Modern stage lighting is a flexible tool in the production of theatre, dance, opera and other performance arts. Several different types of stage lighting instruments are used in the pursuit of the various principles or goals of lighting.
Stage lighting has several functions, although to allow for artistic effect, no hard and fast rules can ever be applied. The functions of lighting include:
Illumination: The simple ability to see what is occurring on stage. Any lighting design will be ineffective if the audience has to strain to see the characters; unless this is the explicit intent.
Revelation of form: Altering the perception of shapes onstage, particularly three-dimensional stage elements.
Focus: Directing the audience's attention to an area of the stage or distracting them from another.
Mood: Setting the tone of a scene. Harsh red light has a totally different effect than soft lavender light.
Location and time of day: Establishing or altering position in time and space. Blues can suggest night time while orange and red can suggest a sunrise or sunset. Use of gobos to project sky scene, moon etc
Projection/stage elements: Lighting may be used to project scenery or to act as scenery onstage.
Plot: A lighting event may trigger or advance the action onstage.
Composition: Lighting may be used to show only the areas of the stage which the designer wants the audience to see, and to "paint a picture".
While Lighting Design is an art form, and thus no one way is the only way, there is a modern movement that simply states that the Lighting Design helps to create the environment in which the action take place while supporting the style of the piece. "Mood" is arguable while the environment is essential.
Focus, position, and hanging
Many stage lights hung on a batten focused in several directions, Focus is a term usually used to describe where an instrument is pointed. The final focus should place the "hot spot" of the beam at the actor's head level when standing the center of the instrument's assigned "focus area" on the stage. Position refers to the location of an instrument in the theater's fly system or on permanent pipes in front-of-house locations. Hanging is the act of placing the instrument in its assigned position.
In addition to these, certain modern instruments are automated, referring to motorized movement of either the entire fixture body or the movement of a mirror placed in front of its outermost lens. These fixtures and the more traditional follow spots add Direction and Motion to the relevant characteristics of light. Automated fixtures fall into either the moving head or moving mirror / scanner category. Scanners have a body which contains the lamp, PCBs, transformer, and effects (color, gobo, iris etc.) devices. A mirror is panned and tilted in the desired position by pan and tilt motors, thereby causing the light beam to move. Moving head fixtures have the effects and lamp assembly inside the head with transformers and other electronics in the base or external ballast. There are advantages and disadvantages to both. Scanners are typically faster and less costly than moving head units but have a narrower range of movement. Moving head fixtures have a much larger range of movement as well as a more natural inertial movement but are typically more expensive.
The above characteristics are not always static, and it is frequently the variation in these characteristics that is used in achieving the goals of lighting.
Stanley McCandless was perhaps the first to define controllable qualities of light used in theater. In A Method for Lighting the Stage, McCandless discusses color, distribution, intensity and movement as the qualities that can be manipulated by a lighting designer to achieve the desired visual, emotional and thematic look on stage. The McCandless Method, outlined in that book, is widely embraced today. The method involves lighting an object on the stage from three angles- 2 lights at 45 degrees to the left and right, and one at 90 degrees (perpendicular to the front of the object).
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