat longer. Light sources that don’t utilize color ÿlters like LED
sources don’t use color ÿlters or subtract any light, but rather add it.
That color ÿlters subtract light is the reason that putting more saturated
color ÿlters on a light source doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get more percep-
tible color. Because we tend to see less color in dimmer light, piling more gel
can actually work against you. The way to get more color – particularly when
it is a saturated color – is to add more lighting instruments with that color.
Primary and Secondary Colors of Light

If you are studying to be a scene designer or painter, you may know that
the primary colors are red, yellow, and blue. When we mix red, yellow,
and blue paint together, we get black (or really mud, as any experienced
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Figure 4.39 Primary and secondary colors of light illustration
painter knows). You can now guess that this is happening because if the
mixed pigment contains all colors, it will absorb all wavelengths and
there isn’t much left to be re°ected back to our eye.
Figure 4.39 shows you three colors of light overlapping, which mix to
white in the center. What do you notice about those three colors? They’re
not red, yellow, and blue. Color isn’t an exact science and so changing the
medium changes the rules.
The primary colors of light are red, green, and blue (not red, yellow, and
blue as in paint), which you can remember by using an acronym we may
hear all the time when talking about video devices: RGB. Secondaries are
what the primaries make when they mix together in pairs: cyan, magenta,
and yellow (in light), which we’ll memorize as CMY. CMY is a term you’ll
hear in all kinds of lighting equipment color mixing contexts later, because
incandescent and discharge moving lights usually mix with secondaries
rather than primaries. LEDs usually mix in primaries, but the best ones
will add other colors to ÿll in the spectrum (to make them “smell right”).
If I were to put these three primary color ÿlters in the SAME light rather
than three overlapping lights in the photograph, what will I get? Mud, of
course. A bit of dim, colorless light may escape through the three gels and
re°ect off things that bright, but because I will have absorbed (subtracted)
all of the visible wavelengths before the light leaves the instrument, there
isn’t really much left to illuminate anything.
In this photograph (as in pigment color wheels), the primaries and secondar-
ies are across from each other and also mix to white.We call these combinations
(ones that additively mix to white) complements. Remember in the ÿrst History
Break, Stanley McCandless used complements set 45 degrees apart and on sep-
arate dimmers in order to mix to white, but get complementary shadows.
Complements
Let’s say I have two lights and I know that I want one of them to be
green, because there will be times in the show when I want to use just
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green, but I also want to be able to mix that green to white. What color
would the other light have to be? If you said magenta, you are right.
You choose the color on the other side of the primary and secondary
wheel. Green and magenta is an unusual combination of colors to use,
but one very common combination in lighting is blue and amber. Amber
is close to yellow and so when we mix them together we get something
close to white.
Getting the Blue Dress Blue

If I want a blue dress to be as blue as it can be, what color gel would
I want to put in a single light that lights it? It might sound like a trick
question, but it’s not. The answer is blue. But why is it that the blue
dress will look bluer if I put a blue gel on it than if I put white light
on it? It’s because when you put that blue gel in, the blue gel ÿlters all
colors except blue so only the blue in the dress is re°ected to the eye.
If the light is white, all colors in that fabric will be re°ected to the eye,
so it won’t seem as blue. Perhaps if the pigment in the threads used to
make the blue dress blue were purely blue, it might not matter, but as
any experienced costume designer knows, pigment color is rarely that
pure. This is also why color consistency in fabric matters. Costume
designers are often shocked when items of black fabric from differ-
ent batches are put onstage next to each other and don’t match under
bright light.
Consider another common real-life case concerning a blue dress. Often
in period pieces, designers like use amber light because it gives it what
some of us think is a “period” feel or a feeling that it has happened in the
past. What happens then when the costume designer puts the leading char-
acter in a blue dress? If you don’t know that’s what they’re planning, then
disaster. Luckily for us, the solution isn’t difÿcult and won’t impact your
design that much. The truth is that even a little blue light in the scene can
restore the color of the dress without turning the scene blue. See Figures
4.40, 4.41, and 4.42.
Lighting Skin and Skin Tones

All the same ideas of lighting surfaces apply to skin. Skin, however,
absorbs light more and in a less predictable way than inanimate sur-
faces. Light re°ects off the pigment in skin in the same way as it does
the pigment on an inanimate object, but skin pigment is much more
varied from person to person than is apparent under natural light. It
can also take more effort to know the cast’s skin than it does to know
the color of the set and costumes. Whenever possible, meet your cast
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Figures 4.40, 4.41, and 4.42 Getting the blue dress blue when your scene is warm.
The ÿrst image is lit with unÿltered “No Color” light from two lights 45 degrees
off center in each direction. The second image has warm ÿlters in each light, one
pink and one amber. The third image adds a blue light at a low level at an angle
directly in front of the subject. Pictured: Shannon Wallace
up close during your design process and do color tests when consid-
ering uncertain choices. If you are not in the same location, ask for
pictures.
As you will read in the perspective of lighting student Amara McNeil in
Chapter 7, our industry has neglected to spend time teaching students how
to skillfully light performers of color. You must take the time to learn how
to light the entire range of skin colors well and if you are a teacher demon-
strating color on skin in a lab, be sure to get models of many skin tones. The
permeable quality of skin means that it absorbs more than solid, inanimate
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Figure 4.43 Lighting a black performer in a white costume effectively. Shown: Vaune Suitt
Photo by Tim Fuller
surfaces. Dark surfaces absorb more light than they re°ect and likewise
darker skin absorbs more light than lighter skin. For these reasons, special
care must be taken for BIPOC performers to ensure that there is enough
light to see facial features. Backlight may be more critical than for white
performers, in order to ensure good depth separation from the background.
It is especially true that when black performers are in light-colored cos-
tumes, angles may need to be chosen that maximize light on the face and
minimize it on their costume. See an example of this in Figure 4.43.
In general, color ÿlters with pink tint re°ect in a °attering way off a wide
range of skin tones, so that can be a pretty safe choice if you don’t have
much time to work with the performers. Light with green or excessively yel-
low tints will usually make white and black skin look sickly. Amber is the
exception, which does have green in it, but usually more red than green and
so can be °attering when used skillfully. Some amber color ÿlters can turn
light skin orange and dark skin red at low levels, so use caution if what you
are lighting is likely to be dim or low contrast (known as low key in ÿlm).
Saturated colors are less predictable, so skin tests are a good idea if
you know you will be using them. I tend to avoid putting saturated colors
directly on the face for this reason, but if you have time in the schedule to
do tests, you can get some beautiful results. Because color is less apparent on
darker objects, well-chosen saturated colors can still feel natural while creat-
ing striking moods on BIPOC performers. For a study of bold color choices
for dark skin tones, I recommend the ÿlm Queen and Slim and the television
shows Insecure, Dear White People, and Empire. The particular brilliance
of cinematographer Ava Berkofsky’s lighting of black performers on Inse-
cure is the subject of several online articles and videos; do a web search for
“Lighting HBO’s Insecure”. See Figures 4.44, 4.45, 4.46, and 4.47 for some
good examples of both dramatic and natural lighting of BIPOC performers.
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Figures 4.44, 4.45, 4.46, and 4.47 Recent ÿlm and television examples of lighting
BIPOC performers. Dear White People (Net°ix); Empire (FOX); The Mindy Pro-
ject (Hulu); Fast Color (2018). Shown: Logan Browning; Terrence Howard, Taraji
P. Henson; Mindy Kaling; Gugu Mbatha-Raw
© Net°ix; Fox Network/Photofest © Fox Network; Hulu/Photofest © Hulu; © Lionsgate/
Codeblack Films
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Opponent-Processing Color Theory and Bleaching

Stare at that black dot on this oddly colored °ag and don’t look away for
one minute. After one minute, move your gaze quickly to the black dot in
the white space. What did you see? Did you see an echo of the regularly
colored American °ag in the white space? For some reason we don’t fully
understand, the mind tries to white balance each of these colors and it was
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Figures 4.48 and 4.49 Flag demonstration of opponent-processing color percep-

tion theory
© moonrun – stock.adobe.com (colors reversed)
doing that by way of inserting an opposite. These aren’t complements as

we deÿned earlier, but another set of pairs speciÿc to opponent-processing
theory. For green, it was putting in red. For yellow it was putting in blue.
For black it was putting in white. And it was doing it so aggressively that
you still saw those colors even when no color was in front of you.
Related to this is the concept of bleaching. After the eye has taken in
a color for a long time, the color sensing cells in the eye become fatigued
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and no longer respond to it. When I was in graduate school for lighting,
we would sit at the tech table in the theatre for eight hours a day for four
consecutive days with the director and go through the cues, painstakingly
adjusting a little here and a little there. The problem was that when we
got into the tech rehearsal each night, none of the color looked like what
we thought it looked like before our dinner break. This is one of the many
reasons not to get too “precious” with your cuing. Sometimes people who
don’t understand how the process works will want you to get it perfect
the ÿrst time they see it or want to keep stopping to adjust, but this is
usually a fool’s errand. The effective and professional way to set levels is
in broad strokes which you reÿne quickly over the course of the technical
rehearsal period. This does not mean that you are designing on the °y, it
just means that you get it as close as you can before you can see it and
then take time to carve in what you intended, like a sculptor. And be sure
to take your breaks so you know what you’re really looking at.
The Spectral Energy Distribution Curve or SED

Most color ÿlter information and sometimes LED ÿxture speciÿcations use
a graph called Spectral Energy Distribution curve or SED. The graph shows
the same range as the Visible Spectrum in Figure 4.36 with a curved line on
it speciÿc to that color ÿlter or device. The line tells you what colors of the
spectrum are allowed to pass (the high parts of the curve) and what colors
are absorbed (the low parts). Another important piece of information
somewhere in those color ÿlter speciÿcations is a transmission percentage.
This is its percentage of light transmission after the ÿlter has absorbed some
of the wavelengths. A ÿlter with a 40% transmission speciÿcation is going
to let only 40% of the light to pass through. So this gel is going to make the
light 60% dimmer than before you put it in. This is crucial to know about.
Here is a real-life example of how transmission might come into play. In
my design for Hands on a Hardbody, a show about a competition to win a
truck, we designed it so that the audience would be on three sides so they
would feel like spectators at the competition. For lighting to support that,
I wanted to be able to light the entire performance environment (includ-
ing the audience) the same. In other words, instead of having the audience
completely dark, as in most theatrical situations, I wanted to have color
continuity from the performing area through the audience area. For the
night scenes I wanted a deep almost ultraviolet blue and so I chose a color
ÿlter which has a 0.3% transmission. It ÿltered 99.7% of the light out.
Because of that low transmission, I had to put that gel in 38 lights around
the room to ensure that I had enough light for the deep color to read across
the entire space. I could have chosen a less saturated color and would have
needed fewer lights, but it wouldn’t have had that same feel. How did I
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know I needed 38 lights exactly? I didn’t. That was about how many lights I
decided I could afford from my inventory for the effect and then I had to do
tests to know if the color I wanted to use would give me the result I wanted.
LEDs and Color

LED ÿxtures mix color additively within the light, as opposed to when you
put a ÿlter in a ÿxture and take light away. When LEDs came onto the scene,
it changed how we deal with color for many reasons. In many ways it got
easier, because now you don’t have to predict how gels will mix and you can
change color instantly without ever leaving the light board. The downside is
that you have to be willing to spend money to get good color ÿdelity. Each
LED color emits a narrow part of the color spectrum, so in order to get the
full range of color, a ÿxture needs a variety of diodes. The more colors of
diodes in the ÿxture, the better range of colors you are likely to be able to get.
CIE Chart of Photosensitivity

Because of our eyes’ variable color sensitivity across the spectrum, the tra-
ditional color wheel is inadequate to illustrate the multitude of colors of
re°ected light that we can see. Scientists created a horseshoe shaped map
called the CIE Chart of Photosensitivity to better demonstrate this. You
may notice right away that there are more greens and yellows available to
us than there are blues and reds.
Figure 4.50 The CIE Chart of Photosensitivity

© Peter Hermes Furian – stock.adobe.com
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One of the things that is fun about this chart is you can actually plot your
color choices on it. It’s a little tedious, but it’ll tell you some things about
the range of color available when mixing your selections. Of course there
are computer programs that can simulate this as well.
The technical aspects of color that we have spent time exploring in
this chapter are more about getting yourself out of trouble than they are
about actually making artistic choices, which you’ll do with your heart.
In the next History Break, I’ll share with you my story of how some pros
impacted my use of color as a designer.
History Break: Masters of Color
This History Break is a bit different in that these folks made their ways
on to the scene much later in the lighting history timeline than most of
our other subjects and they are all still busy making their marks. I call
your attention to them because of the impact they had on me and oth-
ers by publicly teaching about their experiences with color in light. In
1998, designer Jules Fisher asked his friend Beverly Emmons to develop a
Color Lecture for Broadway Lighting Master Classes. She teamed up with
designer Clifton Taylor to develop it and, for that frst one, designer Stan
Pressner joined them. Beverly and Clifton each went on to do lectures and
demonstrations about color in light at conferences over the years and I
went to them anytime I had the opportunity. Here are some of the insights
I took away, along with some reasons you should hear them speak if you
ever have a chance. These are notes I scribbled many years ago and then
incorporated into my lectures, so it is impossible to know if I am quoting
them directly or paraphrasing. I attempt to honor the spirit of teachings as
faithfully as I can.
Beverly Emmons found lighting design through her studies in dance. She
has lit just about every genre of live performance including 22 Broadway
shows. She holds the distinction of being asked to re-light the entire Martha
Graham Dance Company repertoire, which for four decades previously had
been lit by Jean Rosenthal (from our Chapter 2 History Break). You can read
about her experiences and see some of the plots and paperwork from this
work on thelightingarchive.org and performingartslegacy.org.
Emmons struck me as a master of subtle color and spoke about using color
contrast with pale colors to evoke emotion, particularly if you have a small
inventory. In a takeaway that has affected every dance collaboration I have
ever had since then, Emmons said that when working with choreographers,
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you’ll glean much more from what they create than what they say. Spend
time with them while they’re creating if you can, and usually your work will
emerge organically along with theirs.
I saw Stan Pressner speak about color only that one time at BLMC, but now
I see him every year giving artistic and career advice to young designers
at conference portfolio reviews. He too has designed for just about every
genre, including television, and is currently as busy as ever.
Stan is the source of one of my favorite quotes mentioned earlier, that color
mixing is “a combination of psychology, physiology, and voodoo” and he
told me recently that that list should include “physics”. He talked about tak-
ing some of the mystery out of it by plotting your choices on the CIE chart
to see if you have the mixing potential you think you have, something he
learned from designers Tom Skelton and Craig Miller. In a recent exchange,
he emphasized that “all color is relative, in three ways: personal physiology,
cultural referents, and assigned meanings”.
I saved Clifton Taylor for last because he permanently etched his place in
history just recently with his exceptional book: Color and Light: Navigating
Color Mixing in the Midst of an LED Revolution, A Handbook for Lighting
Designers (2019). Please add it to your reading list as soon as you can. Color
and Light is the culmination not just of his years of experience as a designer,
but his years of lecturing about it and refning how to demonstrate the con-
cepts. You can view several of these demonstrations on the book’s website
and learn how to set some up for yourself.
The most revelatory takeaways for me from Taylor were about color hierar-
chy and contrast. It was through him that I learned that yellow-green is gen-
erally the most dominant color, even more so than clear or no color. This is to
say that yellow-green cannot be affected very much through mixing – it will
always stay apparent, no matter what color you try to mix in with it. He sug-
gests that you put the more dominant colors of your design in the backlight
for that reason. In terms of color contrast, he notes that blue backgrounds
will make foreground objects seem warmer and that red backgrounds will
disable your ability to light the foreground warm, because you will never be
able to compete with the warmth of red.
Color in light is a topic that will keep you learning for the rest of your career.
Be sure to get yourself in the room with these masters of color if you ever
have the opportunity!
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Figure 4.51 Four Quartets, a full evening dance theater work by Pam
Tanowitz based on the poem by T.S. Eliot; music by Kaija Saariaho; scenic
images based on paintings by Brice Marden; scenery and lighting design
by Clifton Taylor; costumes by Reid and Harriet; sound design by Jean-
Baptiste Barrière
Photo by Clifton Taylor of the premiere production at Bard /Fisher Center for the
Performing Arts
As we close on Chapter 4, I invite you once again to pause and allow it all
to take root in your mind. Since we took breaks throughout Parts 1, 2, and
3, the refection prompts for those will consist of the topics only – you can
decide what you’d like to think about or review. Grab something to make
notes with and make yourself comfortable. Close your eyes and bring your
attention to your breath for just a few inhales and exhales. When you feel
settled, read each refection question one at a time, then close your eyes for
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another breath or two to see what surfaces. Make some notes, and when
you’re ready move to the next refection prompt.
Refections
Part 1: The Basics
The technical standard-bearers

Safety in entertainment
The controllable qualities, properties, or attributes of light; the conventional,
established lighting instruments; electricity essentials
Part 2: Pause, Step Back, Absorb, and Refect
Strategies and thoughts on keeping current
Part 3: The Big Bites
Advanced lighting brushes: moving lights, LED fxtures, color changers,

mechanical accessories, LED panels, projection, digital content, VR, AR,
HCI, atmospheric effects
Entertainment lighting control: dimmers, control, consoles, control contain-
ers, DMX, and the alphabet soup of lighting systems control
Part 4: The Wind Down
• Color
• What are some things you remember about how we see
color?
• Were there new ideas about color in light that surprised
you?
• How will you handle lighting for less represented skin tones and
multiple skin tones in the same composition?
• What concepts will you take with you into your next design?
144 C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 4
THE WIND DOWN
Figure 4.52 Trailheads, The Brushes
C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 4 145
THE WIND DOWN
Figure 4.53 Trailheads, Technology and Standards
146 C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 4
THE WIND DOWN
Figure 4.54 Trailheads, The Trailblazers

