Today, our guest, UH Theatre Director Sidney Berger, looks for his light. The
University of Houston presents this series about the
machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.
Ask any actor or director what the most haunting image
of the theatre is and most will tell you it's what's known as the "ghost light"
-- a single standing lamp placed for safety in the middle of the darkened theatre
stage after the actors and the audience and the stagehands have left, haunting
the space and presumably calling up the ghosts of performances past.
Light in the theatre has always had its own mystique. But its control is only
a very recent innovation. In Shakespeare's time indoor theatres such as the
Blackfriars, which housed
Shakespeare's own company, enabled the players to be lit solely by chandeliers
of candles. Even through the eighteenth century and the time of famed actor David Garrick,
candles were the sole illumination for actors and scenery. Garrick's stage was
illuminated by six chandeliers, each containing twelve wax candles in brass
sockets. But acting under them was a decided risk as dripping wax frequently
landed on actors' faces.
But, as the centuries passed, oil lamps replaced the candle and then gas. Then came
the profound innovation: electricity. But when electricity was first utilized,
it simply imitated its predecessors but it added color, and its intensity could
be controlled, which made it far more useful to theatre productions. What is clear
is that light or its absence can stimulate an emotional reaction in the same way a
dark and stormy morning can affect us in contrast to a brilliant sun-filled day,
which raises our spirits, although the landscape may be the same. Equally, forms
of torture include keeping a prisoner in brilliant light or its absence for extended
periods.
In the early twentieth century, visionaries learned to use light to create shape
and mass to complement the three-dimensional actor. In an age of flat scenery
plasticity was its basic aim. Adolphe Appia cited light as most akin to music
which reflects and reinforces changes in mood, emotion and psychology. In our
own time, due to twenty-first century technology, we have gone much further.
We now have instruments that move, computers that regulate hundreds of light cues
with the touch of a button. And technology is still advancing at a furious speed.
So, now, as we pass the single ghost light haunting the looming darkness of the
empty theatre, I think of the great designer, Ming Cho Lee, who asked a design
student what he envisioned for a specific play. "Nothing!," replied the student,
"Nothing at all! I want a void!" "Ah, replied Ming, smiling,
"But what kind of void?"
I'm Sidney Berger, at the University of Houston,
where we're interested in the way inventive minds
work.
(Theme music)
F. Bentham, The Art of Stage Lighting. (London: Pitman and Sons Ltd., 1969).
E. F. Kook, Images in Light for the Living Theatre. (New York: Century Lighting Inc. 1963).
T. Fuchs, Stage Lighting. (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1929).
S. McCandless, A Method of Lighting the Stage. (New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1958).
O. Brockett and R Findlay, Century of Innovation (Theatre & Drama). (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: 1973).
Sidney Berger is the Director of Theatre at the University of Houston, founder and
Producing Director of the Houston Shakespeare Festival, co-founder and producer of the
Children's Theatre Festival, Dr. Berger also co-founded the Shakespeare Theatre
Association of America and served as its first president. He has directed over ninety
productions on the UH campus, as well as over twenty-seven productions for the Shakespeare
Festival. He has also been represented by plays he has directed throughout the city,
notably at the Alley Theatre, where he served as associate artist, with many productions.
As Artistic Consultant at Stages Repertory Theatre, he has directed many plays including
Edward Albee's All Over with Mr. Albee in attendance. At Theatre Under the Stars,
he directed the fortieth anniversary production of My Fair Lady with Noel Harrison.
He serves on the board of London's Shakespeare's Globe and has received the university's
highest honor, the Esther Farfel Award. In 1997 Dr. Berger was elected to the College of
Fellows of the American Theatre.
(All photos by JHL)
The Engines of Our Ingenuity is
Copyright © 1988-2006 by John H.
Lienhard.
Differences in illumination were achieved by raising
or lowering the chandeliers. Later, these were exchanged for candled perpendicular
lamps and reflectors which were turned away to dim the stage. This meant the actor's
face became primary. And Garrick's generation devised a catalogue of "looks"
easily seen by the audience. Jealousy, for example, was a combination of fear,
scorn and anger; love, joy and fear.