3. Stage Lighting
The practice of stage
lighting is the art of providing light
onstage in order to give the audience
the ability to see the focal point of the
performance. Stage lighting is most
important quality is providing visibility,
and it is the designers job to have a
motivation for the visibility. The
composition of lighting on stage is
necessary to provide light for scenery
at the appropriate part in the
production. Overall the most creative
aspect of lighting design is the mood
of your design, and the ability to make
it mesh perfectly with a scene or
production.
5. Design &
Paperwork
Once assigned to a production
a designer must come up with a design
concept. From there the designer
reads the production’s script three
times and then creates a scene
breakdown. The scene breakdown
establishes acting areas and cues for
the cue sheet. Once finished, the
designers draws circles on an empty
plot to designate acting areas and then
proceeds to plot lights around each
circle to light each acting area
appropriately. The lights will be hung
by a Master Electrician and then the
designer will program and finish his
design.
7. Lights, Go
Designers will go through
“tech week;” a week consisting of dry
tech run throughs, cue to cue days and
dress rehearsals before the show.
After the final dress rehearsal, the
designer won’t touch their lighting
console again. At least a good
designer won’t. The stage manager will
have all of the designer’s cues and call
them to a board operator who’ll press
the “GO” button and fire each cue.
9. Kevin Adams
Kevin Adams is one of
the most established and advanced
designers today. His designs
incorporate both lighting and scenic
elements, due to his masters degree in
both. Kevin’s success began in
California when touring around as a
freelance designer and after a year he
was picked up by a touring production.
Since then, he’s won multiple Tony
Awards for his work in New York. His
design secret is that when creating a
concept, he only designs with blue
bulbs in his room instead of normal
light bulbs.
10. Kenneth Posner
Famous for his lighting
for the hit Mega-Musical Wicked,
Kenneth Posner, had been involved
with theatre since the age of 17 when
he did summer stock. He went through
college, got his masters from the
Purchase School of the Arts and then
went right to designing on Broadway.
Kenneth has more than 49 Broadway
shows under his belt, including
Wicked, Kinky Boots, Hairspray and
Pippin. Kenneth continues to design
because he loves interacting with new
challenges and finding artistic ways to
overcome them.
11. Jean Rosenthal
Known as one of the first
pioneers of stage lighting, Jean
Rosenthal serves as an inspiration in
broadway lighting to all young
designers. Working mainly in the 50’s
she designed over three hundred
broadway shows including the original
West Side Story and Fiddler on the
Roof. Her designs were more intimate
and less elaborate due to the lack of
lighting technology at the time. Her
career later focused around traditional
theatre, dance and opera lighting.
12. Peggy Eisenhauer
Beginning as a tap dancer,
Peggy as a young teenager would lend
a hand in here local town’s theatre and
began to love lighting. She claims that
her main inspiration was Pippin when
she went to go see it at the age of 13.
From there, she went to college and
then grad school, and after graduating
immediately went to LA, where she
designed shows like Cabaret (2014)
and Assassins. Since then, she’s
worked in film lighting, working on
movies like Dreamgirls, The Producers
and Chicago.