“About.”˜ Beverly Emmons, Performing Arts Legacy Project, performingartsleg-
acy.org/emmonsbeverly.
American Cinematographer, ascmag.com.
ANSI, American National Standards Institute, ansi.org.
“ANSI E1.11 – 2008 (R2018).”˜USITT DMX512-A Asynchronous Serial Digital
Data Transmission Standard for Controlling Lighting Equipment and Acces-
sories, tsp.esta.org/tsp/documents/docs/ANSI-ESTA_E1-11_2008R2018.pdf.
Bennett, Adam.˜ Recommended Practice for DMX512: A Guide for Users and
Installers: Incorporating USITT DMX512-A and Remote Device Manage-
ment, RDM. PLASA, 2008.
Box, Harry C.˜ Set Lighting Technician’s Handbook: Film Lighting Equipment,
Practice, and Electrical Distribution. Routledge, 2020.
Davis, Jeff, Rennagel, Marilyn, and Delbert, Unruh.˜ The Designs of Tharon
Musser. USITT, 2007.
Essig, Linda. “Stanley McCandless, Lighting History, and Me.”˜ Theatre Topics,
vol. 17, no. 1, 2007, pp. 61–67. doi:10.1353/tt.2007.0008.
ETCP.˜The Entertainment Technician Certiÿcation Program, etcp.esta.org.
“Fundamentals of Lighting.”˜The IES Webstore – The Lighting Authority, store.
ies.org/product-category/education/fundamentals-of-lighting.
Gillette, J. Michael, and Michael McNamara. Designing with Light: An Introduc-
tion to Stage Lighting. 2020.
“IALD News.”˜ International Association of Lighting Designers, www.iald.org/
News/In-the-News.
IATSE Labor Union, Representing the Technicians, Artisans and Craftpersons in
the Entertainment Industry, www.iatse.net.
IES.˜Illuminating Engineering Society, www.ies.org.
C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 4 147
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InfoComm. www.infocommshow.org/event-info.
Landau, David.˛Lighting for Cinematography: A Practical Guide to the Art and
Craft of Lighting for the Moving Image. Bloomsbury, 2019.
LDI. Live Design International, www.livedesignonline.com.
Live Design International Show, www.ldishow.com.
Martin, Douglas. “Tharon Musser, Stage Lighting Designer, Dies at 84.”˛ The
New York Times, The New York Times, 21 April 2009, www.nytimes.com/
2009/04/21/theater/21musser.html.
McCandless, Stanley Russell. A Method of Lighting the Stage. Echo Point Books
& Media, LLC; Restored Reprint Edition, 2020.
McCandless, Stanley Russell.˛A Method of Lighting the Stage. New York: Theatre
Arts Books, 1932.
Moran, Nick.˛Performance Lighting Design. A & C Black, 2007.
NABET-CWA.˛National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, 24
Nov. 2020, www.nabetcwa.org.
“NAB Events.”˛ National Association of Broadcasters, www.nab.org/events/
default.asp.
“NAMM Show.”˛NAMM.org, www.namm.org/thenammshow/2022.
“NFPA 70®.”˛ NFPA 70®: National Electrical Code®, www.nfpa.org/codes-
and-standards/all-codes-and-standards/list-of-codes-and-standards/
detail?code=70.
PLASA Media Inc – Lighting & Sound America. L&S America Online, www.
lightingandsoundamerica.com.
Plasa Show, www.plasashow.com.
PLSN. Projection Lights & Staging News. plsn.com.
PR/Agency User Jun 14, 2021 7:11am, et al.“Broadway Lighting Master Classes Gal-
lery.”˛LiveDesignOnline, www.livedesignonline.com/special-report/broadway-
lighting-master-classes-gallery.
Prolight Sound – The Global Entertainment Technology Show, pls.messefrank-
furt.com/Frankfurt/en.html.
Protocol. ESTA. www.esta.org/Protocol/protocol.html.
Taylor, Clifton.˛Color & Light: Navigating Color Mixing in the Midst of an LED
Revolution, a Handbook for Lighting Designers. Quite Speciÿc Media, a Divi-
sion of Silman-James Press, 2019.
“TEA News.” www.teaconnect.org/News/TEA-News/index.cfm.
“The Lighting Archive.”˛The Lighting Archive, thelightingarchive.org.
“Theatre Design & Technology.”˛United States Institute for Theatre Technology,
www.usitt.org/tdt.
Trumbull, Eric. “A History of Stage Lighting.”˛Introduction to Theatre: A History
of Stage Lighting, novaonline.nvcc.edu/eli/spd130et/histlighting.htm.
TSP. Technical Standards Program. tsp.esta.org/tsp/index.html.
USITT. The United States Institute of Theatre Technology, Inc. www.usitt.org.
Williams, Bill. “A History of Light and Lighting.”˛LightingAssociates.org, www.
lightingassociates.org/i/u/2127806/f/tech_sheets/a_history_of_light_and_
lighting.pdf.
148 C H A P T E R 4 : P A R T 4
CHAPTER 5
Choose
After gathering a full plate of concepts and resources, you may be won-
dering how to put it all together. Chapter 5 explores processes that lead
us to choosing.
Approaching the Design

If design is deÿned by intention, how does the designer ÿnd an intention?
It is rare for a lighting designer to start with a blank canvas. We usually
begin with a story, music, theme, idea, or message as a starting point. How
deÿned the path is from that starting point will vary with the activity you’re
working on, the people footing the bill, and the people you are working with.
If there is a director or creator, much of the path may be deÿned by them.
A script analysis or dramatic structure class is required for many col-
lege theatre and sometimes ÿlm majors. If this isn’t your experience, I
recommend seeking one out, no matter what ÿeld you’re planning to go
into, because it will make you a better designer and collaborator, and pro-
vide you with a richer experience in your work. Designers who lack skill
in dramatic analysis may neglect to support deeper story objectives and
subtext because they don’t know it’s there.
For text-based work, script analysis begins, of course, with a reading
of the text. If time allows, I do a quick ÿrst read without thinking too
much about what I’m going to do with it and then put it down for a
while. Often the story will play in my subconscious and things will come
up organically that make me want to know more. On the second read,
I make notes about impressions and ideas, and organize any questions I
have about the writer’s intentions or story progression. I make note of
DOI: 10.4324/9781003022725-9 149

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requirements related to the Given Circumstances (as discussed in Chapter 3).

By then, taking a third read will get the idea engine going.
A nuts and bolts analysis usually happens during the second or third read-
ing. This might be a scene breakdown for text-based work, or a moment-to-
moment breakdown for non-text-based work, or a song or music changes
breakdown for music-driven work, or some combination of any of these. I
like to organize scene breakdowns in a database-style document in which I
can add columns when I come to realize that a particular work has a unique
question to be pondered throughout. For example, when designing the play
Reckless by Craig Lucas, I knew that I wanted the lighting in each scene
to echo or contrast the main character’s state of mind. She is on the run,
coping with the trauma of an absurd string of challenges completely out of
her control. In the script breakdown for that play, but not any other play,
I added a column titled “Rachel’s State of Mind”. I made notes as I went
through the script and it ensured that it in°uenced every decision I made.
When there is no starting text, as is often the case in dance, architec-
tural situations, experiential settings, or new work information has to be
gathered from the people generating the creation. As I mentioned in the
last History Break, when working with creators in movement-based ÿelds,
Figure 5.1 Lighting scene breakdowns
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I ÿnd that it’s better to watch what they are doing rather than have them
talk about it. That isn’t always possible if you aren’t in the same town, or
if you do a lot of different projects to make your living, but time spent
watching the work being made will inform you in ways that nothing else
can. A trust and a special connection develop. It is completely possible to
light something after being presented only the ÿnished product and that
can be the norm, but it’s a missed opportunity to be a part of the “mutually
conceived artistic whole”, as Jean Rosenthal’s biographers put it. If you
can’t be, or if there’s no work being made to watch, be sure to ask questions
that draw out the heart of the creation like “what does this work mean to
you?” rather than surface questions like “what do you think this should
look like?” It takes longer that way, but it’ll generate a better design.
If music is part of what is being created, the designer should try to let that
music get into their soul. Listen to it over and over again until you hear it in
your sleep. Designers who have their own personal relationship with music –
especially those who play an instrument – will see visual images and events
begin to take shape when they listen to the music. In every ÿeld, music changes
will often cue lighting changes. That doesn’t mean that lights should change
every time there’s a music change, but that every music change is an opportu-
nity to consider a lighting change. After you’ve been around lighting for music
for a while, you will feel it when a music change demands a lighting action. Be
sure your other collaborators are on the same page as you, though. It is not
uncommon to sense a big music moment in your analysis that is interpreted
differently by a choreographer or musical director.
Two good questions to ponder in anything you are designing are: “Why
will the audience stay until the end?” and “What can lighting do to support
the story, theme, goals, or intentions?”The ÿrst one will get at what the story
or message is really about, revealing the destination. The second deÿnes the
designer’s role and responsibility in the experience being created. More
granular decisions can be explored by continuing with the questions in the
“Objectives (or Functions or Uses or Impacts) and Properties (or Qualities or
Attributes) Analysis” we discussed in Chapter 4. These would include ques-
tions about how much Illumination and where audience attention should be
directed; how much does lighting need to support the Given Circumstances;
what is the Mood and what Color and Angles does it call for; what are the
Rhythms of the piece and how much will the lighting Change or Move to
match (or contrast) those Rhythms? Those questions will not be answered
all at once, nor should they be set in stone when they are answered, but it’s a
good idea to begin tugging on those threads early in the process.
Once the designer has a good grip on the story, themes, and/or messages
of the work, contextual and visual reference research follows. I intro-
duced this in Chapter 2 when I asked you to consider how to be more
informed than in°uenced. As I said then, contextual reference research
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is an intellectual exercise. We look for information about the author, the

period, locations, reviews and writings about past productions, and schol-
arly analysis of the text or literature. Most of this can happen through
web browsing and your library databases. I encourage the collection of a
“gluttony of information”, because most of it will be discarded, but all of
it will inform your process. It’s kind of like taking pictures, you have to
take many to get a few good ones. Keep what you ÿnd in a show folder or
bookmark them in your browser. There may be a moment in your process
when you realize the value in something you didn’t the ÿrst time and you
want to ÿnd it again. This part of the process may also include collect-
ing drawings and other relevant materials from the rest of the creative
and production team or other stakeholders. In architecture, this is most
closely related to the programming phase, as described in both the Fun-
damentals of Lighting Handbook and Fundamentals of Lighting book by
Susan Winchip. This is an especially critical phase in architectural design
where not having detail can be costly.
Visual reference research contributes to multiple parts of the process.
Abstract images with color, texture, and tone in°uence the emotive qual-
ity of a design as well as assist in the later choices around color palette
and angle/direction of light. Pictures inform practical questions like how
light from a campÿre illuminates the area around it, what light re°ected
off water looks like, or how we can see things at night or in the dark. Fine
artwork such as paintings, graphic art, and photography inspire choices
about how light can be effectively utilized for different dramatic situations,
Figure 5.2 Sample collages

Courtesy of Tori Mays, Noah Dettman, and Megan Mahoney
152 C H A P T E R 5
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locations, and different times of the day or year. As you do visual research
on the Given Circumstances, keep an eye out for situations where a writer
may have had light in mind when setting their story because it can deepen
your understanding of that source material. Consider the information in
these titles: A Long Day’s Journey Into Night.˛.˛. Wait Until Dark.˛.˛. The
Light in the Piazza.˛.˛. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This doesn’t mean
that we are obligated to design it the way the source creator imagined, but
we should be sure that diverging doesn’t work against us.
All of this research assists the designer in better communicating their
ideas. As with anything, you have to consider who you are talking to and
whether or not your references will inform them in the same way that
it informs you. Contextual references make for good conversation but a
scene breakdown, for instance, may not make sense to other collabora-
tors. Visual images are often shared amongst collaborators, especially the
other designers. One of the most tried and true designer communication
tools is an inspiration board or collage of visual references. This tool
can communicate both abstract ideas such as color, texture, tone, con-
trast, and composition, as well as speciÿcs, like how a particular moment
might want to look like. When you search for inspiration, I can’t empha-
size enough that you shouldn’t choose the ÿrst image you come to. One
of the great heartbreaks that the internet has brought design teachers is
when students web search something like “Victorian couch” and choose
for inspiration the ÿrst one that pops up. Good design emerges from
curiosity and an exploration of possibility. Ask yourself, why are these
choices the best ones I could make? Don’t stop looking until you have
a good answer. Even if you come back to the ÿrst one, you’ll be sure it’s
the best choice.
History Break: Jennifer Tipton and the “Conceptual Hook-up”
“One of my former students works on Broadway a lot now; he recently lit an

August Wilson play with 500 lights .˜.˜. If you put a gun to my head, I could
not light an August Wilson play with 500 lights,” refected Jennifer Tipton
for the 2006 book Sculpting Space in the Theatre (p. 140).
This is one of my favorite Jennifer Tipton quotes and it makes me laugh and
nod every time I hear it, but if you don’t know much about her, it might
lead you to some incorrect conclusions. My students read that chapter and
wonder what successful lighting designer wouldn’t be thrilled to have 500
lights for a design.˜.˜.
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Figure 5.3 Jennifer Tipton

Courtesy of Jennifer Tipton
Tipton was born in 1937 and started her career as a dancer. She began lighting
dance in the 1960s, lit her frst show on Broadway in 1969 and won her frst Tony
in 1977 (IBDB). She has designed at least 40 Broadway shows, hundreds of dance
productions, more than a few operas and even created a lighting installation
above the Hudson River. She has won numerous awards including the $500,000
MacArthur “Genius Grant” in 2008 and, as recently as December of 2019, the
Baryshnikov Arts Center’s Cage Cunningham Fellowship. The theme of the Cage
Cunningham Fellowship is artistic innovation, and Tipton intends to use the
$500,000 award in collaboration “with a set designer and a sound designer to
develop an immersive installation centered on the disintegration of the planet's
natural resources”. Tipton doesn’t need 500 lights for an August Wilson play, but
it isn’t because she doesn’t know what to do with a big inventory.
And what about Tipton’s student on Broadway? It isn’t diffcult to fgure out
who that was, but know that Tipton has many successful former assistants
and students. Even though he never studied with her at Yale, she is often
regarded as the designer who set Howell Binkley on his path. Binkley was the
LD for Hamilton and Jersey Boys, both of which he won the Tony Award for,
and a co-founder of the Parsons Dance company. Donald Holder, who won
the Tony for The Lion King, is one of Tipton’s Yale alumni, as is Robert Wier-
zel, who has won numerous awards and lit in just about every well-known
venue in the country.
Besides having the Cage Cunningham Fellowship to brag about this year,
Tipton herself is up for a Tony again, this time for the acclaimed Aaron
Sorkin adaptation of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. This is just two
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years after her nomination for the also acclaimed A Doll’s House, Part 2, an
award she lost to her former student Chris Akerlind for Indecent and she can
commiserate with Don Holder, who was nominated for Oslo. That’s right, in
2017, of the four nominees for Lighting Design (Play), one was Jennifer Tip-
ton and two were her former students. (See in references, “The Tony Award
Nominations”.)
One tool from Tipton I borrowed for students is what she called a conceptual
hook-up (also from Sculpting the Space). I call it the lighting needs inven-
tory to emphasize that it’s a good idea to have a sense of what is necessary
before you get too far down the road. It ensures that you have everything
necessary, but also that you are versed in how light inherently exists in the
work. Tipton describes her conceptual hook-up like this: “a list of what the
play needs with respect to light .˜.˜. We take our list and look at the space,
and then we go back and forth between these two things until fnally the list
represents what the play needs, in the context of what is possible” (p. 135).
The next time you work on a design, start with this exercise and notice how
it grounds your process.
I also credit Tipton for causing me to realize that at some point in your
studies you should take the time to sit with a single light coming from each
possible angle (one at a time) and fnd out what it evokes for you. Tipton
gave a widely attended talk on the mainstage of the 2008 USITT national
conference in which she did just that, talking about how she felt about each
angle of light. Much of it was what we might think of as basic information
like “backlight separates the performer from the background” and “side
light reveals dimension” but the exercise of making time to immerse yourself
in the feeling of each lighting angle can be inspiring.
Whether Jennifer Tipton earns a Tony in her 80s or not, you can be sure that
her infuence on our feld will go on for a long time. Be sure to connect with
her if you have the chance.
Laying Out the Light Plot

When I teach lighting design, whether to beginning or advanced students,
no matter how inspired they are or how conÿdent they feel about what
they have learned, things usually come to an awkward pause at this point
in the process. I hear something along the lines of: I understand how to
observe light, I have a grasp on the equipment, I’m inspired by the journey
of light as I envision it in the material, but I don’t have a clue where to
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put the lights. Don’t panic! This is perfectly normal. It has to do with the
fact that lighting instruments and technical speciÿcations don’t look any-
thing like the end experience we imagine creating. Generating technical
speciÿcations is a whole skill set in itself. Your ability to complete them
competently and professionally is likely to have an impact on getting your
career off the ground, but being good at drafting and paperwork isn’t the
same thing as being a good designer. You will have to learn how to do
the drafting and the speciÿcations, but don’t confuse those tasks with the
design. In Appendix 1, I’ll point you toward some resources and I strongly
recommend an entertainment drafting class, but much of it you will learn
assisting others who probably learned it the same way. In the meantime,
once gathered, reference research, process, and inspiration bring you to
decisions about what you want a scene to look like, and once you know
what equipment is available and where you can hang it, then deciding
where to put the lights isn’t as big a leap as you might think. This next
project will help you understand the through-line.
Project: The Mini-Lighting Design
A more detailed version of this project with step-by-step teaching instruc-

tions can be found in the Practical Projects for Teaching Lighting Design
(2016) published by USITT. It is based on what my teacher James H. Gage
called “The Photo Project”, but there are many similar hands-on picture-to-
lab projects out there. This version starts a step earlier, with a scene, giving
the experimenter something closer to the true design process.
For the least experienced, this works best as a group project because it puts
more brains on the task and gives them a taste of the ups and downs of
collaborative creation. So if you’re not in a class, grab some friends!
To realize this project fully, a full light lab or scale lab is helpful. A visualizer pro-
gram is useful for experimenting with possibilities before dealing with ladders
and wrenches. There are many visualize options now, ranging from user-friendly
to complex. I have always used Virtual Light Lab by West Side Systems because
of its relatively cheap cost and its easy learning curve, but there are far newer and
more sophisticated options available, like Capture, WYSIWYG, and Augment3D.
In a resource pinch, there are creative ways to do this project without a lab or
visualizer. The process is to read a scene, make some decisions about what
it should look like, fnd some visual references from which you can evaluate
angle and color, apply choices, work through some other possibilities, and
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play. You could do all that with just a scene, a search engine, some clip lights,
and some color flters if you had to.
Procedure
Step 1: Pick a scene. I recommend classic Shakespeare scenes like the

witches scene from Macbeth, the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet,
Othello in the bedchamber, or the frst forest scene from A Midsummer
Night’s Dream. Shakespeare scenes don’t always give as much directive
so there is more opportunity to think about light as it relates to the
spoken words and story. If you’re having trouble getting started, try
something more prescribed, like a Tennessee Williams piece, but you’ll
have more fun if you move away from those kinds of heavily described
works as you start to get the hang of it.
Step 2: Find reference images. Choose at least three photographs, paintings
or images that have a quality of light (in terms of angle, color, composi-
tion, contrast, etc.) that feel like what you think your scene should feel
like. It’s OK to use search terms for the mood, location, time of day, and
any other Given Circumstances, but avoid using search terms like the
title, playwright or characters, because you will end up with production
photographs, which just give you someone else’s answers.
Step 3: Evaluate the physical circumstances of light in your reference images.
If it is available to you, use a visualizer to move lights around and change
the colors to come to decisions about where, relative to an object in the
center of a space, lighting instruments would be located, and what color
each light would, be to create a lighting look inspired by your reference
images. Sketch out your decisions in some way that makes sense to you
can be referenced and updated when you are moving lights around in
real space. If you don’t have access to a visualizer, just guess where the
light is coming from and draw some arrows on a piece of paper. Such a
drawing is called a lighting key or an angle/color concept.
Step 4: Light your scene. In a physical light lab or in your living room with
clip lights or some other creative means of arranging light sources
around an object, place lights where you think they should go and
move them around until you match your inspiration image, or until you
run into something you like better. Don’t be attached to your original
ideas because you might stumble on better ones. You will quickly fnd
that lighting three-dimensional space has challenges that are not appar-
ent in a two-dimensional reference image, and that’s OK because that
is part of the learning experience of this project. Be sure to play and
experiment to get all that you can from each attempt.
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Step 5: Refect on your experience. What did you learn about physical space,
light, and color in this particular scene challenge? Show your fnal image and
ask the viewer what they experience. Did it communicate what you meant
for it to communicate? Why or why not, and what might you have done dif-
ferently to communicate more clearly? What did you learn about each step
in the process? What adaptations to the process might you make for yourself
next time around to get to an even more effective or effcient outcome?
Research 1
Research 2
Figures 5.4, 5.5, 5.6, and 5.7 Sample project submission images.
Student work courtesy of Kendall Phillips, Rachelle Fernandez, Cheryl Thompson,
and Rayrn Wintersteen
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Virtual Image
Final Light Lab Image
Laying Out the Light Plot (Continued)

