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The Power of Stage Lighting

By Grey Pratt, Customer Service Rep, Pioneer Drama Service 

Grey has been involved in theatre for 16+ years, starting from when they were a small child.  Through the years, their participation has included acting, tech, directing, designing, writing, construction, and much more.  The theatre arts have a special place in Grey’s heart, and they invest themself in any facet they can, which has led to the exciting opportunity of being employed with Pioneer Drama. 

What is the function of stage lighting?  Why is it important?  What aspects are changed and/or heightened by lighting?  These are all good questions to consider for lighting your show.

At its heart, the function is simple:  the audience needs to be able to see the actors.  But of course, there is so much more to it.  Lighting is a magical element that should not be looked over when planning your show.  Lighting brings focus, illumination, atmosphere, emotion, and flow to a show.  A good lighting design can heighten your performance and draw the audience even more into the story you are telling.

For full vision of the stage, the best place to start is with a “general wash” — lighting that covers the stage evenly.  To gain an even general wash, grid your stage into 6 even spaces and make sure that at least 5 lights are aimed at each section.  Let the lights overlap until you have found an even transition from light to light when an actor walks through them.  Then it can be broken up into sections or areas specific to the show.  Once you’ve set a general wash, you can add color to convey the atmosphere of the scene.  You can add spots or “specials” to help draw the audience’s attention to a specific area of the stage (and/or draw attention from other areas).  A lighting change can also indicate the end of a scene or change the mood.  It can facilitate a smoother scene change or separate and isolate the stage in a way set pieces cannot.

The real magic of lighting is that you don’t need fancy equipment.  It’s all about how you use it.  The direction of your lights changes everything!  To best explain it, try an experiment.  Set an actor on stage and light them with a single light source — a flashlight or your phone, anything that projects light.  Now take that light and shine it directly in front of the actor’s face (front lighting) and see how it washes out some of the facial features.  Move the light to the side of the actor (side lighting) and see how the other side of the actor’s face darkens.  Move the light over the top of the actor’s head and shine it downward (top/down lighting) to create shadows under the eyes, nose, and lips.  Move the light under the actor and shine it up at them (up lighting) to see how the shadows shift to the cheekbones and forehead.  Finally, move the light behind the actor, shining into the audience (backlighting).  Notice the silhouette it creates.  All these lighting effects create a certain feeling or atmosphere.  They change the way an actor looks on stage, and the actor didn’t even have to do anything!  That is the power of lighting and angles.

Once you have explored the magic of angles, the next step is to explore colors.  Changing the color of stage lights is achieved using gels — generally a clipping of transparent colored plastic laid over the lens of the light.  There are several categories of gel sheets, each with their own purpose, such as effect, color correction, diffusion, or reflection.  For instance, while color filters are used to change the color of a light, diffusion filters are used to soften or spread light and reduce the contrast between highlighted areas.  The complexity builds, with diffusion filters having several sub-categories — frosts, flexi-frosts, grid cloths, etc.  The more skilled and knowledgeable you get, the more you can use lighting to create atmosphere or emotion on stage.  For example, if you had a general wash with a tint of blue, you could create a sad, lonely tone or a dark, scary night.  Similarly, with a red tint, you could create an atmosphere of anger or danger or even extreme heat.  This is why lighting techs love their role — colors and tones help create the world, the environment, and the atmosphere on stage.

Darkness can be as impactful as light.  By utilizing shadows, sudden blackouts, spotlights, specials, blue outs, or fades, you can change times, places, events, streams of consciousness, conversations, and so much more!  For instance, when an actor in a scene reveals an inner dialogue to the audience, you could dim the general wash about 20 percent and have the actor step into a special or spotlight to tightly draw focus.  Then, when they are pulled back into the conversation of the scene from before, the lighting shifts back to full.  This creates a whole other world within the same space and time as another.  It switches the audience’s focus without taking the rest of the actors completely out of the scene.

With some good resources and study, the magic of lighting is in your power!  You can help create all kinds of worlds within a small or limited space and in the process, help your audience connect with the story.