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The Virtuosity of the Lighting Artist: Designer or Performer?

In this chapter Hunt investigates the role of those creatively responsible for theatre lighting, and the historical emergence of the figures of the theatre lighting designer and the theatre lighting operator. Hunt shows how present lighting design practices have been shaped since the 1930s by technological and professional as well as artistic forces.

The role of the Lighting Designer emerged in the middle of the twentieth century, and, in terms of its responsibilities and relationships with other production personnel, has remained essentially unchanged since. The conventional design process is well established, and is supported by an apparatus that includes: contractual arrangements; the professional roles of lighting operators and other technical staff; and a complex and finely-tuned technical infrastructure.

However, at the time the role of the lighting designer was emerging, an alternative role of the lighting artist as performer was proposed by at least one practitioner: Frederick Bentham. Hunt describes Bentham’s lighting philosophy, assesses the lighting control system he created to realise his ideas, and explores the reasons why his proposed role of the lighting performer was not generally adopted, despite Bentham’s considerable influence on theatre lighting at the time. Hunt goes on to argue that the role of the lighting designer, modelled on the pre-existing model of the set and costume designer, came to embody a conception of lighting design as a thing made in advance. In contrast, Bentham’s ideas imply a conception of design as process: something rehearsed but performed in the moment. The subsequent history of stage lighting has significantly shaped our ideas about the role of light on stage.

Hunt draws on historical primary source material from the theatre-professional literature to give an account of an aspect of the development of theatre practice not previously described in scholarly terms, and recontextualises understanding of present lighting practices.