If you put the Mini-Lighting Design Project together with what you’ve learned
about the different types of lighting instruments, knew what you had and
where you could hang them, you could light a scene. You could light several
scenes. If you’re working in a recorded or virtual medium in which you can
move the lights around for each scene, this may be all you need.˛.˛. Go design!
Now what happens when it’s time to light a whole show in a ÿxed
period of time with a live audience? This is when things get complicated
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and it will take a lot of work, study, and trial and error to master. The
good news is that there are lots of tips and tricks to guide you in getting
started.
In a lighting designer’s dream world, we would have enough space to
hang equipment speciÿc to each scene, or we would have magical light-
ing instruments that could make every kind of color and quality that we
wanted, or that could °y around the theatre quickly and quietly to where
we want them for each scene. Technological advances get us closer to
those dreams every day, but in the meantime, the reality of doing live real-
time performance presents constraints that we have to creatively manage.
It is rare to have a playing space compartmentalized enough, or physically
small enough – relative to the amount of space there is to hang lights˛–
in order to have every scene lit with its own set of instruments. Even
when you get that lucky, the need for the performers to travel between
the acting areas, or full stage moments like the bows, make it necessary to
ÿnd a means of lighting continuity across the whole performance space.
Even just the desire of the director to change their mind when they begin
transferring the blocking from the rehearsal space to the performance
space means that you usually have to construct your light plot ready for
adaptation.
If you do have enough space and equipment, or enough variable equip-
ment to light each scene with lighting instruments speciÿc for that scene,
then you should do it that way. This will give you the most interesting,
appropriate, effective, and personal design. You could start with a “con-
ceptual hook-up” as Jennifer Tipton describes, perhaps ÿrst prioritizing
your conceptual list in case you do have to make compromises, or just
starting at the beginning of the show and working your way through.
Assign lights for each scene until you’ve placed everything you need.
I’ll illustrate with the single-scene project example shown in Figures
5.4–5.7. That group determined that they wanted lights coming from
seven angles. They used two front lights, one on center, and one from SR;
two side lights from left and right each, one low and one high, and one
back light off center to SL. If the scene involves one person standing in
one place or in one small area, as in this project, one lighting instrument
from each of those angles would work. This may also be true in ÿlm
or television where large wash ÿxtures and/or close camera angles are
common. From here the team would decide which kind of lights to grab
from the available inventory (probably ERS or Fresnels), hang those seven
lights, color them, set relative levels, and their design is actualized!
If the space we are lighting is larger than this, however, the plot will
need to scale up. Very generally speaking, acting areas (or what we often
call focus areas) on a stage that are more than 8’ wide or deep will require
more than one light from each angle to ensure coverage across the area.
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Some angles require fewer sources than others. For example, the low side
light speciÿed in that project will cover considerably more area because
it is shooting across the space rather than being pointed at one area. For
me, I prefer that what we call focus points, the center of the acting area
where we stand to focus a light, be no more than 5’ or 6’ apart. This is
particularly important for front or face light, which is the angle or angles
from which the audience is viewing. The reason for that is that uneven-
ness in light is more likely to be noticed when we are looking at a per-
former’s face. Pools of light are brighter in the center and dimmer away
from the center, so if you spread your inventory too thin, there can be dips
in intensity. Since natural light doesn’t tend to behave like that, this can
be distracting and is usually the mark of a poorly constructed light plot
or a sloppy focus.
You might think you can thwart physics by choosing a lighting instru-
ment which projects a bigger pool of light, or by moving the light further
away, but remember that all other things being equal (instrument type,
wattage, etc.), smaller pools are brighter, bigger pools are dimmer. Relat-
edly, given the same type of lighting instrument, a light will be brighter
if it’s closer and dimmer further away, exponentially so. You can cheat
physics with a little cleverness, but at some threshold, your design will
just look thin and dim.
There’s really not a good way to get around the fact that the more area
you have to light and the more scenes you have to light, the more lighting
instruments you need and the more space you need to hang them. If a
production intends to use the entire space for multiple scenes, the ability
to light each scene in its own way diminishes.
To illustrate this in an exaggerated way for effect, let’s look at Figures
5.4–5.7 as an example again. Let’s say that this scene the team wants to
have lit from seven angles takes place across the entirety of a 40’ wide by
30’ deep stage; how many conventional lighting ÿxtures would have to
be hung? I mentioned before that certain angles can cover more area, so
you wouldn’t necessarily need a low side light for each area – maybe one
of those could cover the stage – but in order to look at this example in a
worst-case-scenario kind of way, let’s pretend that we do.
To keep our focus points no more than 6’ apart and light the entire
space, we need at least seven focus points across the space times ÿve
points deep. That’s 35 focus points times seven lights for each focus point,
which would be 245 lighting instruments for this one scene. There aren’t
many scenarios in which we could afford to use 245 lights for any one
scene. And if there were, say, ten scenes like this in this show, each one
using the whole stage, we’d need 2,450 lights, which is not possible. This
is an exaggerated example and most directors don’t stage like that, but
the challenge will lie somewhere between a tight acting area for each
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scene (ideal) and using the whole stage for every scene (a recipe for a
disappointing design).
One of the most efÿcient strategies for reaching a compromise between
what you’d like to have and what can physically be accomplished is to
work in systems. Dance, opera, and festival designers have this technique
mastered because they often use a single light plot not just for one show,
but sometimes many shows or even a whole summer of shows. When
done that way, the plot is considered a repertory, or rep plot. A system is a
series of lights coming from one direction doing the same thing, but each
light is focused to its own area. There might be a system of front light, or
a system of backlight, or a system of high side light from SL, etc. If there
is more than one color of that angle, we’d call it a different system. There
might be a high side blue from SL system and a high side pink from SL
system. If advanced technology is available, there might be a backlight
color changing system plus a backlight neutral system. With a light from
each system focused to each area in its own control channel, the designer
is able to light one area independently or many areas evenly. With two
colors from any given direction, the designer is able to light from that
direction in one color, or the other color, or the many options that exist
when two colors are blended.
You can understand now how working with systems generates more
options with fewer lights, but requires more compromise. For example,
maybe you have room for only two systems of high side light from SL.
Maybe you want to light one scene from that direction in one kind of
blue and another from that same direction with another kind of blue.
You’ll probably end up compromising by picking a blue that works well
for both, otherwise all you’ll have in systems from that direction is blue.
If you’re really clever, maybe one of those scenes only takes place in one
area and so you can hang a special – a light for just that scene – that has
the blue you want, freeing up your system to be the other blue. Clever
resource management is key. Color changing ÿxtures or movers help. The
low side lights in the wings often get a manual color change when the
curtain comes down between dance pieces for just this reason.
Lighting Teams, Organizational Structures, and

Why the Variations
Consider what you know so far about the industries we’ve surveyed and
why differences in organizational structure might exist. Certainly the scale
of the production is a big factor. Small independent ÿlms may have only a
few people producing the entire ÿlm, while a mainstream action ÿlm may
have hundreds of people in the credits. There are many small professional
theatre companies in which a single production person is the entire team
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(lighting and everything else), but a Vegas spectacular might have dozens
on the show crew itself and dozens more on the day crew.
A less obvious reason for the differences are the timelines a discipline
works under. For example, the dance lighting designer is often also the
programmer and light board operator, and there may not be a techni-
cal team at all. When this happens, it is usually because the company
uses a ÿxed light plot and the choreography may continue to evolve even
through the run of performances. A similar thing happens in the concert
industry in which the lighting designer is often also the programmer and
console operator, in part because the set list may not even be decided
until right before the performance and because the design is more °uid.
In contrast, in traditional theatre, opera, and other ÿxed location live per-
formance, the lighting designer locks in the design and then moves on to
their next project as soon as the show has opened.
For the most consistent organizational structures, we can look to the
areas that have union representation, contractors, or any specialists who
work under well-deÿned contractual, legal, or safety protocols. When
United Scenic Artists and/or the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage
Employees (discussed in Chapters 3 and 4) are involved and the scale is
large, you can be bet the job descriptions will be well-deÿned. Members of
the design team are generally not meant to touch equipment in the venue
and the procedures around labor are strictly controlled. This includes
both Broadway and regional theater rated LORT (League of Regional
Theatres) A, and where shows are worked on for long periods of time
before they open. In these situations, there will be at minimum a lighting
designer and a separate master electrician who direct the artistic and tech-
nical aspects respectively. An assistant and/or associate lighting designer
will almost always be on hand, and the master electrician also will usually
have one or more assistant master electricians. There will usually be a
Figure 5.8 Typical theatre and live, produced performance lighting team organi-
zational structure
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light board operator, who stays with the show after the rest of the team
moves on, often a separate programmer, and a large team of electricians.
Having technicians dedicated solely to programming is becoming more
and more common now, especially in musical theatre and spectacle pro-
ductions where the technical skill required to program is quite complex.
As we scale down in size of operation, or branch out into other related
live genres like opera, dance, certain kinds of event production, or the
variety of small scale spectacles and immersive work that are out there,
the job deÿnitions generally stay the same, there are just fewer people
and fewer assistants. A job that gets added to some situations is lighting
director. The title is such a convenient catch-all that you shouldn’t assume
anything when you hear it. It usually contains at least the administrative
responsibilities of a master electrician, with an expectation of design abil-
ity. In touring shows that don’t travel with their own equipment, the light-
ing director is usually someone who is expected to make design decisions
from venue to venue, but didn’t design the show. It can be a great job for
an aspiring lighting designer because they create the same design again
and again with a different set of gear at every stop. This is what I did for
STOMP for many years, and it’s how I learned what lighting equipment
can really do. In television, the lighting director is usually in charge of
lighting operations, much like a master electrician, sometimes reporting
to a designer, especially in live event broadcast, but often to the director.
They are usually charged with calling instructions to other lighting tech-
nicians during broadcast or recording.
Figure 5.9 Travis Hagenbuch (see Chapter 3 Pro-perspective) as Lighting Director

Courtesy of Travis Hagenbuch
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Architectural lighting design projects are usually handled by ÿrms

rather than individuals, so they will often have multiple lighting designers,
associates, and project managers. Because the projects often take place
over a long period of time (sometimes years), stakeholders may change
over the course of it. Speciÿc titles vary from ÿrm to ÿrm and usually
have more to do with a ÿrm member’s seniority than their speciÿc role
on a project. Nevertheless, job responsibilities on a given project are
well-deÿned before starting because the ÿnancial stakes and liabilities are
high. Architectural lighting designers may be hired by an architect or may
be hired by the building or project developers. Because these projects usu-
ally involve buildings that will be occupied by the users and the public
for years to come, they demand a greater degree of detail, planning and
accuracy than most of the other ÿelds. Building and safety codes, and
other kinds of legal mandates, coupled with the high expense of having
to re-do anything that didn’t go the way you meant for it to, mean that
this industry has some well-developed ways of doing things. The lighting
designers’ collaborators will be some combination of the architect, inves-
tors, contractors (from building to electrical to even the ÿnishers), equip-
ment suppliers, project managers, and electrical engineers. Architainment
and themed entertainment look similar to architecture organizational
structures because they have all these same considerations. Being able to
stay interested in projects for a long period of time and a love for precise
planning are a must if you want to work in these ÿelds.
As mentioned earlier, the person who makes artistic decisions about
light in ÿlm and video production is the cinematographer or the director
of photography, the “DP”. Which of these two titles is used is largely a
matter of the preference of the person holding the title. The reason for
the broader title than “lighting designer” is that the DP is also responsi-
ble for the camera department and the imagery of the ÿlm as a whole. In
Figure 5.10 Typical ÿlm and video production lighting team organizational
structure
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this medium, it would be hard to separate lighting decisions from camera

decisions and there isn’t much reason to. What matters in ÿlm are the
carefully crafted images captured in the frame of the camera, adjusted
and completed in the editing room, and then served on a screen for the
viewers many months later. It can be a long and painstaking process. Even
a student short in ÿlm school, often no more than a few minutes long, is
worked on for several months. Wide release ÿlms may be worked on for
years. Having a single person tightly control those processes is under-
stood to be the best practice. Unlike in theatre, where all scenes will take
place in the same space to be repeated for every performance, a ÿlm scene
can be worked on meticulously, recorded – maybe several times – and
then wiped clean or the team relocated for a new scene.
The lighting team on a ÿlm is led by the gaffer, whose job is similar to
the master electrician in live performance settings. The gaffer’s righ-hand
person is their best boy or second electric, similar to an assistant master
electrician. (Best boy is a term rightly on the decline as we move away
from gendered titles.) Alternately, these positions may be called the chief
lighting technician (CLT) and assistant chief lighting technician. Together
they lead a team of set lighting technicians, often called sparks. Film
also makes use of dimmer or light board operators, and more and more
are using programmers as they incorporate more complex technology.
If shooting is happening on location, the team may also have generator
operator. Unique to ÿlm and video production are grips, or hammers,
who support both the lighting and camera departments by building plat-
forms, handling special rigging, and managing diffusion and re°ecting
surfaces for the lights.
Take a Breath: There’s Not Just One Right Way to Do It
As you let the terminology and organizational structures settle into your
minds, this is a good time to remind you to not get to attached to any of
them. Take a breath and just for a moment let that information drift away.
You need to know the standards in order to be job-ready, but don’t hold on
to any of this too rigidly. Our felds are flled with people thinking that the
way they frst learned to do something is the way it should always be done.
This is not a healthy attitude for creative work.
I love effciency, so I’m the frst person to say, “let’s not reinvent the wheel”.
If a challenge has already been solved and there is nothing new to be gained
from re-examining it, then let’s adopt a previous solution and spend our
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energy on more meaningful things. But there is a line between not wasting
time and obstructing progress.
Be suspicious of conversation-ending weapons like: “we do it that way

because it’s the professional model” or “you have to do it this way or you’ll
never make it in the real world”. Hopefully I demonstrated to you in the
previous section that there is not just one “professional model”. Even within
a particular feld, scale changes everything and companies always have their
own unique cultures. People say these things when they are trying to control
the situation by diminishing the opposition. If we are to call ourselves crea-
tives, we should embrace useful change or at least not obstruct it.
I encourage you to get informed before you disrupt, but don’t settle for
answers that don’t make sense. When you have a good idea, build your
case. Thorough arguments don’t always win, but you can be sure that in
the face of institutional resistance, ones that aren’t thoroughly thought out
never will. Get yourself well-armed with information and analysis, then be
brave, patient and persistent.
The Collaborative Process

The collaborative nature of our work can be both a great joy and a big
headache. A student who graduated long ago reminded me recently that
during a tech rehearsal for a musical he was designing he said to me: “The
blocking is messing up my design.” And I said, “It’s not about you.” He
said he didn’t understand and was mad at me at the time, but it planted
the seed that changed his trajectory as an artist for the better. A dec-
ade later, he looks back and realizes how much better a collaborator he
became because we (his faculty) pushed back on him that night.
If your reason for wanting to do lighting is all “about you”, this is
probably not the right career path. To be sure, you will have to collabo-
rate with plenty of people along the way who do think it’s all about them.
You won’t often get to choose who you are collaborating with, at least
not early in your career, so it’s worth committing now to ÿguring out how
to work with all of them.
Working with Directors

Most of the time, the director’s name is at the top of the credits. Direc-
tors come in all personality types and temperaments, but the thing they
all have in common is that they are the ÿrst one to get credit or blame
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for the success of a creative work. It’s easy to forget that when they are
making seemingly unreasonable demands on your work. It’s also helpful
to remember that people aren’t always the best version of themselves
when they are under strain. This doesn’t mean that we excuse inappro-
priate behavior, but it does mean that if we can remember not to take
things too personally, we can avoid joining them in whatever suffering
they are experiencing. The time to tell a director they are being unrea-
sonable or that their demands are making the product worse isn’t usu-
ally in the heat of the moment. Unless you happen to be more renowned
than them, they are still the boss and it’s usually best to give them what
they think they want so they can see it. Stan Pressner emphasized this
about color disagreements in the master class you read about in the last
History Break. Color is something that everyone thinks they understand
until it is in front of them. And because color in light is one of the easiest
things to change, he pointed out that it is usually not something worth
battling over. (Of course, be prepared to change it back if you know
you’re right!)
For every challenging director you work with, you’ll have some that
are fabulous. Even with them, there will be moments of friction. A typical
interaction I and my students have with one of our favorite faculty direc-
tors, Hank Stratton, goes something like this.˛.˛. He asks for a change that
I tell him I think will not look like what he thinks it will look like. We
debate a bit, maybe get a little heated, and then I agree to try it. He’ll look
at it, pause, then say, “Is that what I asked for?” I’ll say, “Yep.” He’ll say,
“That’s terrible, isn’t it?” I’ll say something afÿrmative, but consolatory
like, “Well, it doesn’t look as bad as I thought it was going to.” He’ll laugh
and say, “Right, that’s why I’m not a lighting designer. Can we change
it back?” And we do. Occasionally it’ll go the other way and I’ll say, “I
didn’t think that was going to work, but it did.” And we keep it. This is
normal and healthy collaboration. It happens when all the collaborators
respect one another, don’t get too attached to their own ideas, and believe
that their work together is more than the sum of its parts.
Working with Other Designers

All of the above is true for working with other designers. Except for
in ÿlm where there is more centralized decision making through the
cinematographer, most entertainment lighting design involves other
designers (set, costume, sound, projections) who are more or less each
other’s equals. The set or environment designer will often take the
lead, which is a throwback to the days of scenographers who were
the central visual decision-makers, but also just a factor of them being
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the ÿrst ones who have to bring things to the table. No matter how
collaborative the team is from the beginning, the person designing the
environment has to create a framework before the other designers can
go very far.
It is crucial in creative teams that the collaborators allow each other’s
processes to breath. Collaborative creative work is both an introversive
and extroversive process in that each collaborator needs time to them-
selves to process ideas. If one designer in the group is too controlling, it
can disrupt the process of another. If anyone on the team is unengaged,
but then critical of decisions that were made while they weren’t paying
attention, that can sour the others’ willingness to be open about what
they are thinking. One of the more common train wrecks in a live per-
formance design process happens when people sign off on things they
haven’t taken the time to fully look at. This seems to happen more fre-
quently as remote design gets more common. Everyone on the team has
different due dates and are working on multiple projects. If they fail to
fully engage in the process because they are busy and their due dates are
further out, it can cost the whole team. As a collaborative artist, you
should be able to expect engagement, thoroughness, and a willingness to
communicate from your collaborators, and they should be able to expect
the same from you.
Working with the Rest of Your Team

A technical director I once knew had a sign over his door that said, “The
key to good leadership is to surround yourself with people who know
what they are doing and then let them do their jobs.” This is easier said
than done, but I’ve always found the spirit of it to be accurate. As with the
director being praised or blamed for the success of a creation, even though
they don’t have complete control over everything that happens, the light-
ing designer will be praised or blamed for the lighting even though they
usually can’t get it done by themselves. When I can surround myself with
people who understand how I work, who are as committed to the success
of a production as I am, we are most effective if I let them do their thing.
As with the interaction with the director I described above, I often have
terrible ideas that my team tries to talk me out of. Trusting each other to
be motivated by a desire to get the best possible design product is key.
The person in charge has to take responsibility for the decisions made,
but the more any leader can rely on and count on their team, the better
the quality of work will be.
Sometimes you will have people assigned to you who are in it for dif-
ferent reasons or maybe just aren’t up to where you’d like to set the bar.
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When this happens, you may have to make some judgment calls about
what can be accomplished. You may be able to go back to a producer
later to let them know that someone on the team wasn’t up to the task,
but in the moment, it’s still your responsibility to put a good product in
front of the audience. In a “not my ÿnest hour” moment after I had been
on the road for many years, a local promoter had cut so many corners on
the team and the equipment provided that I lost my temper. I said I was
going back to the hotel until a minimally qualiÿed crew was hired and
the rider requirements were met, and I didn’t care if we opened that night
or not. You can applaud my bravado if you want, but when I got back
to the hotel, I remembered the several thousand people who had paid to
experience the show that week and my employers who would be forced
to replace me if they had to refund those tickets. So I went back. I took
a deep breath, re-grouped the team and got something like the intended
design on the stage for the eager audience. Thankfully a management
debrief put policies in place to try to avoid such a thing happening again,
but I would not have been able to have that conversation if I had stayed
in my hotel room and let the show go down. Remember that this kind of
work is a team activity and that “it’s not about you”. Be passionate, be
ÿrm, but be kind and get the job done.
History Break: Jules Fisher, and Jules’ “Dos” of a Good Lighting

