Reading Stanislavsky from a Stage Lighting Designer’s Point of View: Stanislavsky’s Notes on the Dramaturgy of Light

ABSTRACT

Stage lighting design is, mostly, referenced and researched in correlation to the scenographic history of theatre, often leaving in shadow the organic impact it has on the human beings involved in the theatre process, both in front and behind the footlights. Light, though, is not just a visual scenographic element; it is living, an orchestrator of the human vision; we still say, “I‘m going to see a play” and not hear a text spoken on stage. The beginning of the twentieth century was a turning point for theatre making, with Stanislavsky being one reference point for future developments. He made valuable remarks about lighting, proving that concentrating attention is an active process that does not happen by accident and that there are tools, like lighting, to facilitate that process. Key to my discussion here will be Stanislavsky’s notion of a light-initiated compartmentalisation and manipulation of stage space, i.e. the identification of specific sections on the stage the limits of which are set by light: circles of attention. Stanislavsky’s circles of attention support the statement that lighting serves as a “magnifying lens” that draws the viewer’s focus to particular areas or actions on stage. This article will elaborate on the potential of Stanislavsky’s circles of attention to the dramaturgy of light, shedding light on various extracts of his writings where the dynamic functions of stage lighting are observed and described in an experiential way.

KEYWORDS:

• Stanislavsky
• stage lighting
• circles of attention
• lighting narrative
• lighting education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Grammatikakis, The Autobiography of light, 26.

2. Palmer, “Light and Projection,” 48.

3. Graham et al, “Introduction: Thinking Light,” 7.

4. Appia, Music and the Art of Theatre, 74–8.

5. Aronson, Looking into the Abyss, 2.

6. Pilbrow, Stage Lighting Design, 186.

7. Nosella, Dramaturgy as a Source for a History of Stage Lighting.

8. Whyman, “Stanislavski: Contexts and Influences,” 69.

9. Stanislavski, An Actor Prepares, 89.

10. Leach, Theatre Studies, 29.

11. Pilbrow, Stage Lighting Design, 174.

12. Essig, “A Primer for the History of Lighting,” 6.

13. Stoker, “Irving and Stage Lighting,” 907.

14. Pilbrow, Stage Lighting Design, 174.

15. Ibid., 174.

16. Stoker, “Irving and Stage Lighting,” 906.

17. Penzel, Theatre Lighting, 61.

18. Ibid., 61.

19. Ibid., 61.

20. Stoker, “Irving and Stage Lighting,” 911.

21. Vobach, Adolph Appia, 47.

22. Appia, Music and the Art of Theatre, 74–8.

23. McCandless, A Method, 33.

24. Ibid., 52.

25. Whyman, “Stanislavski: Contexts and Influences,” 80.

26. Ribot, The Psychology of Attention, 5.

27. Ibid., 2.

28. Ibid., 11.

29. Ibid.

30. Stanislavski, My Life in Art, 216 and Whyman, “Stanislavski: Contexts and Influences,” 69.

31. Edward Gordon Craig grew up in the wings of the Lyceum Theatre, where Irving experimented with lighting, as his mother Helen Terry was an actress working in the Theatre. Craig did not fail to acknowledge the influence lighting had on stage.

32. In 1910, Sergei Volkonski, a member of the MAT, went to Hellerau to study Eurhythmics and helped build an intersection, arranging a tour for Delacroze in 1911 in Moscow, while two years later, in 1913, Stanislavsky himself visited Hellerau to understand Eurhythmics. He was also introduced to Appia’s work (as mentioned in Davidson, “Konstantin Stanislavski and Emile Jaques-Dalcroze,” 192).

33. As Stanislavsky would say, “An actor should be observant, not only on the stage but also in real life. […] He should look at an object, not as any absent-minded passer-by, but with penetration.” Stanislavski, An Actor Prepares, 99.

34. Stanislavski, My Life in Art, 24.

35. Ibid., 113–14.

36. Ibid., 140.

37. Ibid., 213–15.

38. Stanislavski, An Actor Prepares, 85.

39. Pilbrow, Stage Lighting Design, 7.

40. Stanislavski, An Actor Prepares, 91.

41. Aitken, Broken Screen, 271. Aitken refers to close-up, wide-angle shots, and the pan of the camera as the elements that create a predetermined path into the image of the film, but he goes on recognizing that the same function in theatre happens with the use of the spotlight.

