Theatre Lighting Supplies

Lighting is a critical element of theatre performances, as it sets the mood, focuses the audience’s attention and brings to life characters. Different types of lighting offer a variety of effects that enhance the performance.

Front lighting helps bring focus to the face of actors, while high side lights spotlight the upper body. Beam lights are a key tool used to add dimension and distinguish props and set pieces from the backdrop.

Stage Lighting

A good lighting design can transform a simple play, musical, dance or concert into a memorable event. The right angles, intensity levels and colors can create different “looks” or lighting states that help the show achieve its desired mood.

A basic theater lighting system will consist of a variety of conventional lanterns, also known as light fixtures or lights. These are boxlike devices that provide the light source, often using tungsten bulbs and sometimes LEDs. These lights are plugged into a dimmer, which controls their intensity. The dimmer is connected to a computer, or console, that programs the lighting for each scene.

Conventional lanterns come in a variety of forms, including ellipsoidal fixtures, which can produce theatre lighting supplies a round beam of light at a set size and are ideal for lighting a large area like a backdrop called a cyclorama. Other types include border or strip lights, which are used to evenly light up the stage floor and are perfect for highlighting props, and Fresnel fixtures, which can produce a powerful, but soft-edged beam of light with a variable focus that allows them to be used to highlight specific areas on the stage.

Another type of conventional fixture is a scoop light, which can have gels affixed to them. This allows the lights to shift from one color to another, which can create different effects. Also, many conventional lights are designed to be dimmerable and can be faded in or out, cross-fading between two cues.

Lighting Controls

Lighting controls are the devices that connect to the input and output of a lighting system. They may be a logic circuit or microprocessor (centralized intelligence) or embedded within the luminaire itself, and they can utilize a variety of technologies and protocols.

A common type of control is a DMX, which transmits data to control light fixtures over low-voltage wiring. These systems offer greater flexibility and responsiveness than traditional hardwired systems, and they can help reduce costs by minimizing the number of power outlets needed to run your entire theater rig.

Almost all modern theatres use this type of control. This is because DMX allows them to send multiple commands at once, which reduces the total amount of work they need to do in order to create different effects.

Tungsten stage lights are typically patched into a series of dimmers in a theatre, and these are then connected to the lighting desk. This is where the light designer will typically place all of the lighting cues theatrical lighting supply that are required to get the show up and running.

Conventional stage lights, which are also known as ellipsoidal spotlights, can be framed and focused in various ways by changing the current they receive from the dimmers. They can also be coloured by using “gels,” which are pieces of colored film that are placed in front of each lamp. Follow spots, a special type of ellipsoidal spotlight that can be manually operated to follow a performer around the stage, are usually also plugged into dimmers.

Lighting Design

A professional lighting designer (or LD) has a wide range of tools to create the desired effects. He may use a lighting plot, a copy of the script and channel hookup on a light board, a computer monitor connected to the light board for referencing cues or using visualization software, and a light walker to stand in for performers so that he can see what they look like under different lights.

He also needs lighting instruments – either traditional tungsten stage lights, or more recent LED types that can be programmed to change colors and focus to spotlight actors on a crowded set. Most LDs choose to work with a mix of both tungsten and LED instruments for flexibility and cost-effectiveness.

Lights are used in theatre for a variety of reasons, the primary being to let the audience clearly see the actors on the stage. But lights do much more: They establish time and place by varying the color of light to suggest different times of day or locations such as a city, desert or forest. Lighting can accentuate and de-emphasize costumes and scenery. It can encourage or discourage applause after musical numbers, scenes, and acts; and it provides visual rhythm and movement by changing the direction and intensity of light during a performance.

A lighting designer’s other practical tools include filters, gobos and gels for changing the color of a light. Historically, these were selected, cut and fitted to lights by hand; but modern lighting instruments are more flexible with a wide range of available filters.