Design
In the Tharon Musser History Break, I mentioned that there were two leg-
endary lighting designs up for Tonys in 1975 when she won it for A Chorus
Line. In any other year, Jules Fisher would probably have had a Tony for his
Chicago design, which was also a signifcant leap for our industry in terms
of aesthetics. He won nine others, though, most recently in 2013, and was
nominated for many more. And because he also designed the lighting for
the flm Chicago (with his frequent co-LD Peggy Eisenhauer), his unique
mastery of design is captured for all time. Even if that weren’t the case, his
many contributions to the feld of lighting design ensure his place in the
history books.
In addition to his artistic achievements (from The Designs of Jules

Fisher)˜ – conceptualizing the “light curtain”, patenting the frst mov-
ing light, signifcantly advancing the abstract, or concept lighting design
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aesthetic, to name a few – Jules Fisher is credited with lighting design

fnally being recognized as its own profession by USA829, which took
years of wrangling.
Fisher created Broadway Lighting Master Classes in 1994, he has said, fol-
lowing his frustrations with higher education. He wanted a more intensive
experience taught by his many accomplished colleagues. You may remem-
ber a previous Break that this is where I attended the revelatory color lecture
by Jules’ friends Beverly Emmons, Clifton Taylor, and Stan Pressner. Fisher
would often kick off the event with inspiring welcome speeches. One of my
favorites from my notes is six short and sweet rules he shared for effective
lighting design:
1. Make it beautiful
2. Make it interesting
3. Find the unobvious
4. Reveal through contrast
5. Provide variety
6. Use the beauty of simplicity
Refections
• Intention, analysis, reference research, scene or moment breakdowns,

“conceptual hook-ups”, inspiration boards: What methods will you
employ to generate ideas and communicate with your collaborators as
you approach your design?
• Reference material, acting areas, angles, focus points, systems, specials:
How will you organize your resources as you lay out the light plot?
• Teams, organizational structures, time: What sorts of creative environ-
ments excite you and are you suited for? If you’re not suited for the
environments that excite you, how might you adapt to achieve your
dreams?
• Collaborating with directors, other artists and stakeholders, and your
team: What kind of collaborator do you want to be?
• What did you learn in this chapter that you’d like to know more about?
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Box, Harry C. “Chapter 1, Your First Barbeque.” In˛ Set Lighting Technician’s
Handbook: Film Lighting Equipment, Practice, and Electrical Distribution.
Routledge, 2020.
Ebrahimian, Babak A.˛ “Beverly Emmons” and “Jennifer Tipton.” In Sculpting
Space in the Theater: Conversations with the Top Set, Light and Costume
Designers. Focal Press, 2006.
Ebrahimian, Babak A.˛Sculpting Space in the Theater: Conversations with the Top
Set, Light and Costume Designers. Focal Press, 2006.
“Fundamentals of Lighting.”˛The IES Webstore – The Lighting Authority, store.
ies.org/product-category/education/fundamentals-of-lighting.
Jackman, John.˛ “Chapter 10, Advanced Lighting Setups.” Lighting for Digital
Video and Television. Routledge, 2020.
Keller, Max, and Johannes Weiss.˛ “Light in Painting.” Light Fantastic: The Art
and Design of Stage Lighting. Prestel, 2010.
Lampert-Greaux, Ellen. “Sweet Dreams.”˛LiveDesignOnline, 1 Jan. 2007, www.
livedesignonline.com/concerts/sweet-dreams.
League, The Broadway. “IBDB.com.”˛IBDB, www.ibdb.com/broadway-cast-staff/
jennifer-tipton-25927.
Libbey, Peter. “The Cage Cunningham Fellowship Puts a Spotlight on Light.”˛The
New York Times, 5 December 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/12/05/arts/
dance/jennifer-tipton-receives-cage-cunningham-fellowship.html.
Miles, Kristen (Press Contact). “Baryshnikov Arts Center Press Release.”˛ Bar-
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19_Fall/BAC_Cage_Cunningham_Fellow_Announcement_12.05.19.pdf.
Moody, James L.˛“Chapter 3, Staff and Design Associates.” In The Business of
Theatrical Design. Allworth, 2014.
Moody, James L., and Paul Dexter.˛“Chapter 4, Personnel and Certiÿcations.” In
Concert Lighting: The Art and Business of Entertainment Lighting. Routledge,
2017.
Moran, Nick.˛ “Chapter 4, From Text to Concept.” In Performance Lighting
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Practical Projects for Teaching Lighting Design: A Compendium, Volume 2. Syra-
cuse: United States Institute for Theatre Technology, 2016. Print.
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Shelley, Steven.˛“Chapter 6, Creating the Preliminary Lighting Section and Light
Plot.” In A Practical Guide to Stage Lighting. Routledge, 2016.
“The Tony Award Nominations.”˛The Tony Award Nominations. The American
Theatre Wing’s Tony Awards®, www.tonyawards.com/nominees/year/any/
category/lighting-design-play/show/any.
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Winchip, Susan M.˛“Chapter 11, The Lighting Design Process.” In Fundamentals
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C H A P T E R 5 173
CHAPTER 6
Do and Adapt
Chapter 6 will introduce you to “game time” – the seemingly too short
period of time we have to implement our designs, change things that need
to change, and manage the pace of it all in a way that enables the creation
to shine.
Coping with and Celebrating the Unexpected

One of the most difÿcult things about this business for us perfectionists
to accept is that, no matter how meticulously you plan, not everything
is going to go the way you anticipate. Even as the industry is developing
better and better ways for us to pre-visualize, this is still a mysterious,
abstract medium with many moving parts. Some of the choices you make
will come out the way you want, but some will not. Some will come out
the way you want, but not the way your collaborators expected. Some of
your collaborators’ choices will not come out the way you expect. Some-
times a great idea on paper isn’t so great when fully realized. And often
the process itself will materialize a better choice than you could have
dreamt up ahead of time. This is a normal aspect of creative work and
doesn’t mean that the ÿrst choice was wrong or wasn’t as well thought
out. The wrong lesson to take from those experiences is to think that the
discussing, planning, and decision-making early in the process is some-
how a waste of time. Or that when you have to change a choice you made,
you have somehow failed everyone. The question you have to ask yourself
is: “did that change lead me to something better than I expected?” The
DOI: 10.4324/9781003022725-10 175

DO AND ADAPT
answer, when we can see it clearly, is almost always “yes”. I can’t stress
enough that this is what makes collaborative creative work AWESOME.
Ours is a life of engagement and skillful action. We get to connect, adapt,
and grow. The sooner you learn not just to cope with but fully embrace
the challenging stuff that comes with it, the sooner you’ll receive all the
gifts this work has to offer.
Focusing the Rig – Getting the Lights “Right”

I read or heard somewhere that Richard Pilbrow once said that even after
designing hundreds of shows, whenever he walks in to focus the show, he
thinks, “This is the time they ÿnd me out.” Most new lighting designers
exhale when I tell them this. As I was writing this book, I reached out
to Richard to see if he remembered saying that and he responded that
he wasn’t sure, but that the sentiment was true. He added in that email
exchange that “I always thought that lighting was one of the most high
tension occupations of all. You start lighting after load-in and a wearying
focus, probably behind schedule, expected to deliver perfection instantly˛.˛.˛.
Or sooner, in front of your peers, all of whom wish you’d ÿnished already.”
And he went on to say: “in my youth I knew where the nearest loo to the
stage was in every theatre in Britain. Between focus and lighting [cue set-
ting] I’d always retire and throw up. Yes, insecurity lies at the center of
lighting design!!”
In my experience, the kind of catastrophic mishaps most lighting
designers are dreading are more likely to happen in your ÿrst few designs
than after you’ve done many, which is why school under the guidance of
a skilled teacher is useful. I always have that feeling when I design too,
but by the end of the focus, even when things don’t work exactly the way
I intended, I leave thinking, “Oh, right, I do know what I’m doing. Thank
goodness.” This is normal too. You have to learn to embrace the moments
of fear as part of the creative process.
Good preparation, risk assessment, and °exibility are the cure. Real-
ize that the most time-consuming part of focusing a light is getting to it
(which is one reason to be excited about automated technology). Clear-
ing the space and getting a ladder or lift into the area, or climbing to the
lighting grid or catwalk, usually takes longer than actually making an
adjustment. If my preparation is good, I’ll have an idea of which things
will fall into place easily and which might not. I will have a plan B or C
for the riskier choices. And I’ll be ready to try that B or C plan rather than
obsessing over why Plan A didn’t work.
Clear communication with your team is vital. A mutually understood
vocabulary and attention to what is happening leads to an efÿcient focus.
At the beginning of every focus, take the time to go over the plan, any
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challenges you anticipate needing to spend time on, your preferences for
order of operations, others’ preferences for order of operations, and the
vocabulary you will use. The common term, “working”, for instance, is
one that prevents frustration. Because our work is often done in the dark
or near-dark, the people calling a focus often cannot see what the focuser
is doing. When a technician has to spend a little more time getting the
equipment to do what the designer wants it to do, ÿrmly announcing
“working” will let everyone know that work is being done. The focus
caller can do something else for a moment or move to another focuser.
For the designer/focus caller, saying: “OK, pause. New idea now” is
one of the greatest communication tips I ever learned. (Thank you, Santa
Fe Opera.) Here’s why. Sometimes you will ÿnd yourself ÿghting with a
focus, realize the light isn’t going to do what you want it to do, and you’ll
decide to go to plan B. When your team is really committed to trying to
get what you want, they will not know you are changing the goal unless
you make it clear to them. The new instructions may not make sense
in the context of the original instructions and result is frustration and
wasted time. A momentary pause to wipe the slate clean will let Plan B
start fresh. These may seem like small things, but working with a well-
tuned focus team can be exciting, saves the producer’s money, and gives
you time back to work on the art of things. Precise communication is how
you achieve it.
The “Tech” Period – Getting It Done While Everyone is

Staring at You
During an interview for an article I wrote on contemplative practices
for designers, Maranda DeBusk, a graduate design student at the time,
joked, “the tech table is the nucleus for all negative energy. The lighting
tech table is always where everybody crowds, and everybody wants to
stand over your shoulder and everybody wants to tell you how to do
your job.˛.˛.” It takes a lot of courage to choose this work but eventually,
when you’re good at it, and if you take up quietive practices, you might
be a collaborator who makes that environment better. Maranda’s grad
school classmate at that time, Kristen Geisler, told a story about tech table
tension while assisting their teacher, Kenton Yeager, who is a long-time
meditator: “it was amazing to me watching him .˛.˛. He didn’t react to
it .˛.˛. He absorbed [the director’s] nervousness – sort of °ushed it back
out in that very calm way.”
The thing to remember about these moments is that the other peo-
ple in the room don’t really understand what the lighting team is doing.
Even if they have some understanding of how light works in art, they
rarely understand all that technical shorthand that the team is using to
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materialize the ideas. They have to relinquish control and that’s a scary
place for them when lighting can make or break their work. The more
you practice being the calm at the center of the storm, the more successful
you will be, and the more other people will want to work with you.
Being able to work calmly may be a factor of your quietive practices,
but being able to work conÿdently will depend on your understanding
of the technology and how you prepare. Don Fox is one designer and
teacher who has spent a lot of time thinking about how to prepare. His
Pro-perspective will lead us into live level setting proÿciencies.
Pro-perspectives: Don Fox, Setting Up the Console, and

Pre-Programming – “Making the Salad Bar”
I sometimes refer to pre-programming the lighting console as being similar

to making a salad bar. The chef will have the team chop vegetables, prepare
dressings, slice fruit, assemble cheeses and pickles. All of these things need
to be arranged for easy access using a layout best suited to the situation,
whether the scale is a gathering of a few friends, a fast business meeting
luncheon for 50, or part of a lavish wedding feast.
Likewise, it is valuable to pre-program the lighting console or show fle with

containers for all of the “ingredients” that we think we will want to quickly
access, arranged in an intentional manner, so that we can effciently manip-
ulate the light to serve the production at hand. Ideally console prep begins
with conversations between the lighting designer and the programmer early
in the production’s development. The conversation should include straight-
forward connectivity questions like which fxture personalities to use or how
granularly the LEDs should be patched, but also more complex preferences
like pre-programming facelight presets into inhibitive subs so that keep-
ing actors in isolated key light is more quickly achieved during tech. If the
designer is to serve as programmer then they can start a show fle ahead of
time using an offine editor for that console.
The consoles that I’m most comfortable working with are ETC’s Eos Family,
so I’ll continue to use that terminology here, but every major console on the
market has similar versions of these programming containers. Understand-
ing the capabilities, quirks, and syntax of the console is critical in being able
to make effcient choices during pre-tech preparation.
Lighting consoles already suggest the direction for this conversation with
keys, buttons, or storing locations with names like “Group”, “Effects”,
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“Focus Palette”, “Color Palette”, “Beam Palette”, “Int Palette”, “Preset”,

“Sub”, and “Macro”.
Decisions also need to be made regarding Show Control (both inbound and
outbound), user interface choices (including saved Snapshots, Direct Selects,
and onscreen Magic Sheets), Setup options (like default timings, home presets,
and marking options – often called Move In Black or MIB) and recording defaults
so that when you update you know exactly what ripple effect your changes will
have throughout the palettes, presets, subs, macros, and cues in the show fle.
How we plan to fll and arrange/number the recording containers and what
we choose as the console default behaviors will be greatly infuenced by the
kind of production for which we are preparing. The console prep for busking
(lighting on the fy, in response to live performance) a music concert will be
substantially different to the pre-programming we might do for a musical
theatre production to be left in the hands of the show crew (because we are
turning our work over to operators).
The approach to pre-programming the console will also vary according to

what kinds of fxtures will be in the rig. If a light plot has only conventional
fxtures, it doesn’t mean that the console prep for that show is any less
important, it just addresses different concerns. Even fully conventional rigs
will be much more easily handled if there are groups, subs, intensity pal-
ettes, and presets already envisioned and prepared for flling once the rig
is focused and level setting begins. For rigs of moving lights and LEDs, it is
critical to pre-program the console so that as much is done prior to tech as
possible. With pre-vis software available and focus tools like Augment3d
from ETC being built right into the boards, there is a lot that can be pro-
grammed prior to tech and then tweaked, rather than starting from scratch.
When giving consideration to your console setup, think about what the
show is going to require you to create quickly based on the visual language
that you and the director have agreed upon. Then, like a salad bar, make
sure you’ve got everything you need prepped and laid out so that you can
quickly serve up a fresh and tasty lighting design!
Some Common Live Level Setting Profciencies

In Chapter 4, we talked about basic lighting control in the context of
channels, groups, etc. In the last Pro-perspective, Don Fox added the more
advanced concepts of palettes and presets. These are all ways in which a
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lighting console arranges control information. Advanced programming is

beyond the scope of this book – and there are great tutorials and webi-
nars out there for every type of light board, so I won’t go into great depth
about any of that here, but there are some common strategies with which
you should be familiar.
Unless a design has less than a couple dozen channels, designers don’t
usually memorize channels, groups, or other containers. They number the
containers in ways that make them easier to recall quickly, and then use a
tool for fast recall a magic sheet.
The Hands on a Hardbody magic sheet in Figure 6.1 is one exam-
ple of a computer-drafted paper magic sheet but there are lots of digital
options and onboard console options. Each lighting designer has their
Figure 6.1 Paper magic sheet for Hands on a Hardbody

