Effect Of Dimming In Theatre

This actor was not drowned out by the action around them because all other action was now background noise. Limelight could also intensify a scene filled with emotion by focusing on the main action. Limelight made it possible for a director to easily manipulate the audiences focus to where ever the director felt necessary. The introduction of the gas table changed the way theatres went about stage lighting. While being able to create artificial light with candles, footlights, and limelights the theatre industry was still not able to control the amount of light on the stage. The gas table allowed “real dimming”, and was a “flexible, centralized” tool (McCandless, 58). Effective dimming can change the way a play effects the audience. At the end of the scene, some directors call for a quick blackout. This can be very effective in some cases, but in the majority of cases a dimmed blackout or a dimmed scene change can keep the audience on their toes. The early days of dimming were a real hassle. Yes, it had an amazing effect, but the equipment was bulky and hard to maneuver. Most advances in technology seem to have one common denominator which is to make a tool easier to handle. The introduction of the switchboard did just that for lighting. The switchboard made “effective stage lighting” an

This can be very expensive, and some theatres will spend the majority of their budget designated for stage lighting on a collection of lights rather than spending it on a switchboard that has the capacity to operate multiple different light circuits simultaneously. A company can always add more lights and circuits to its stage, but they are basically useless if a nice switchboard is not in use. Multiple dimmer switches can be “utilized for colour blending of different circuits in multicolor lighting equipment to obtain a desired color hue”(Williams,