42. Jones, articulating the necessary qualities of light in 1941, summed these up as: lucidity, penetration, awareness, discovery, inwardness, and wonder. Jones, The Dramatic Imagination, 121. Inwardness has a lot in common with Stanislavsky’s small circle of attention, which has a similar function, that of directing attention inwards.

43. Jones, The Dramatic Imagination, 112.

44. Stanislavski, An Actor Prepares, 90.

45. Ibid., 90.

46. Ibid.

47. Pilbrow, Stage Lighting Design, 30.

48. McCandless, A Method, 17.

49. Reid, The Stage Lighting Book, 105.

50. Pilbrow, Stage Lighting Design, 28.

51. Stanislavski, An Actor Prepares, 90.

52. Pilbrow, Stage Lighting Design, 14.

53. Reid, The Stage Lighting Book, 96.

54. Ibid., 130.

55. Stanislavsky, An Actor Prepares, 90–1.

56. Abulafia, The Art of Light on Stage, 159.

57. Ibid., 158.

58. Moran, The Right Light, 113.

59. Mirzoeff, An Introduction to Visual Culture, 43.

60. Stanislavski, An Actor Prepares, 82.

61. Ibid, 92.

62. Ibid, 86–7.

63. Ibid., 87.

64. Ibid., 37.

65. Di Benedetto, The Provocation of the senses in contemporary theatre, 39.

66. Pilbrow, Stage Lighting Design, 85.

67. Graham, Scenographic Light, 30.

68. Ibid., 32.

69. Stanislavski, An Actor Prepares, 279.

70. Ribot, The Psychology of Attention, 19.

71. Stanislavski, An Actor Prepares, 276.

72. Ibid., 278.

73. Ibid, 279.

74. McCandless, Syllabus, 86.

75. Ibid., 113.

76. Pilbrow, Stage Lighting Design, 7.

77. Stanislavski, An Actor Prepares, 199.

78. Saunders, A Treatise on Theatres, 2.

79. Stanislavski, An Actor Prepares, 86.

80. Abulafia, The Art of Light on Stage, 152.

81. Arnheim, Art and visual perception, 43.

82. Berger, Ways of Seeing, 8.

83. Essig, Lighting and the design idea, 4.

84. Palmer, “Light and Projection,” 48.

85. Knowles, “Looking for Enlighted Lighting,” 5.

86. Stanislavski, An Actor Prepares, 84.

87. Ibid., 51.

88. Valentina Tamiolaki, in The S Word 2023 symposium in Athens, presented a paper entitled “Creating a Role for Light: A Lighting Design Teaching Method Based on Stanislavsky,” where she elaborated on the similarities between the creative process of the lighting designer and that of the actor, applying steps suggested by Stanislavsky to the lighting design process. This presentation has been elaborated in essay form and was published in a recent issue of Stanislavski Studies. See Tamiolaki, “Creating a Role for Light.”

89. Pilbrow, Stage Lighting Design, 28.

90. Goebbels, Aesthetics of Absence, 80.

91. The term seers, those who see, is used by Aronson in the introduction of his book Looking into the Abyss, p. 7, highlighting the importance of vision in the perception of theatre.

92. Sawyer, “Introduction: The new science of learning,” 10.

93. Goebbels, Aesthetics of Absence, 77–81.

94. Moran, The Right Light, 110.

95. Aronson, Looking into the Abyss, 34.

96. Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, 82–91.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported that there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Christina Thanasoula

Christina Thanasoula is a freelance lighting designer. She has trained at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (London, UK) and holds a Master of Arts in Advanced Theatre Practice, strand of Lighting Design. Since 2003, she has designed lighting for over 250 opera, theatre, and dance performances. She is the author of the Greek national occupational standard and educational curriculum of the lighting technician profession and author of the book Lighting design: painting on stage in four dimensions published in 2021. She is currently working on her PhD thesis on lighting design at the Department of Theatre Studies at UOA.