Drawn by Associate LD Daniel Kersh, after a template borrowed from his internship super-
visors Laura Bickford and Stacey Boggs
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own preferences about how they like their magic sheet laid out, but there
is usually enough commonality that any trained lighting person will be
able to extract information from it. In this example, the primary data are
the channel numbers, but there are graphic elements which aid in drawing
the designer’s eye to the right place quickly. Every choice in the layout is
deliberate, including having the backlight nearer to the top of the page
than the front light, because this echoes the physical layout of the theatre.
How a cue list is planned depends on designer preference and the scale
of the show. At a minimum, if an experienced designer were to be lighting
a small play with few cues and they were conÿdent that there would be
plenty of technical rehearsal time to set levels and reÿne them, they might
simply pencil into their script where they plan to have cues along with
some notes that help them remember what they mean for the cues to look
like. When the time comes, they take their script and magic sheet to the
tech table and start cueing. As production scale goes up and/or time to set
levels is tight, more preparation is required. What that looks like is highly
personalized, but I recommend (and for my students, require) a prepared
cue list. The more detail the designer thinks through ahead of time, the
fewer things they will have to decide while everyone is waiting, and the
more time they will have to make the design great.
For the extremely detail-oriented, there is a technique I employ called
dry cueing. Dry cueing involves guessing the level we will want groups or
channels to be at without seeing it. The levels will almost never be right,
but all the decisions of what ingredients are needed for every cue are
already made, so that when we sit down at the tech table, all we have to
is dial in the reÿned levels of those channels as they come on. These leaves
more time for the ÿnesse of the design (sculpting, timing, etc.), which,
for me, is the fun part. Be warned that dry levels should be very broad
strokes. You will rarely get them “right” before you can see them live and
you will later kick yourself for wasting the time trying.
Whether I am dry cueing or doing it live, I usually like to do it in this
order: ÿrst the background, then backlight. (Even in a dark cue you’ll
almost always want at least a little background and/or backlight because
that’s what separates objects from the background and keeps your per-
formers from °oating in space.) Next is whichever side or front light I
mean to be key; then whichever side or front light I mean to be ÿll; and
then specials or accents or scene-speciÿc touches. The starting levels are
usually in the 25–75% range (25 for ÿll and 75 for key). Never start with
anything at full or you’ll have no way to go up when you want something
just a little brighter.
When dry cueing, I don’t recommend spending time guessing levels of
color systems you intend to blend. Just set them both at the same level,
or set the color you know will be dominant at a higher level, and adjust
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when you can see it. No matter what system you are turning on, make a
guess, set it, and move on. Don’t agonize over it. Dry cueing is simply a
way to avoid starting from scratch, not a way of trying to win the game
before it has even started.
Presets and Palettes are more complex containers, which allow changes
to be made more globally in a show ÿle. This saves a considerable amount
of time when you are working at a large scale or have a large number of
repeating locations. It works like this. The designer sets a preset or palette
(depending on the syntax of the board and what the designer wants to
do with it), then creates a reference to that preset or palette in the cues
that need that particular set of levels (so maybe all scenes in a particular
location at a particular time of day, for instance). Then when the designer
is live cueing and makes a change, that change gets made for all the cues
with that reference point. Or another use would be on tour where the rel-
ative spatial relationship between moving lights and a focus point might
change from venue to venue. If each cue that uses the same focus point
references a focus palette, then you can simply update the focus palette
and every cue will be automatically updated.
The tools Cue Only vs Track are concepts that keep beginning design-
ers up at night, but everyone will tell you that it’s not hard once you put
the time in to understand it. To demonstrate what these two choices mean
and why you would choose one over the other, let’s go through a com-
mon scenario. You are in tech rehearsal and you have already set levels
for a sequence of cues within a scene. As the scene progresses, it doesn’t
change location or time same time of day, but needs several cues because
it requires small changes in selective focus. As the tech rehearsal is hap-
pening and you are somewhere in the middle of that sequence, you decide
to adjust the color of the background – maybe it doesn’t feel enough like
night. Everybody loves the change and it is agreed that that is the right
background color for this scene – the whole scene. If you change it in
that cue only (hence the syntax “cue only”), then when the next cue in
the scene happens, the color will change back. Until you have embraced
tracking, there will be an awkward gasp, a °urry of activity at the tech
table and everyone in the room wonders if you know what you are doing.
The director thinks: “I thought we agreed that was the right color, why
did the LD change it back?” You didn’t “change it back”, you just didn’t
change it forward, but only the lighting people know the difference.
Tracking the change avoids this.
This makes sense, right, so why should it be scary? The scary part is the
time-consuming mess created when you track something BEYOND the
scene you are working in. It will happen to you at some point and it will
be stressful to clean up, but once you understand how tracking works,
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the time you occasionally spend cleaning up a mis-track will be much less
than the time you would have had to spend adjusting each individual cue.
The key to avoiding tracking errors is another command tool usually
called Block. Blocks often go on a scene transition cue, or if there is no
transition, then the ÿrst cue of the next scene. Blocks should go wher-
ever there is a signiÿcant shift in overall levels, because that’s where the
designer is most likely to want a tracked level stop tracking. Think of the
block as a wall stopping any new level barreling toward it. It prevents a
change of level IN the blocked cue AND beyond. And if you are tracking
backwards (often called Trace), the block will prevent tracking back into
the last scene. There are more nuanced kinds of blocking functions on
some boards, but this is usually how it works. If you have blocks in the
right places, whenever you are about to update a cue with a change you
made, you can just pause for a moment to determine if the change you
made should be a one-time change (such as a special coming on) or a
change for that whole scene. You can even pause to check for where the
next block is and insert or remove blocks before you update. If it’s that
rare one-time change, you activate the cue only function, but the rest of
the time, you just enter and let it track. The new level will track through
until it hits a block. It’s really that simple and you will get used to it
quickly. If you make the wrong choice (and you will sometimes), and you
realize it right after you hit enter, just “undo”. And remember, if you ever
track something into a scene that you don’t mean to, you can always track
it back out again. So there’s nothing to fear!
Editing in blind – so called because you cannot see the changes happen-
ing, as opposed to live (both are menu choices on most light boards) – is
another intimidating but necessary skill. This usually happens because the
rehearsal has moved on, but you didn’t get to make a change you wanted
to make live. If you’re thinking ahead, you may realize that a change you
made in a cue needs to change in several more out-of-sequence cues. In
the earlier example of the background color change for instance, if that
look is repeated again later in the show, the change may need to be made
there too. A real pro anticipates those necessary changes and would like
to have them made before the rehearsal gets to that moment, so they
make the changes in blind or not live. Another “pro-move” is to do notes
in blind while other departments are working. For example, the rehearsal
might be paused for an automation challenge that needs worklight, which
leaves the lighting designer on pause. A pro takes advantage of this time
to make whatever edits that they are able to make in blind.
Knowing when to ask for a hold (a stop in the rehearsal) and when
to take a note is another skill to cultivate. If you don’t ask for the holds
you need, you may not be able to get the note done accurately, but if
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you ask for too many holds, you won’t have a real-time sense of what
you’ve got, and other departments may not be able to get done what
they need to. There are a number of factors to take into account. Will
you be given the time you need to do the note if you don’t call for a
hold now? Do you need the performer in place to make the change? Do
your collaborators need to see change? (Either because you need their
agreement or because they will get nervous if they don’t see you mak-
ing changes. This often happens with directors who don’t know their
designer well. They may ask for a change and if they don’t see it happen
at that time, they may get nervous about whether or not it will get done
or look like they imagine.) Is the note simple enough that you can do it
now or does it require some problem solving? Or does it require a work
note, like a re-focus or physical color change to see the ÿnal result?
Can you do this note in blind next time someone else needs a hold?
Not everyone agrees with this, but I usually say if you don’t really need
the hold, don’t call for it. Some designers feel entitled to hold for every
little thing, but I’m not one of them. I ÿnd that excessive holding makes
it hard to see what I’ve created in context and I work efÿciently in blind
anyway, so why would I want to drag out the rehearsal unnecessarily
or counter-productively?
The last conceptual skill I want you to think about is letting go. Jules
Fisher is often quoted as having said that “designs are never done, they
just open”. What I’m NOT suggesting is that you call your design “good
enough” when there is still time left, but what I am suggesting is that
you be intentional about when you call your work “done”. In the pro-
fessional theatre model, a show is meant to be frozen once it has its
ofÿcial opening. The idea is that at that point, the cast and show crew
need to be allowed to do their job for the paying audiences without
chaos of a new idea. There are many other models, dance being one of
them, where changes might happen during the run of the production.
This works in dance because dancers usually remember a change without
needing much repetition, the performance runs are usually shorter, and
the light board operator is often the lighting director or designer. In the
professional theatre model, it is expected that changes will happen and
be rehearsed during the preview period, but I have seen many examples
in academic theatre in which changes were made but NOT rehearsed,
resulting in the audience seeing a change on opening night that didn’t go
quite as expected. So context matters. Be sure to take a risk assessment
and ego-check before you make a big change late that doesn’t have time
to be rehearsed. If a change will have a big enough positive impact that it
is worth the risk, be extra attentive that everyone else has the time they
need to adjust.
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History Break: Kevin Adams, Rule Breaking and Innovating
Before Kevin Adams’ rise to prominence, there were a few “common sense”
rules in lighting: (1) lighting is best felt and not noticed (meaning the goal
is to affect people, but don’t call attention to yourself); (2) never use fores-
cent lights onstage (mostly because you can’t dim them, so there can be no
nuance, and because the snapping on and off will be distracting – the same
went for neon and, at the time, LEDs); and (3) make the best design choices
for the material and only for the material (meaning what you did before
doesn’t matter because it’s not about you, it’s about the show).
In an interview for Live Design magazine in 1998, Adams said that when he
took a lighting design class as an undergrad he learned something “which
put me off for a long time, was that lighting shouldn’t be noticed”. He
defnitely didn’t take this rule with him. He won his frst Tony for the 2007
musical Spring Awakening with a design that included forescent, neon, and
LEDs. In another interview for Live Design several years later, he said he
didn’t use some of that equipment in his third Tony Award-winning design,
2010’s American Idiot, because had already used them in Spring Awaken-
ing, and that he didn’t use certain “aggressive” effects in Hair because he
wanted to use them in American Idiot.
Kevin Adams didn’t just ignore the “common sense” rules, he crushed
them, and he was lauded for it. It was time, and he was the designer to
meet the moment. It may have been easier for him because he didn’t major
in lighting in school and he didn’t get to Broadway by assisting other prom-
inent lighting designers. Both of Adams’ degrees are in scenic design, and
in much of his work it isn’t apparent where the scenic design ends and the
lighting design begins. He uses light and the lighting instruments themselves
as part of the environment. He wasn’t the frst to do it – Jules Fisher, who
Adams has said inspired him, became known for using light environmentally
many years earlier. But Adams made his mark doing it well and defantly. It
is also true that Adams’ groundbreaking designs were for groundbreaking
creations. Spring Awakening, The 39 Steps, Next to Normal, and American
Idiot each brought a fresh performance approach to the stage and needed
the LD to make fearless design choices.
Kevin Adams is an accomplished photographer and his website is worth a

tour for its spectacular visuals. Be sure to experience his designs live and in
context if you have the chance, though, because the archival shots will never
do his creative contributions justice.
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Refections
• Ideas that evolve, collaborators that have new ideas, things that just
don’t work the way you planned: What strategies will you employ to
ensure that you enjoy the ride?
• Turning the lights on for the frst time with your team: What will you do
to ensure that everyone has the information that they need when they
need it and that you are ready to make decisions about instruments
that don’t achieve what you were going for?
• The “hot seat” at “game time” (tech week/on-set): How will you keep
your focus and what kind of person will you be when nervous collabo-
rators are gathered around you? What skills do you need to learn and
practice to ensure that you meet you the requirements of your technical
rehearsal schedule?
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Adams, Kevin, www.ambermylar.com/Kevin_Adams/welcome.html.
Barbour, David. “The Unexpected Kevin Adams.”˛ LiveDesignOnline, 1 Nov.
1998, www.livedesignonline.com/unexpected-kevin-adams.
“Five Questions for Kevin Adams, Lighting Designer.”˛LiveDesignOnline, 1 April
2007, www.livedesignonline.com/ÿve-questions-for-kevin-adams-lighting-designer.
McMills, Anne E.˛The Assistant Lighting Designer’s Toolkit. Routledge, 2022.
C H A P T E R 6 187
CHAPTER 7
Refect
If we take the time after each endeavor to self-re°ect, we fuel growth.

Chapter 7 examines some of the ways to do that.
Markers of Success
Before you can decide if you were successful or not, you need to decide
what success means for you. Is it a big award that you want? To be writ-
ten about? Praised by your loved ones? Or your colleagues? Big pay-
days? Big audiences? A cheering crowd? An affected viewer? Apparent
social impact? Successful students? Making meaningful creations with
just-as-dedicated collaborators? Ponder that while we explore some
considerations.
Even if we’re not in it for the money, unless we are independently
wealthy, there are a few things most of us have to do in order to be able
to keep doing what we love. The broad question for me are: did I accom-
plish what I meant to accomplish? Did my work contribute to the broader
work that it was a part of? And did my collaborators and I get where we
meant to get? Was whoever was footing the bill satisÿed with what they
spent their money on? If the people I worked with had the opportunity to
work with me again or recommend me, would they?
This is a challenging business to be in. The demands are high and
we spend long hours together. I’ve often heard designers say that when
they’re interviewing assistants, more than anything they’re wondering if
they can sit at the table with them for hours, days, and weeks on end.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003022725-11 189

REFLECT
Some people can become negative under strain and that can make others
wonder if what they’re doing is worth it. You know who the people are
that you want to work with. How can you be the person that they want
to work with?
Learn to Seek Out and Receive Criticism

The question of how well you contributed to the story or intention can
be a trickier question than you think. It requires that you be willing to
see from multiple viewpoints and make sense of contradictions. Some
creative people will tell you to just do what you do and let the audience
take care of itself. There’s an expression: “What people think of you is
none of your business.” There are contexts in which this expression makes
sense, but it is dangerous advice to take before you’ve learned your craft
well. Ask people what they think and learn to be informed by it. Don’t
be offended if they “didn’t get” what you were trying to do, rather ask
yourself why they didn’t get it. What could you have done differently to
better take them along on the journey?
In the project “Stories with Light” in Chapter 3, I invited you to look
at Joan Marcus’ website for production shots in which something about
light told you something about the story. Try this with your own work.
Show someone a lighting look you have designed or a photo of one and
ask them what they think is happening in the moment. If they are ready
for this kind of question, ask them what about light might have caused
them to draw that conclusion. If they understand what it means, ask for
observations about the composition, contrast and especially the tone (all
discussed in Chapter 3) you have created. Does what they see match what
you were going for? You could ask speciÿc questions around the choices
you made in the context of the things Light Can and Should Do for your
creation (also from Chapter 3). Can they see what they are supposed to
see? Is their eye drawn to what you meant for it to be? Do they have some
sense of the story, theme, or intention? Etc. Or you could use Jules Fisher’s
rules as discussed in Chapter 5 and ask if it is beautiful and/or interesting?
Unobvious? If you have several moments of the same show, ask them if
they see some variety? And so on.
This clinical exploration is one way to take some of the anxiety out of
receiving critique. Another is to remember that you don’t have to agree
with what you hear and that even though negative critique may be an
indicator of how successful you were in that project, it isn’t necessarily
a re°ection of what you can do next. It’s quite the opposite, because if
you can openly receive criticism and honestly re°ect on it, your chances
of succeeding increase tremendously. From my years of reviewing stu-
dent portfolios, I can tell you that the students who can receive feedback,
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REFLECT
converse comfortably about their work, and tell you what they would
have done differently are the ones who are ready to thrive.
Documenting Your Work

For archival photographers, the most important subject is the performer
and second is the environment. Light for them is a tool to achieving good
exposure and contrast, but not always the subject. For your portfolio,
light has to also be a subject. Re°ect back on production shots you have
tried to evaluate, perhaps again from the Stories with Light project. What
sorts of camera shots allow you to see what you needed to see in order
to evaluate the lighting? Closeups? Wide shots? Centered shots? Angled
shots? High horizon line shots? Low ones? Highly exposed shots? Dark
shots? You probably realize that a variety is most useful and that having
only one kind of shot doesn’t tell you much.
Consequently, it’s a good idea to learn to take your own shots. It can
be hard to prioritize this when you’re trying to get the design done, but
may be your biggest regret if you don’t. This takes ÿnancial commitment
because you’ll need a camera – one that works well in low light and high
contrast situations. There is skill involved in shooting low light images
that are not grainy or out of focus, so take a class in camera techniques if
you can. I shoot in manual setting and raw format (as opposed to jpeg).
Manual, so that I can live adjust depending on the relative light levels of
the scene, and raw, so that I can make more precise adjustments to the
pixels later. Even the best cameras today cannot see what the eye can see
and so post-developing involves correcting for that. One of the most com-
mon things you’ll do is bring the exposure up on the shadows and down
on the highlights to resolve the high contrast of theatre lighting which the
camera doesn’t usually resolve on its own. If you have a camera phone
and haven’t tried this already, play with those functions. You’ll see that a
tiny amount of adjustment on the shadows and highlights can make a too
dark and/or too washed-out image look right again. If you have access to
Adobe Photoshop software, another good tool is content-aware ÿll. This
will allow you to remove the head of someone interrupting the bottom of
your frame or the cable that was hanging down the night you shot.
Ready to Do It Again?
Now that you know what success means to you, have documented your
work and gotten feedback on it, it’s time to do it again. The next design
will be even more exciting. You have made choices, evaluated the out-
come, and now you’re ready to make new choices. Never stop learning,
trying new things, and re°ecting.
C H A P T E R 7 191
REFLECT
History Break: Who is Missing?
A proper history of signifcant lighting designers could fll several books. The
History Break subjects in this book are all people who impacted my career
and whose stories I brought with me into the classroom. There are many
more infuential lighting designers whose stories could impact your work if
you explore them: Martin Aronstein, Abe Feder, Peggy Clark, Tom Skelton,
Gilbert Hemsley Jr., Richard Nelson, John Gleason, Arden Fingerhut, Howard
Brandston, Chris Parry, Howell Binkley, Patricia Collins, Shirley Prendergast,
Natasha Katz, Peggy Eisenhauer, Ken Posner, Don Holder, Brian MacDevitt,
Peter Kaczorowski, Robert Wierzel, Rick Fisher, Allen Lee Hughes, Kathy A.
Perkins, Ken Billington, Paul Gallo, Paule Constable, Neil Austin, Jane Cox,
Luc Lafortune, Max Keller, Bill Klages, and James L. Moody. I also suggest
you check out Fred Foster, Sonny Sonnefeld, and Anne Valentino. These are
people whose impact I have some knowledge of and there are surely many
more I haven’t given their due honor.
Now I want to dig deeper into the question of who’s missing, making the
transition with some of my own self-refection.
There’s something wrong with the fnal inventory of people I have chosen for
the History Breaks and Pro-perspectives. They are all white. I explained how
I chose the History Break subjects; they are people whose work impacted
mine over the years in direct ways. I read their books, saw them speak
at conferences, or were introduced to them in some way by the people I
worked with. The Pro-perspectives list started with my strong network of
former students and colleagues who I knew would write with a voice that
was uniquely theirs. In the frst outline draft of the book, it quickly became
clear that women were not well represented in the line-up of “pros”, but
that part wasn’t hard to solve. I have plenty of successful professional female
colleagues, they just aren’t as outward-facing as my male colleagues and so
they were not the frst ones I thought of. I tell you this because it is a good
subject for us all to refect on – people who keep quiet often go unrecog-
nized unless we challenge ourselves to look further. It is important in all
things that matter that we push past the frst answer we come to.
What wasn’t immediately clear to me was that there wasn’t a single BIPOC
lighting person I know well enough to call on. I’m sorry that I didn’t wonder
until I started writing this book how the few non-white students I have had
over the years must have felt doing these reading assignments and never
once reading about a person who they identifed with in that way.
192 C H A P T E R 7
REFLECT
If you are white, as I am, it is a little too easy to convince yourself that BIPOC
lighting professionals aren’t there. No matter how you approach a search,
you won’t fnd much diversity in our feld. A look through the list of lighting
design winners on the Tony Award website won’t yield a single apparent LD
of color, and only one Black LD who has been nominated.
There are historians, scholars, and organizations better qualifed than me to

explain systemic racism, classism, sexism, and ableism in the entertainment
industry, and the corrosive impact it has had. I’ll point you to some of those
resources throughout this chapter and in the References and Resources but
it isn’t enough to know about it, we must also check our own responsibility˛–
either direct or complicit – in this situation.
I’ll give you a couple of examples of my own moment of clarity in the hopes
that it helps you think about these things. First, the easier one to fx.˛ .˛ .
A young female student talked with me about her love of entertainment
technology, but refected that the books written about that technology were
written using he/him pronouns, which she felt was an unintentional but clear
signal that the industry still belongs to the men. Second, the one that kept
me awake for a long time.˛.˛. A young Black female student talked about
arriving at her assistant lighting designer job before the lighting designer she
was working for, and being the only Black person in the building. When the
LD arrived, she noted that he was “so unapologetically Black” and people
loved him, but it made her realize how hard she had been working to min-
imize herself before he arrived. As a woman and a non-gender-conforming
gay person myself, I am familiar with this phenomenon on some level, but
not to the degree that a young Black female student has to face it when she
walks into a venue. I realized the courage she has to have and how many
young Black designers we must have lost because they had no interest in
feeling like this work they love was being done in someone else’s house. It
is not OK and we have to do better. How can we make sure that the house
belongs to anyone who is qualifed to be there? The solution will have to
come from many directions, but everyone can and should contribute.
Please check out these resources (full sources follow this chapter): We See
You White American Theatre (website); Production on Deck (website); BIPOC
Arts (website); USITT EDI Resources (webpages); LORT EDI Resources (web-
pages); “A Conversation on Diversity and Anti-Racism in Entertainment
Design” (online video); “No More 10 Out of 12s” (online video series). There
are many more, but if you start poking around here, you’ll be off to an illu-
minating start.
C H A P T E R 7 193
REFLECT
Learn how to check your bias. We ALL have bias. We unconsciously get
along better with people who are like us and we tend to select people and
situations that are familiar and don’t challenge our assumptions or our
comfort. Not consciously excluding people who are different from us isn’t
enough. Unless we make the time to explore, invite, and celebrate voices dif-
ferent from our own, and actively use our infuence to make space for them,
we will help to perpetuate only what is already there. And unchallenged
bias guarantees that those with decision-making authority will continue to
reproduce more of the same unless consciously and intentionally choosing
to disrupt it.
Another story that may surprise you.˛.˛. A number of years ago I was orient-
ing students who had signed up to operate followspots for the semester’s
musical. One student spoke up that she was legally blind. My frst reaction
was that this couldn’t possibly work and the faculty around me reinforced
that reaction. Even if she could see enough to do the task, the grid in the
dark is a hazardous place even for those who have 20/20 vision – I couldn’t
imagine how she was going to navigate it. The student could see light and
color, though, and she was used to living in a world that didn’t look to her
the way it did to me, and she was determined to do this. In order to meet a
moment like this, you have to be ready to take the time. We started by work-
ing through the obstacles one at a time and we got there. The student had
a great learning experience and so did the rest of us – faculty and students
alike. It can be done, but you have to be open.
I hope you see challenging the status quo in this feld as a moral imperative,
but if you still have an excuse for not doing that, then let me try another
approach. I’ll tell you what’s in it for you. Remember what we discovered
about the mind in the context of quietive practices? When our mind is left
to its own devices, it drifts into repeating loops. The mind will always try to
make sense of things by using what it already knows, but by now you know
that fresh ideas will only come when we disrupt that. If you need some sci-
entifc evidence, check out a 2017 study published in the Journal of Applied
Psychology, which found that “Close intercultural friendships .˛.˛. spark cre-
ativity, workplace innovation, and entrepreneurship.” If you won’t work on
yourself in the interest of others then do it because it’ll make you better at
your chosen life’s work. My hope is that that the awareness you attain will
lead you the rest of the way.
Seek out things that are unfamiliar and that challenge your assumptions.
No matter who you are or what your role is, observe the room – whether it
194 C H A P T E R 7
REFLECT
be a classroom, the rehearsal room, a meeting room – do most of the faces

look the same, and are they saying mostly the same things? If so, honestly
question why that is and what can be done about it. And if there are people
look or think differently, or who question the status quo, how are they being
treated? If people who are different have left, do you know why? Was it
because they weren’t willing to make the same sacrifces as the people still in
the room (which is what we usually tell ourselves) or was it that they weren’t
starting in the same place so the obstacles were greater? Spend some time
fguring out what you can do to lift and support them.
Let’s circle back now to “who is missing”. I want you to know that there are
some signifcant and important Black lighting designers who have not been
given the attention they deserve. I have met all but one of the following
folks, but I haven’t had the honor to work or spend any signifcant time with
them. I wish I could speak from heart experience about these folks, as I did
with the designers in the other History Breaks, but hopefully I will at least
inspire you to want to know more about them.
A 2019 America Theatre Wing article (Pierce, “Lighting Designer: Allan Lee
Hughes”) notes that Allan Lee Hughes has created over 400 designs – more
than a dozen of them were on Broadway. He has earned four Tony nominations,
one of them last year for A Soldier’s Play, and he has received numerous other
awards and accolades. A program was named in his honor that has trained
more than 700 young artists since at the Arena Stage in Washington D.C. He
received his degree at NYU Tisch School of the Arts and now teaches there.
For another American Theatre Wing article, “Yes, Lighting Design Has a
Diversity Problem” (2018), the very busy lighting designer Xavier Pierce
was interviewed. Pierce mentored a graduate student in my program a few
Figure 7.1 Xavier Pierce

Courtesy of Xavier Pierce
C H A P T E R 7 195
REFLECT
years ago and was one of the warmest LORT (League of Regional Theatres)
A-list LDs I’ve ever met (which is to say that he is one of the designers
who is hired by the top tier LORT theatres). His design was fabulous and
the student had a great learning experience with him. I count more than
80 lighting design credits for him since he graduated from NYU in 2009
(a dozen in 2020 alone) and he has been nominated for multiple regional
theatre awards.
Pierce was noted in the article as saying that “he could immediately think of
only two African American lighting designers working at his level or higher”.
One was his mentor Allen Lee Hughes and the other was Kathy Perkins.
Perkins started her career in the late 1970s and is still actively designing
today. But that’s not the only reason you should know about her. Perkins is
also a theatre historian who has been writing and presenting about Black
theatre professionals since 1982. Don’t tell Perkins that there aren’t any Black
or POC designers out there. When she received the USITT Distinguished
Achievement Awards from both the Lighting and Education Commissions in
2021, her impact was spotlighted. Younger designers of color gave testimo-
nials about how she supported and encouraged them – that she would call
around and check in to see if they needed anyone to talk to. She wanted to
make sure that they knew that someone was watching and wanted them to
succeed. Perkins will take her own place in history not only as a successful
designer and teacher, but also as a tireless champion for important change.
One of her important messages is that if schools want more Black lighting
design students, they have to go get them. There are many students with
potential who don’t have access to the same resources as the ones who
show up in the typical recruiting pools. And when you get them, make sure
they feel like they belong.
Figure 7.2 Kathy A. Perkins

Courtesy of Kathy A. Perkins
196 C H A P T E R 7
REFLECT
One of Perkins’ mentors was Shirley Prendergast, who passed in 2019. Pren-
dergast was loved dearly by those she worked with. Perkins wrote in a 2019
article that Prendergast got into lighting when taking a course to inform
her photography, and that she was the frst African American woman to
be admitted as a United Scenic Artist lighting designer. Her career spanned
more than fve decades and just about every kind of live performance. Her
frst Broadway credits start in 1971 and she assisted Skelton, Gleason, and
Tipton (IBDB). She is credited with six Broadway designs of her own but that
doesn’t scratch the surface of how much creative work she generated and
the number of young professionals she infuenced.
As an educator, I keep asking myself how we can do a better job ensuring

that aspiring Black and POC lighting designers make it into the profession
and want to stay. One young student I believe will be in some future History
Break is Amara McNeil. When she was applying to undergraduate schools,
Amara wrote an application essay that caught my attention for its honesty
and courage. She didn’t become a student in the program I was teaching,
but she and I kept crossing paths in other ways. In the short time I’ve known
her, her perspective has had a strong infuence on mine. I asked her if she
would develop an essay for this book about her experience as a Black stu-
dent of lighting. I want her words to close this chapter on refection.
Aspiring, but-not-yet-Pro-perspective: Amara McNeil
I clearly remember the frst time I ever “lighting designed” a show. I was in
the tenth grade and barely knew what stage lights were, never mind how
I could use them to tell a story. Flash forward four years later, and I am still
learning. While I have been lucky enough to learn so much from a multitude
of mentors, teachers, and fellow designers, there has been one essential
part of my education that is missing: What does it mean to be a Black female
lighting designer? How do I become a racially aware designer when it seems
as if there are little to no resources to pull knowledge from?˛
In a recent conversation with a fellow Black female lighting designer, I asked

her how she learned to light for skin tones other than white. “I taught
myself.” She completed over seven years of lighting design training, yet she
still had to teach herself how to light over 40% of our country’s population.
I refuse.
C H A P T E R 7 197
REFLECT
Through conversations with various mentors, professors, and peers, I have

found lighting to be an˛industry in which you are pressured to take unpaid
internships regardless of the unfair fnancial burden it puts on low-income
students. It is an industry where in looking for a mentor, you will almost
always fnd a cis white man because anyone else is too far too few, where
a student can go through both undergraduate and graduate school and is
never taught how to make every skin tone look beautiful on stage.˛
For our industry to embody what the country looks like, a country which
is almost 40% non-white, the modes through which we teach and think
about lighting design need to adapt (US Census Quick Facts). From mentor-
ship to color theory, we need to make lighting design more accessible for
BIPOC students. As a designer, look back at your work: Have you worked on
shows that have challenged you to light skin from the palest of pale to the
darkest of dark? Are you prepared to make every actor look their absolute
best regardless of skin tones? As a teacher, look at your curriculum: Are you
training your students to effectively communicate a story while simultane-
ously making every actor look their best? Are you advising your students to
demand compensation for their work and not fall victim to unpaid intern-
ships’ unethical practices? Are you, yourself, willing to commit to not work-
ing for companies which utilize unpaid labor?
While I am young and still learning so much about lighting design and the-
atre, I know what type of industry I want to be a part of. I want to see an
industry that does not rely on unpaid internships or unpaid labor. I want
to see an industry where a woman’s ability to match the physical strength
of a man does not determine her creative worth. I want to see an industry
where I do not have to teach myself how to make my fellow Black kings and
queens look their best, sun-kissed, and powerful. It will take some intense
pedagogical shifts and industry-wide accountability. However, I am ready; I
hope you are too.

“A Conversation on Diversity and Anti-Racism in Entertainment
Design.”˛United States Institute for Theatre Technology, www.usitt.org/news/
conversation-diversity-and-anti-racism-entertainment-design.
BIPOC Arts Database, www.bipocarts.com.
“Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in USITT.”˛ United States Institute for Theatre
Technology, www.usitt.org/usitt-edi.
“Lift the Curtain: Breaking the Business of Unpaid Internships.” https://youtu.be/
dXeJyv6jQsw.
198 C H A P T E R 7
REFLECT
Lu, Jackson G., et al. “‘Going out’ of the Box: Close Intercultural Friendships and
Romantic Relationships Spark Creativity, Workplace Innovation, and Entre-
preneurship.”˛Journal of Applied Psychology, vol. 102, no. 7, 2017, pp.˛1091–
1108., doi:10.1037/apl0000212.
Marcus, Joan. joanmarcusphotography.com.
No More 10 out of 12’s USITT Online Series:
“Why It’s Time for Change”: https://youtu.be/vxgu-oVM-z8.
“Impact on the BIPOC Community”: https://youtu.be/sQE1q-kP1So.
“Impact on the Disability Community”: https://youtu.be/772gbNDeucw.
Perkins, Kathy A. kathyaperkins.com.
Perkins, Kathy A. “Trailblazing Lighting Designer Shirley Prendergast
Passes.”˛New York Amsterdam News: The New Black View, amsterdamnews.
com/news/2019/apr/04/trailblazing-lighting-designer-shirley-prendergast.
Pierce, Jerald Raymond. “Lighting Designer: Allen Lee Hughes.”˛American The-
atre, 20 Nov. 2019, www.americantheatre.org/2019/11/19/lighting-designer-
allen-lee-hughes.
Pierce, Jerald Raymond. “Yes, Lighting Design Has a Diversity Problem.”˛Amer-
ican Theatre, 27 June 2018, www.americantheatre.org/2018/06/19/yes-
lighting-design-has-a-diversity-problem.
Production on Deck, www.productionondeck.com.
“Resources for Racial Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.”˛League of Resident Thea-
tres, lort.org/edi-resources.
“The Tony Award Nominations.”˛The Tony Award Nominations. The American
Theatre Wing’s Tony Awards®, www.tonyawards.com/nominees/year/any/
category/lighting-design-play/show/any.
“U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts: United States.” Census Bureau QuickFacts,
www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219.
Unruh, Delbert.˛The Designs of Jules Fisher. USITT, 2009.
We See You W.A.T., www.weseeyouwat.com.
Xavier Pierce Design, xavierpiercedesign.com.
C H A P T E R 7 199
CHAPTER 8
Inspiration
A commercially ÿnanced study by teachers at University College London

in 2017 found that the heartbeats of audience members at a production of
Dreamgirls synced up with each other. It’s a great marketing story, but in
reality it isn’t an “out there” idea. Previous scientiÿcally reviewed research
suggests that heartbeats can sync up in all kinds of situations when there
is sufÿcient human connection.
As a teenager in the mid-1980s, I was a followspot operator for a
community theater production of the musical Cabaret. I had spent hours
in a basement doing lighting work I didn’t totally understand and was
rewarded with a show crew position. I remember on opening night that
I was following the lead character Sally Bowles with the spotlight as she
belted out the climactic number of the show. The audience was riveted,
I was precision focused, and when she got to the ÿnal phase of the song,
the lights I had spent all that time on in the basement began to chase, the
orchestra and Sally gave it everything they had, and the energy in the
room was electric. You know what I’m talking about. You’ve felt it. It’s
why you’re reading this book. The connectedness I felt in that room
that day inspired my life journey. It doesn’t have to be theatre, or even
entertainment for that matter, and it doesn’t have to be live. But crea-
tive work is particularly capable of causing transcendent and connected
experiences.
It called to you, so how are you going to answer that call?
DOI: 10.4324/9781003022725-12 201

I N S P I R AT I O N
History Break: How Will You Make Your Mark?
This last History Break is yours. I often ask my students to write a “future
bio”. It’s ten years in the future and you are writing your bio for a program
or website. What does it say? I do this so that I can get a better idea of how
I can serve them, but they fnd some clarity through it, and I invite you to
do the same. What matters enough to you that you want to achieve it and
make sure everyone in the future knows about it? What do you want the
future textbook author to tell the aspiring lighting artists about you?
Take your time with this one, and maybe ponder it for a few days. Remem-
ber that it won’t set anything in stone; you can write a new future any time!
Use it as a chance to consider where you are in this moment and where you
might be going, but know that it is pliable.
Thank you for going on this journey with me. I wish you success and joy in
whatever you do with it.
Now get ready for your History Break. Take some breaths, refect on what
you’ve learned, the choices you’ve made, and the choices yet to come.
Then, from here, begin.

University College London Division of Psychological and Language Sciences.
“Audience Members’ Hearts Beat Together at the Theatre.”˛UCL Psychology
and Language Sciences, 1 Feb. 2019, www.ucl.ac.uk/pals/news/2017/nov/
audience-members-hearts-beat-together-theatre.
202 C H A P T E R 8
Appendix 1
How Do I.°.°.
Hang Lights?
Pipe and Crescent Flashlights and Handtools Tie Line and Gaff
(C-) Wrenches Headlamp Tape
Voltage Sensor and RMS Meter DMX Tester Light Meter

Circuit Checker
Common Tools
203
APPENDIX 1: HOW DO I.˛.˛.
Getting It on the Hanging Position

w/C-Clamp
Back the Bolt Clamp Over Bold Finger Wrench Tighten

Out Pipe Tight to snug
w/O-Clamp
O Clamp start Lift to Pipe Flip Top of Bolt Up and

Clamp Over Tighten
DONT
Leave Loose
Overtighten Use a Wrench

on Wing Nuts
204
Finishing the Instrument/Fixture
Shutters Out
Safety- Safety-Movers Tail Hanging

Conventional (Until Cabled)
Par Bottle
Moveable
Focus Knob Check Focus
Functional Range
(After Cabled)
Common Mistakes
No Focus Slack Connectors Away

from Instrument
C-Clamp Loose
Safety Left Off
Shutters Closed Hardware Too

Tight Connector Not
Not Plugged In Seated
205
Cabling Dos and Don’ts
Do
Keep Connector
Dress Excess
Near Clamp
Leave Focus Slack
DON’T
Leave Cable Coil the Cable

Excess Hanging into a Tight Circle
Tie the Connector
into a Bundle
206
Troubleshooting Tips
Get into the circuit

to test at the most
convenient place
so that direction of
problem can quickly
be determined
Consider
Rule things out
probability˛–
rather than just
given where
changing things,
you are in the
in case there’s
process, what are
more than one
the most likely
problem
points of failure?
Don’t rush.
If a breaker is Being in a hurry
tripped, pause to can be frustrat-
consider possible ing, but it gets
causes before worse if it takes
re-setting, in case longer because
there is a danger you missed
When using electric- something
ity sensing tools, test
the tool on a known
working circuit
BEFORE and AFTER
the suspect circuit to
rule out tester failure
207
Focusing Tips
Designer/ Caller
Go over order of Prepare an order of Communicate clearly
operations, protocol, focus before you start if you need a moment
and preferences before and a plan for each to think (“Standby
you start light while I think about
this”) or if you need
to work with another
focuser for a moment
(“Please work on xxx
and I’ll come back to
you”)
Technician/Focuser
Ask questions ahead
of time
Communicate clearly
and concisely if you
need something – use
“Working” if you
need time
Pay attention to the
patterns so that you
can anticipate
Everybody Coordinate order of activities

Use consistent language and with other departments so
avoid unnecessary chatter that all departments can work
effectively together
208
Strike/Loadout Tips
Plan the strike order ahead of

time so that time is used efÿciently and
people are safe
Stay aware and communicate well Put everything away, remove

trash and restore house hang
when required
209
Communicate My Ideas?
Use a Collage or Inspiration Board, either paper or electronic. Paper
allows for mixed materials while digital gives you creative editing tool. Be
sure to favor quality of light rather than objects, but have enough speci-
ÿcity of light to ensure clear communication.
• Light a model or light objects in a light lab. Physical models can be touched
and experimented with using °ashlights, desk lamps, or clip lights. Light-
ing a real person or objects at full scale in a light lab can let you get speciÿc.
Josh Hemmo and Connor Greene Lighting a Scenic Model

Photo courtesy of Josh Hemmo and Connor Greene
A lit model for a production of The Full Monty
A lit model combined with full scale lab lighting. Shown: Eve Bandi
210
• Rendering light by hand works for those who are comfortable draw-
ing. One popular technique is to transfer the outline of a scenic image
onto black paper and then use colored pencils or pastels to draw light
in, mimicking what happens in a dark theater.
A drawn lighting rendering on black paper

Courtesy of Jessica Creager
• Nothing will beat computer rendering and visualization in the future.

Historically, Adobe Photoshop has been a relatively accessible option.
Industry-speciÿc software like WYSIWYG, Vision, Capture, Render-
works, and the emerging Augment3D require more investment, skill,
and processing power but provide more realistic results. Many have
student versions.
A computer aided lighting previsualization

Courtesy of Forrest Tallbull
211
Create Technical Specifcations?

The light plot and section along with corresponding instrument schedules
and hookups are the standard work order tools across all ÿelds. Formats
are industry speciÿc, but those who learn the theater standard ÿrst have
a good foundation. Even though hand-drafting is rare in professional
settings, learning to do it by hand ÿrst can provide a good foundation.
Learning to use a scale ruler is essential even if all drawings are digital
so that you can read hardcopies. Light plots are drawn in plan view, or
from above looking down, but a section view, or cut side view of the envi-
ronment, is necessary to plan for height and to negotiate obstructions. A
lighting section is often created for this purpose.
An instrument schedule and a channel hookup lists the data from the
drafting in a database format. The instrument schedule is arranged by
hanging position and the channel hookup by control channel. Other ways
of arranging the data result in a dimmer hookup or a circuit hookup.
Instrument, color, gobo, or accessory counts may also be created.
212
Common software for creating technical speciÿcations varies across

the industries. Vectorworks and Autocad are the most commonly used for
computer aided drafting (CAD) in performance-type disciplines and John
McKernon’s Lightwrite is popular for the paperwork. Lightwrite and Vec-
torworks can exchange data which can save a lot of time. CAD programs
can export data, but Lightwrite allows for signiÿcant customization. Red-
dit is the industry standard in architectural applications.
213
Appendix 2
Live Performance Lighting Design Case Studies
More production images of most of the following case studies can be

found at www.deannaÿtzgerald.com.
As “Traditional” as it Gets: The Man Who Came to Dinner

This 2013 Arizona Repertory Theatre production of a 1930s play illus-
trates why so many American theatres built in the 20th century were
constructed the way they were.
The Man Who Came to Dinner. Shown: Michah Bond, Roberto Guajardo, Jordan
Letson, Kate Strause
214
APPENDIX 2 : LIVE PERFORMANCE LIGHTING DESIGN CASE STUDIES
(Continued)
The unit set, upstage of the main drape and parallel to it, with side
walls at an angle, allows for great sightlines from every seat in the house
and as-good-as-it-ever-gets (when there’s a set) lighting angles. This type of
traditional layout is so lighting friendly that it allows for accurate focus of
the lights before the set is even installed. With well-planned focus points
and the marks on the °oor where the walls will be, we completely focused
the plot after hang, on the bare stage. This type of script lends itself nicely
to this kind of design, and many older theatres were designed for just such
a production.
Keep in mind that precision is critical. The walls will amplify a poor
focus as uneven shutter cuts, hard edges, or disproportionate hots spots
are put on display. One of the best tricks I’ve learned is to use ¼ cuts of
frost in one side of the gel frame only. This is so that the part of the ÿeld
edge that lands on a wall is a little softer than the edge of the rest of the
ÿeld. Creative frost usage can do wonders to clean up stage lights on °at
surfaces.
Challenging Confgurations: Hands on a Hardbody

Flexible spaces are far more appealing to the creative artist. You’ll regu-
larly face challenges that haven’t been solved before, which is both exhil-
arating and terrifying.
215
Hands on a Hardbody. Shown: Adia Bell, Brett Parker Dixon, Josh Dunn, Keenan
Larson, Daniel Lopez, Connor Morley, Devon Prokopek, Dominique Ruffalo
Hands on a Hardbody was a pop musical with a full size hollowed out
pickup truck that could move in all directions. The audience was on three
sides, known as a thrust conÿguration, and the front row was at stage
height, intentionally bringing them close to the action.
Thrust conÿgurations are tricky to work with. One challenge common
for lighting in this conÿguration as well as in-the-round is getting good
illumination without blinding the audience. This is especially true if the
thrust is relatively narrow, if you intend to use followspots, or if perform-
ers are going to sometimes be above °oor level, all of which were the case
with this production.
One successful solution was to have six followspots. We could have
used more, but the logistics of six were enough to manage. Operators
became masterful at hand offs, where one operator seamlessly fades in as
another fades out, during a performer’s travel, to avoid unwanted blinding
or splashes of light. As with many of these case studies, there was no such
thing as too much planning. We had the good fortune of being local, so
we did many, many tests to get lights in good places. It is also critical in
this case to argue for abundant practice time for the operators. They need
time to create a shared communication with each other and they have a
lot to learn and ÿgure out.
216
Grass Roots to Spectacle: STOMP OUT LOUD, Las Vegas

If you know STOMP, you probably know them as “those guys who bang
on the trashcans”. I had the great pleasure of being part of the family for
about 12 years, from 1996 when I took over as lighting director on one
of the tours through 2008 after designing the lighting for the Las Vegas
incarnation called STOMP OUT LOUD.
When a show transforms to go into a Vegas venue, one of the biggest
challenges is the increased number of stakeholders. STOMP was always
creatively controlled by the duo who started it and had been a relatively
sweet and simple concept for us to tour. We had only ÿve people on the
tour production team and one truck, mostly scenery plus a heavy stock of
props. The show’s tagline, “see what all the noise is about”, drew in full
houses all over the world. Audience members left banging on everything,
having gotten the message that music can be made by anybody with just
about any found object.
The challenge with STOMP OUT LOUD was to create a show excit-
ing enough to warrant a place on the Las Vegas Strip, but without losing
the simplicity that made it great. Moving lights, scrollers and LEDs were
incorporated, but the creators expected that none of that technology
would draw attention to itself. It was a challenging needle to thread,
but one that we worked on for months in the performance space. The
creators generated the material on the stage with the performers and I
lit, adapted, and re-lit while they developed and even the lobby became
part of the show.
STOMP OUT LOUD lobby photograph
217
Don’t Blind the Acrobat: Cirque Mechanics, Boom Town

Circus performers have a culture like no other. They perform death-defying
acts and trust each other with their lives. The acrobat understands the
risks of the aerialist and the “clown” knows how to check the safety nets.
You’ll rarely work with a company quite so tightly connected. You’ll
also immediately see amazing lighting possibilities. You need at least
a little front light because every act has at least one – and sometimes
many – applause breaks, when a performer who has just done something
jaw-dropping lands face forward and lets the audience cheer for them.
But what you’ll also see is the opportunity for side-, back-, top-, and diag-
onal back light shaping of strong and sometimes contorted bodies, much
like in dance.
Inevitably, if they know you’re new to them, someone will tap you on
the shoulder and ask you from what direction you’re planning to light
the act you’re watching. Then they will throw cold water on your dreams
by telling you that side and top light will blind them. In fact, they would
really rather you get the lights in such a way that they never have to see
them. Oh, and lights changing while they are in mid-air or doing some-
thing that requires spatial orientation (which is what they are always
doing) can cause a tragic accident.
But these are also some of the most adaptive artists you’ll ever work
with. There are some things they simply can’t safely adapt to, but they
will tirelessly experiment with you to get a solution that looks great but
lets them do their job. The close-up in the Cirque Mechanics image is an
example of months of planning and experimenting, and even technical
innovation. The aerialist is hanging on a device that descends and rises, at
the end of a scenic beam which rotates, allowing her to make several full
rotations around the entire width and depth of the stage, including over
the audience. At full speed, one full rotation only takes a few seconds.
When I ÿrst saw what was being created, I made my case that it was
critical to have a top light special at the end of the beam, such that it trav-
eled with her. My point was that that angle would cast light only on the
°oor below her, rather than a followspot which would have to chase her
from a ÿxed location and end up splashing all over everything. It would
also avoid her getting lost in a full stage wash. Besides the technical chal-
lenges of getting power to such a light, the most important question was
whether or not she could safely do the act. Every time she looked up there
was a bright light source in her eyes. And because she was also going up
and down, her proximity to it would be slighting different each time she
looked up. In the end, it worked, but we had to experiment with different
kinds of lights and baf°es, and she had to practice with it a lot. When the
crowd held its breath as she °oated over them, it was all worth it.
218
Cirque Mechanics’ Boom Town aerialist and acrobat
Pandemic and Streaming Lighting: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

When the COVID-19 pandemic upended all that we knew and hit the
pause on gathering for live performance, a few brave companies showed
the resilience that the entertainment industry is known for. One such com-
pany is The Rogue Theatre. Before 2020, live performance artists cringed
at the idea of having our work ÿlmed or streamed. We deÿne theatre by
the power of the live, in-person, communal, unrepeatable-moment-in-time
experience.
As is the case for a lot of performance companies, the patron base of
The Rogue was in the high-risk category for COVID. The Rogue pro-
duced shows during the pandemic for a reduced capacity audience with
stringent safety protocols in place for everyone involved. We hung the
lights in our masks, after having been temperature checked, and we had
a safe word (“pineapple”) that could be spoken if any of us got absorbed
in what we were doing and forgot the protocols. But no amount of safety
protocols can make it worth taking a chance for some patrons who are
at high risk of not surviving an infection. The time had come for us to get
comfortable with streaming our work.
When work is being streamed, early communication is critical. Most
video professionals are artists in their own right and expectations for
219
their work are different than for the live experience. For example, in
the theatre we intentionally create dark space to direct attention, but in
video, dark space is considered an unattractive vacuum. Further, even the
best cameras today still have trouble with the extreme contrast between
someone in a special and a dim surround. To make matters worse, many
theatrical ÿlter colors simply cannot be read accurately by a camera. And
if the production intends to use LED equipment, as most of us do now,
tests will have to done to make sure there is no frame rate °icker. If the
presenting company rushed out to buy the earliest, cheapest LEDs, those
will likely be left in storage on a ÿlmed production. Do a web search for
LED camera °icker if you have never seen this phenomenon.
Thorough and mindful preparation along with good faith collaboration
can ensure that the production is lit for the live audience and those watch-
ing on a device. Spend some time learning what videographers see and be
ready to help them understand what you see. Being able to accomplish this
is likely to be an expected skill for lighting designers for years to come.
Videographers ÿlming Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein during the Covid-19 pandemic
220
Appendix 3
Getting a Job
If you’ve ever heard me speak on a panel about career development,

you’ve probably heard me say that the most valuable job relevant piece
of advice that I can give you is: “Don’t be an a**-hole.” This is a tough
and demanding business, but the people who take it out on other people
will eventually run out people willing to hire or work with them. If the
environment you are working in needs to change, ÿnd the appropriate
channels to press for that change, but don’t use it as an excuse to make
things miserable for the people around you who are in the same boat.
Remember that you chose this work for a reason and don’t lose sight of
whatever that reason is. If you really aren’t getting anything out of it and
are miserable all the time, you’ll need to look at why that is and possibly
make a change for yourself. If you don’t, it will likely be made for you.
Contacts, Contacts, Contacts

The expression “It’s all in who you know” is especially true in arts and
entertainment. For better or for worse, the slim margins of error as well
as the intimate nature of creative collaboration guarantee that people will
choose to work with people they have had some work experience with
already. Be brave about taking advantage of opportunities to meet and
show your best side to other people in the industry. Be sure to be kind and
collegial with your peers and keep in touch with them, since they may be
the ones hiring or recommending you in the future.
221
APPENDIX 3: GETTING A JOB
Resources for Finding Work

Though many jobs in entertainment are heard about via “word of mouth”
there are resources available for those who don’t have their foot in the door
yet. Many of the organizational websites talked about throughout the book
have job boards and there are a few sites that are speciÿcally about job
advertisements. Create a bookmark menu in your browser and periodically
go to those pages and see what’s going on. Mine also has organizations I
think I’d like to work with and organizations in places I think I’d like to
live. Even if you aren’t actively available for work, it will keep you current
on the state of job opportunity in your ÿelds and in regions. If you are a
teacher, you should keep up for your students’ sake. There are some harbin-
gers to keep an eye out for – for instance, when employers are anticipating
tough times, you may see more “multiple hats” kinds of jobs and when
things are looking good, specialists are valued. If you keep an eye on trends,
you’ll get a sense of what kind of “hat” you or your students might need to
be pulling out to ride out the next economic wave.
Always do “due diligence” before responding to any job post. Ask
around about the company, check its history, and web search for news
about the organization and the people you think you might be work-
ing with. It’s also a good idea to know about the job board itself. ART-
SEARCH, for instance, is a website that employers have to pay to post on,
whereas many of the others are free. Employers who are willing to pay
to advertise their jobs tend to be more established, while employers who
only post on the free sites and do so often tend to have more turnover.
Following are some of the relevant jobs bookmarks in my dropdown.
• ARTSEARCH.tcg.org
• OffStageJobs.com
• USITT.org (jobs page)
• URTA.com (jobs page)
• SETC.org (jobs page)
• Plasa.org (jobs page)
• Apap365.org
• IALD.org (career center)
• Broadwayworld.com (classiÿeds)
• Playbill.com (jobs page)
• Operaamerica.org (jobs page)
• LORT.org (no job board, but contact info for LORT member theatres)
Resume Perspectives
When working on your resume, be sure to look for format examples
that are appropriate for the jobs you are applying to. For instance, the
222
traditional theatre resume usually looks like a laundry list of credits, but
this is not true of technical director resumes or corporate level resumes
which tend to be more descriptive in nature. NEVER LIE, but once you
have more than enough work experience to ÿll a page, how you arrange
that experience and what you include vs what you allow to drop off will
tell different stories. For instance, if you have skills in a lot of different
areas, be sure that the skills and credits relevant to that job are the most
apparent. If the job is with a company in which “all hands are on deck”
for everything – in other words, you might be applying as an entry-level
lighting technician, but maybe the lighting crew helps audio or projec-
tions – be sure to show all those skills. If the job is clearly more special-
ized or a leadership position, then make sure that what you focus on in
your resume sends a message that you are well-versed in that particular
specialization.
Portfolio/Website Development and Resources

An online website, portfolio, or just professional online presence is nec-
essary for just about every freelancer today. The ÿrst thing a person is
going to want to see when considering hiring you for a design job is your
work, and it is most convenient for them if they can click on your web
link. Adobe has a portfolio builder that is pretty user-friendly and if you
are in school, you may be able use Adobe for free. Other sites like Wix
and Wordpress are popular. Even if it isn’t a design job, a presence online
will help potential employers get to know you, so even a proÿle on pro-
fessionally oriented sites like LinkedIn is a good idea. Whatever sites you
use, think about your online presence and what it might tell someone who
does a web search for your name. Get some feedback from people who
don’t know you well.
This last Pro-perspective is from someone who has done it all. Her per-
spective inspires me because she shifted directions many times and every
change had value and meaning. After you read her perspective, be sure to
check out her website to consider how it reveals her unique story.
Pro-perspective: Dawn Hollingsworth, CLD, FIALD, WELL AP,

A Dynamic Career
The journey of my career has not been a direct fight. In fact, there were
many layovers along the way at points I would never have been able to
forecast when I set out after college. My undergraduate experience taught
me many skills, but nothing about how to get a job and what to do with a
223
degree in technical theatre. The frst thing I knew was that I did not want
to live in New York. That affrmation alone meant my career opportunities
would be limited. Maybe because I wasn’t urban enough for New York, but
I found the Chicago theatre scene to be exactly what I needed to hone my
craft.
In school I had thought of myself as a scenic designer, but in Chicago I had

more chances to design lighting than scenery and it also afforded the ability
to have a day job to pay the bills. The day job offered me experience design-
ing industrial shows for corporate clients and some amazing travel. Those
years were not easy but were priceless, being able to work with some amaz-
ing actors and other designers. It also taught me that learning a diversity of
skills was the best way to ensure I would not starve.
Then a regional manager for a manufacturer approached me after seeing

one of my shows and offered me a sales job. I had never thought of myself
as a salesperson but he said I could make money so that sounded good.
The decision to jump on board was predicated on the introduction of the
frst computerized lighting console and I knew unless I could get exposure
to new technology, my skills would be left behind. I was still able to design
plays, dance, musicals, and opera. After several Chicago winters, I moved to
Los Angeles, where the opportunity to make a living in theatre was non-
existent. There were plenty of theatres if you liked working for free.
Eventually, I landed another sales position at a manufacturer, but this time I

was introduced to the world of architectural lighting. This was a whole new
environment of sales, fnance, marketing, product design and engineering.
My lighting background came in handy and I was able to go back to school
for an MBA. I learned a whole new set of skills and designed my last show
during those years. As luck would have it, I actually made it to Broadway
with the Easter show at Radio City. After nine years and four promotions,
the manufacturing operation moved and I chose to stay, so we parted ways.
Honestly, I missed the collaboration of a design team.
I joined a design partnership without regret for leaving the security of corpo-
rate life. Everything I learned along the way prepared me for the next stop
and looking back I had many rich experiences. Anyone who has worked for
me knows I ask the interview question, “If you were a car, what kind of car
are you?” The question isn’t about cars; it is a calculated question to under-
stand how much a person knows about their true self. Being honest with
yourself and knowing who you are is more relevant than what you know.
224
In life not every decision works the way it was supposed to, but those
moments teach you what you don’t want, which is equally important. Some
might think success is measured in the number of accolades or awards, but
I believe it is in being fully committed to what you are doing in the present.
If you can’t commit, it is time to book a new destination.
225
Appendix 4
Suggestions for Scaling This Book
The content of this book draws the most effective aspects of two semesters
of lighting courses as I used to teach them at the University of Arizona,
plus content from our Introduction to Entertainment Design course. The
students in the lighting courses are primarily made up of BFA theatre
design and technology majors across all emphases (lighting, but also scen-
ery, costumes, technical direction, stage managers, and sound), usually
with a small number of majors from other disciplines including perfor-
mance, ÿlm, television, and theatre arts. There are a number of considera-
tions for how you might select or re-order the content for your particular
situation.
For Educators Teaching.°.°.
Majors in Professional Training Programs

The modern necessity of teaching as many students as possible at one
time makes teaching anything challenging. In my courses I typically
have two to four lighting majors and 12 to 20 majors from other the-
atre and entertainment emphases along with a couple of students with
little lighting background at all. Demanding as it can be to make sure
that the lighting majors are challenged and the ones with no experience
aren’t left behind, I like it that way. I ÿnd that the diversity of perspec-
tives has a huge impact on student learning and satisfaction. Students
move on with better collaborative skills and a better understanding of
226
APPENDIX 4: SUGGESTIONS FOR SCALING THIS BOOK
the connectedness of their work. If you are in that situation, this book
should help. The most effective teaching will happen if you can tailor
content dynamically, but the real value of this book is the meta-perspective
it cultivates.
If you are teaching two semesters in a professional training pro-
gram, that is to say with majors who will be doing this for a living,
you should be able to go through the whole book comfortably, with
companion lab and crew work, some of which can be drawn from the
Appendices. If the students have to hang a show quickly at the start of
the semester, you will want to address that right away in lab, possibly
using the “How do I.˛.˛.” appendix, and you may want to move up a
preliminary look at Chapter 4’s Safety section. I didn’t arrange the
book like that because, pedagogically speaking, young students (espe-
cially if they did lighting in high school) are quick to get the wrong
idea of lighting as technology rather than art. The more you can put
the art and design up front, the better you will serve them. Just be sure
to balance it with preparing them for whatever practical work they
have to do.
Theatre and Entertainment Majors Not Focused on Lighting

If you are teaching students who won’t be lighting designers but may
work in theatre or entertainment ÿelds, they need to have an understand-
ing of how light is used and what lighting teams do. For them, you can
comfortably navigate most of this book in one semester, possibly leaving
out the highly technical sections, offering them only as further reading.
Much of Chapters 4 and 5 can be skipped over or just referenced, par-
ticularly the sections on power, entertainment control, and laying out the
light plot. Be sure not to accidently cue them that these topics are “too
difÿcult” or “uninteresting”. I’ve had students from other majors end up
as successful technical specialists after getting their ÿrst exposure to it in
one of my classes. Be sure to invite them to explore those topics so they
can head in a direction that resonates with them.
Other-than-Theatre Majors
Though the content is designed as a deliberate journey from start to ÿn-
ish, most of it can be extracted independently for the particular situation
you are in. Chapters 1, 2, and most of 3 will give a student of any art form
a new perspective. Most of the projects can be done with any population
as a fresh kind of creative exercise. The Pro-Perspectives can open any
student’s eyes to career possibilities.
227
APPENDIX 4: SUGGESTIONS FOR SCALING THIS BOOK
High School or Vocational Students

Though the book has its best ÿt with college students, the language is
intentionally accessible for younger students as well. The past decade has
brought a shocking number of post-secondary Theatre Education degree
programs to a close, leaving high school theatre teachers less prepared
for the challenge, particularly in terms of technical training. I think this
book can help and I encourage high school theatre teachers to cherry pick
the content to serve their objectives. I recommend prioritizing the safety
section and the Appendices if students will be doing practical work, and
the practices around better observation and collaboration. Try to at least
introduce the rest because you might be opening a door to their dream
career they didn’t know was there.
If You’re Learning on the Job

This book will work well for you if you found your way into the light-
ing industry without higher education training. It will broaden your
understanding of why things are done the way they are, what other job
prospects might be available to you, and where you might go for further
training. If you take up a Quietive Practice for yourself or even just begin
to apply a re°ective perspective as I frequently prompt the reader to do,
you will likely ÿnd a deeper satisfaction in your life’s work, regardless of
which direction it takes.
Just Curious
If you’re “just curious” about lighting, welcome! Take what you want,
let it lead you in directions that resonate, and enjoy. Let your journey
deepen your experience as a participant in arts and life, and share the
awesomeness!
228
Glossary
This Glossary is limited to terms that are referenced in the text, but not
speciÿcally explained. Please ÿnd additional terms in the Index.
Atmospheric when particulate (like fog, haze, or water) is added to

enhancement the air in a venue, usually to reveal beams of light
Chaser refers to scenic piece with light bulbs on alternating
circuits that can create an effect
Contacts components inside an electrical device that conduct
electricity
Field of view in this context, whatever the viewer can see while
experiencing a creative work
Flat a scenic item that can look like a wall or structure
Front of refers to the area before the stage in a theatre venue
house or FOH
Gel industry vernacular for the color ÿlters that can be put in
lighting instruments (the ÿrst ones were made of gelatin)
Gobos, thin pieces of metal cut to a speciÿc pattern or printed
templates, glass that can be placed into a lighting instrument in order
cookies to project that pattern; ÿlm and television also calls them
cookies, but cookies can also refer to anything put in front
of a light to produce a shadow
229
GLOSSARY
Patch panel in entertainment venues that have more circuits than

dimmers, a patch panel is used to connect different circuits
to dimmers at different times through the performance
Hazers, atmospheric effect devices
foggers, rain
curtains
High key and ÿlm-speciÿc terms that refer to bright (mostly white)
low key and dark (mostly black) lighting states
Key and ÿll when two lights are used at noticeably different levels
to create highlight and ÿlled shadow
Lamp the light source component in an entertainment
instrument or ÿxture
Lighting a technician whose job it is to program the lighting
Programmer console
Load a device or component that uses power in an electrical
circuit
Magic sheet a paperwork tool for quick recall of channels and other
lighting console reference numbers speciÿc to a given show
Memory what the ÿrst computerized control consoles were
control board called (this differentiated them from manual boards,
which had no memory)
Pin-splitter a tool used to maintain the proper space in the pin of a
stage pin connector
Pit the lower area in front of a stage where an orchestra
might be placed for a production with live music
Proscenium the frame around a stage in traditional theatres
Pull-down a term used to describe a cue that dims (pulls down) the
light in the area around a subject being highlighted in
order to draw greater focus to that subject
Repertory In this context, repertory refers to a situation in which
multiple shows or pieces take place under one light plot
Special a term referring to a light that has a speciÿc singular
purpose in a show (as opposed to lights that are part of
a larger system of light)
Value an art term referring to the brightness of a color
Wash a term referring to lights focused over a large area
Wings the sides of the stage in a traditional theatre
Work light lights that are hung in order for visibility when the
show-speciÿc lighting is off
230
Index
Note: Page numbers in italic refer to Figures
AC (Alternating Current) 98–99 American National Standards Institute

Actors’ Equity Association 121 see ANSI (American National
Adams, Kevin 185 Standards Institute)
address maps 114–115, 125; American Society of
DMX512 114–115, 116 Cinematographers see
advanced lighting brushes 84, 121, 144 ASC (American Society of
advanced lighting technology 84, Cinematographers)
111–114, 118–119, 121; animation 41
atmospheric effects 120–121; ANSI (American National Standards
color changers 117; HCI 118; Institute) 75; DMX512 77–78,
holographic content 118; LEDs 110, 114–115, 116, 125, 126,
18, 83–84, 116, 117, 118, 140; 127, 128
lighting consoles 122–125, architainment lighting 61–62, 113,
178–181; lighting control 165
121–125, 128; moving lights architectural lighting 42, 59–60, 61,
112–116; projections 118–120 62, 66, 90–94, 113, 122, 131,
AHJ (Authority Having Jurisdiction) 152, 165
75, 96 artiÿcial light 15, 16, 17–18, 83–84
Alternating Current see AC artists 1, 19
(Alternating Current) ARTSEARCH 222
American Gothic (Wood, 1884) artworks 29–31
33–34 ASC (American Society of
American Idiot (2010) 185 Cinematographers) 66
231
INDEX
A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of color 72, 81–82, 129–135, 141–142,

La Grande Jatte (Seurat, 1884) 144, 168; bleaching 138–139;
29, 29, 30 CIE Chart of Photosensitivity
atmospheric effects 120–121 140–141; color ÿlters 131,
attributes 81, 114–115 135, 139–140; LEDs 84, 140;
augmented reality 118 opponent-processing color
Authority Having Jurisdiction see AHJ perception theory 137–138; SED
(Authority Having Jurisdiction) 139; skin tones 133–135, 136, 137
Autocad 213 color changers 117
automated lighting systems 109–110 color ÿlters (gels) 131, 135; Hands on
a Hardbody 139–140; SED 139
backlights 88, 135, 142 color perception 129, 131
bandwidth 10–11 complementary colors 132–134
Berkofsky, Ava 135 composition 1, 27, 28, 44
Binkley, Howell 154 Computer Aided Drafting software see
BIPOC lighting designers 192–193, CAD (Computer Aided Drafting)
195–198 software
BIPOC performers 135, 136, 137 conceptual hook-ups 155, 160
Black-ish (ABC) 55, 56 concerts 52, 53, 66, 113, 163
bleaching 138–139 conductors 102
blocks 183 contemplative practices 1–2, 8–10
blue dress (example) 134, 134 contextual reference research 12, 13,
Broadway Lighting Master Classes 171 151–152, 153
contrast 27–28
Cabaret 18, 201 control channels 212
cable connectors 102–103 controllable qualities 40–41, 81–82
cabling 205–206 controlling light see lighting control
CAD (Computer Aided Drafting) conventional lighting instruments
software 110, 213 84; see also advanced lighting
Cadena, Richard 109–110 technology
career development 221–225 counterweight systems 80
certiÿed technicians 96 COVID-19 pandemic 219
channels (control channels) 124 Creager, Jessica 50–52
channel hookup 212 creative thought 1–2
Chicago (1975) 106–107 creative works 175–176, 201
Chicago (2002) 48 cross reality 118
chicken coops 89 cueing 181–182, 183
A Chorus Line (1975) 106–107, cue lists 181
108–109 The Curious Incident of the Dog in
CIE Chart of Photosensitivity the Night-Time 13, 20
140–141 cyc lights 88, 94
cinematographers 165–166
circuit breakers 98, 99, 100–101 dance 49–50, 66, 113, 141–142,
circuit hookups 212 150–151, 163, 184
Cirque Mechanics 218, 219 dark skin tones 135, 136, 137
collaboration 2, 167–170, 171, Day and Night (Escher, 1938) 14
175–176 daylight 15, 16, 17, 93–94
232
INDEX
DC (Direct Current) 98 (Entertainment Services and

DeBusk, Maranda 177 Technology Association)
design 1, 12, 28–29, 30 Entertainment Technology
The Designs of Tharon Musser Certiÿcation Program see ETCP
(USITT and Unruh, 2007) 107 (Entertainment Technology
diffused light 15, 18 Certiÿcation Program)
digital bookmarks 73 environment designers 168–169
digital content 119 equipment 105–106
digital reading lists 73 ERS (ellipsoidal re°ector spotlight) 85,
dimmers (dimming lights) 121, 122, 86, 94
124, 125 Escher, M.C. 14
Direct Current see DC (Direct Essig, Linda 40, 41, 45, 81
Current) ESTA (Entertainment Services and
direct light 15, 18, 19 Technology Association) 75, 76,
directors 167–168 78, 110
directors of photography see DP established lighting instruments see
(directors of photography) advanced lighting technology
discharge sources see light sources ETC ColorSource Fixture Family
DMX512-A 125, 127 (LED) 116
DMX512 Digital Data Transmission ETCP (Entertainment Technology
Standard for Controlling Lighting Certiÿcation Program) 76, 96
Equipment and Accessories exterior light 16
77–78, 110, 114–115, 116, 125,
126, 127, 128; address maps faders 124–125
114–115, 116 fay lights 88
downlights 91, 92, 94 ÿlm lighting 41, 65, 66, 93, 114,
DP (directors of photography) 118, 122
165–166 ÿlm production 79, 165–166
dramatic analysis 149–151 Fisher, Jules 170–171, 184
Dreamgirls (2017) 201 focus points 160–161, 176–177, 208
dry cueing 181–182 followspots 49, 50
form 44
electrical circuits 98 Four Quartets (Tanowitz) 143
electrical connectors 102–103 Fox, Don 178–179
electrical contacts 98 fresnels 86, 87, 94
Electrical Formula Wheel 97 functions 40, 80; impacts 40–49, 80,
electrical training 95–96 81, 82
electrical wiring 98–101 fuses 98
electricians 96
electricity 95, 96–103, 104 gaffers 166
ellipsoidal re°ector spotlight see˛ERS Gage, James H. 8, 60, 156
(ellipsoidal re°ector spotlight) The Garden of Earthly Delights
Emmons, Beverly 141–142 (Bosch, 1515) 29, 30
entertainment lighting 18–19, GDTF (General Device Type Format)
144,˛227 110
Entertainment Services and Geisler, Kristen 177
Technology Association see ESTA gels see color ÿlters (gels)
233
INDEX
geographic location 17 International Association of Theatrical

Gianelli, Scot 54–55 Stage Employees see IATSE
Gibney, Rachel 61–62 (International Association of
Gillette, J. Michael 41, 81 Theatrical Stage Employees)
The Glass Menagerie 31–32
groups (control console) 124 Jackman, John 41–42
Joan Marcus Photography 48
Hagenbuch, Travis 55, 58–59, 164 job boards 222
Hands on a Hardbody 126, 139–140,
216; magic sheets 180, 181 Kaszniak, Al 8
hang lights 203–209, 210, 211–213; Katatikarn, Jasmine 41
cabling 205–206; focus Keeping Up strategies 105–106,
points 208; light plots 212; 109–110
previsualization 211; tools
203–205; troubleshooting 207 labor unions 76
HCI (human-computer interaction) 118 lamps 83
Holder, Donald 154, 155 Landau, David 41, 43, 81
Hollingsworth, Dawn 223–225 LDI (Live Design International) 106
holographic content 118 LEDs (light emitting diodes) 18,
Hopper, Edward 27–28 83–84, 116, 117, 140; panels 117,
Hughes, Allan Lee 195, 196 118; virtual sets 118
human-computer interaction see HCI letting go 184
(human-computer interaction) light 7–8, 14, 18–19, 27, 129, 132,
191; Nighthawks 27–28
IALD (International Association light boards 108–109, 114; see also
of Lighting Designers) 66, 76; lighting consoles
Lighting Quality Venn Diagram 42 light desks see lighting consoles
IATSE (International Association of lighting 34–35, 37–42, 46–49
Theatrical Stage Employees) 76, 163 lighting artists see lighting design;
IES (Illuminating Engineering Society) lighting designers
75–76 lighting brushes 71, 81, 82, 84, 94,
illumination 41, 42, 43 111, 121, 144
immersive productions 54–55, 66 lighting consoles 122–125, 178–181
impacts 40–49, 80, 81, 82 lighting control 121–125, 128
in blind (not live) 183 lighting courses 226–228
incandescent lights 83 lighting design 1–3, 17, 19, 34,
industry newsletter mailing lists 73, 74 159–160, 166–167, 190–191;
industry trade events 106 light plots 155–156, 160–162,
Insecure 135 212; Mini-Lighting Design Project
inspiration board (collages) 152, 156–158, 158–159; The Photo
153, 209 Project 156–158, 158–159
Instagram 48 lighting designers 1, 7–8, 14, 34, 149,
instrument schedule 212 176, 189–191, 192–198
intensity 81 Lighting Diary 7–8
interior light 15–16 lighting directors 164
International Association of Lighting lighting hardware 109
Designers see IALD (International lighting instruments 83–89; ERS 85,
Association of Lighting Designers) 86, 94; fresnels 86, 87, 94;
234
INDEX
PARs 87, 88, 99; soft lights 89, NABET-CWA (National Association
90, 94; wash lights 88–89; see also of Broadcast Employees and
advanced lighting technology Technicians-Communications
Lighting Moments Project 39 Workers of America) 76
lighting needs inventory 155 National Electrical Code see NEC
Lighting Quality Venn Diagram (IALD) 42 (National Electrical Code)
lighting rules 185 National Fire Protection Association
lighting scene breakdowns 150 see NFPA (National Fire
lighting software 109–110 Protection Association)
lighting systems control 127–128 National Theatre Live War Horse
lighting teams 169–170, 176–178, 186 Trailer 48
light plots 155–156, 160–162, 212; The naturalism 31, 44–45
Photo Project 156–158, 158–159 natural light 14–18
light sources 82, 83–84, 94; NEC (National Electrical Code) 75,
artiÿcial light 15, 16, 17–18, 76, 102–103
83–84; geographic location 17; NFPA (National Fire Protection
incandescent 83; LEDs 18, 83–84, Association) 75
116, 117, 118, 140; period Nighthawks (Hopper, 1942) 27–28
styles°17 night-time 15, 16
Light Worksheets 38, 39, 45, 46 note taking 183–184
Lightwrite 213 NT Live: The Curious Incident of the
linear sources 91, 94 Dog in the Night-Time Ofÿcial
Live Design International see LDI Trailer 48
(Live Design International)
observation 7
McCandless, Stanley 20–21, 41, 44, 81 Ohm’s law 100
McNeil, Amara 197–198 online presence 223
magic sheets 180–181 operas 49, 50, 51, 66, 113, 163
Mandalorian stage 118 opponent-processing color perception
meditation 9, 10, 11 theory 137–138
meditative practices 10, 11 organizational structures 162–166, 171
memory control boards 108–109 organizational websites 222
modeling (modeling form) 44 overcurrent protective devices
mood 43–44 see°circuit breakers
Moonlight, Wolf (Remington, 1909) 31 overhead rigging 80
Moran, Nick 84
mouse pad, Secoa 101 pacing 45
movement 81, 150–151 palettes 179–180, 182
moving head lights 115 panels, LED 117, 118
moving lights (movers) 112–116 parameters 114–115
moving mirror lights (scanners) Parker and Wolf 41, 43
115,°117 PARs (Parabolic Anodized Re˛ectors)
Murder on the Orient Express (2017) 87, 88, 94, 99
118 patch panels 124
musical theatre 49, 151 period styles 17
The Music Man 34 Perkins, Kathy A. 196
music touring 52, 53, 66 Personal Protective Equipment see PPE
Musser, Tharon 106–109, 170 (Personal Protective Equipment)
235
INDEX
PEs (professional engineers) 96 remote manipulation 111

photographs 17 research 12–13; contextual 12, 13,
The Photo Project 156–158; Mini- 151–152, 153; visual 12, 13, 151,
Lighting Design Project 158–159 152–153
The Picture of Dorian Gray 34, 35 resumes 222–223
Pierce, Xavier 195–196 rhythm 45
Pilbrow, Richard 22, 23, 24, 41, The Road to Perdition (2002) 47
45, 176 The Rogue Theatre 219
Pirates of the Caribbean Ride – Magic Rosenthal, Jean (Jeannie) 14, 21–22, 23
Kingdom Walt Disney World 48
plausibility 31, 32–33, 45 Sabbatini, Nicola 121
plays 49, 50 sACN 128
portfolios 223 safety 78–80, 121
Power Formula 100 Santa Fe Opera 93
PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) 80 saturated colors 135
Prendergast, Shirley 197 scene painters 1, 120
pre-programming 178–181 scenic designers 1
presets 179–180, 182 Schwartz, Sam 52, 53
Pressner, Stan 129, 142, 168 SCR (silicon-controlled rectiÿer
previous productions 12, 13 dimmer) 122
previsualization 211 script analysis 149–150
primary colors 131–132 scrollers 117
Prince – Purple Rain live at Super sculpting 44
Bowl (2007) 48 secondary colors 132
production shots 191 SED (Spectral Energy Distribution
professional engineers see PEs curve) 139
(professional engineers) selective focus 43
professional organizations 66, 67, self-re°ection 189–190
74–78, 80 shadows 15, 18–19
professional training programs shape 81
226–228 shopping malls 59–60
projections 118–120 silicon-controlled rectiÿer dimmer
properties of light 81–82 see˛SCR (silicon-controlled
rectiÿer dimmer)
qualities of Light 40, 41, 81–82 single light source 19, 20
quietive practices 1–2, 4–5, 8–10 single spotlights 19; The Curious
Incident of the Dog in the
RDM (Remote Device Management) Night-Time 20
110, 127–128 skin tones 134–135, 136, 137
realism 31, 32 soft lights 89, 90, 94
recessed lights 91, 92, 94 sources 73–74; digital bookmarks 73;
Reckless 150 digital reading lists 73; industry
re°ected light 15, 18 newsletter mailing lists 73, 74;
re°ections 17, 18 websites 73–74
Remington, Frederic 30–31 So You Think You Can Dance (Fox)
Remote Device Management see RDM 55, 57
(Remote Device Management) space lights 89
236
INDEX
Spectral Energy Distribution curve Tipton, Jennifer 153, 154–155, 160

see˛SED (Spectral Energy tone 27–28, 32
Distribution curve) tools 71, 73, 203–205
spotlights 19; The Curious Incident of tracking 182–183
the Dog in the Night-Time 20 tracklights 92, 94
Spring Awakening (2007) 185 Trailheads 25, 68, 145, 146, 147,
stage lighting 20–21, 22–23 172, 186
Star Trek 34, 36 Tree of Contemplative Practices 9
STOMP 13, 164, 217 troubleshooting, hang lights 207
STOMP OUT LOUD 217 TSP (Technical Standards Program)
Stratton, Hank 168 75, 78
submasters 124–125
sunlight 16, 17 United Scenic Artists 66, 163
Up (2002) 48
Tanzillo, Michael 41
Taylor, Clifton 141, 142 Vectorworks 213
TEA (Themed Entertainment videographers 219–220
Association) 66 video production 165–166, 219–220
technical specifications 155–156; Virtual Light Lab (West Side
The Photo Project 156–158, Systems) 156
158–159 virtual reality 118
technical standards 74–78, 80, 127,144 visibility 41, 42, 43, 44
Technical Standards Program see TSP visual artists 1, 27
(Technical Standards Program) visualizer programs 156
technology 105–106, 109–110 visual reference research 12, 13, 151,
television 55, 93 152–153
television lighting 41–42, 55, 58–59, The Voice (NBC) 55, 57
114, 122, 164 The Voice of the Prairie 31, 32
termination 127 volunteering 13
Terry, Steve 75, 76–78, 109, 125
text-based works 149–150 Wait Until Dark (Lang, 1967) 42–43
theatres 49, 50, 54, 66, 79, 113, 163, The Walking Dead (AMC) 55, 56
184, 220, 227 walking meditation 10
The Man Who Came to Dinner (2013) wash lights 88–89
214–215 wavelengths 129–130
themed entertainment 63–64, 66, websites 73–74, 223
113, 165 Wierzel, Robert 154
Themed Entertainment Association Williams, Tennessee 31
see TEA (Themed Entertainment Wood, Grant 33
Association)
This Is Us 17 yoga 3–4, 11
timelines 163 Young, Steven 63–64
237

Deanna Fitzgerald - The Heart of Light - A Holistic Primer For A Life and Career in Lighting Design and Production-Routledge (2022)

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The Heart of Light

• how to observe, communicate about, and use light effectively

From her perspective of lighting designer, educator, and contemplative practitioner,

Deanna Fitzgerald is a professional Lighting Designer and member of United Scenic

1 Introduction and an Invitation 1

Industry Perspectives and Quirks 49

The Spectral Energy Distribution Curve or SED 139

6 Do and Adapt 175

Focusing Tips 208

My ÿrst acknowledgment has to go to Tori Mays who started it all with

I especially thank the folks who dedicated time – without expecting

in Hollywood, Orlando, Seoul, New Orleans, and Zhuhai, China; and

Introduction and an Invitation

quietive practices. If you think about the kinds of over-arching skills a

Project: Getting Started Being Quiet

To condition the mind for creative thought.

What and How?

If you have just a moment:

• Sit or stand comfortably.

If you have a half an hour or more:

We’ll begin Chapter 2 by jumping right into a project designed to hone

Project: Lighting Moments

Explore two questions:

is almost always an answer. If it grabbed your attention, there was an

This works well as a class exercise on a discussion board, or organized on

Measuring success: A progressive depth of analysis over time is the best

Timetable: In the beginning, set a goal of one entry every couple of

Quietive Practices and the Creative Process

contemplation is a cherished effect of quietive practice, but not something

Figure 2.1 Tree of Contemplative Practices

Results of the present ALE [activation likelihood estimation] analy-

Being More Informed than Infuenced

So how do we do it? The simple answer is that (like everything else) it

Light as it Naturally Occurs

Figure 2.2 Day and Night, 1938, M.C. Escher

LEDs caused a huge shift in how artiÿcial light is experienced. Those of

• We only see light when it is re°ected off a surface, caught in atmos-

• The contrast between a shadow and the surface around a shadow

Figure 2.3 “Small Places”. A spotlight on Christopher (Hunter Hnat) in The

History Break: Honoring the “Founders”

Stanley McCandless (1897–1967) is often called the father of Ameri-

McCandless’s techniques are the subject of many nerdy debates amongst

When people talk about “lighting McCandless-style” or “using McCand-

While we tend to credit McCandless with codifying the mechanics of lighting

Jean was so open to the thinking, the intentions, of others, so ready

disagreeable overtones, came to a halt when the director John House-

conceived artistic whole” is an expression worth pondering for any lighting

She lit until it was time to go.

A year after A Method of Lighting the Stage was published, a titan of

Figure 2.5 Richard Pilbrow today

Pilbrow’s presence is felt throughout the whole of arts and entertainment.

As recently as 2011, I saw him give a talk to a crowded conference hall at

Take a Breath: Refections and Trailheads

Figure 2.6 Trailheads

References and Resources

Impacts of Light for the Artist

Figure 3.1 Nighthawks, 1942, Edward Hopper

creates a tone, or evocative atmosphere. The feeling I have is one of curi-

Engaging the Observer

Figure 3.2 A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, 1884, George Seurat

Figure 3.3 The Garden of Earthly Delights, 1490–1500, Hieronymus Bosch

Art, Reality, and Plausibility