Reflections about Scottish Rite Scenery, Spatter and Lighting
For some artists, the use of spatter is always the final step in painting every backdrop. Shaking a brush to scatter little dots of warm and cool colors throughout the painting completes the composition. This was not a common technique before the 1920s.
Spatter is used for a variety reasons. It can break up solid areas in a setting and provide texture. It can help shape and define objects such as tree trunks, interior walls, draperies, meadows and the exterior of buildings. It may suggest atmospheric conditions, such as rays of light emanating from clouds overhead or a hazy landscape.
Sometimes, it is intended to help the composition, anticipating the possibility of a poor lighting design. As many of us know, certain light colors can “kill” portions of a painted scene, sapping the life out of the color. Spatter is a way to resuscitate a scene when poorly lit with an inappropriate color choice. Some individuals in charge of lighting a historic scene may not be familiar with the demands of two-dimensional settings and let one color dominate their palette – green for forests, red for hades. Proper lighting that mixes a few colors can make backdrops appear as magical and transformative. Uninformed choices in regard to color and intensity will make a backdrop static and lifeless. I have walked into many Scottish Rite buildings where the lighting fails to show the potential of what is possible on stage; the backdrops are lit with whatever color is predominant in the scene. Lighting is an important aspect of Scottish Rite degree productions as the scenes were designed with specific scenic illusions in mind and specific lighting. Often the border lights are red, blue and white. When more colors have been added in contemporary systems, they are seldom balanced to enhance the painted settings.
The Masonic stage crew often does not realize that there are transparent and translucent sections in painted compositions, intended for surprise revelations or the magical appearance of a hidden object or message. In some instances beautiful woodland scenes have the ability to depict brilliant sunsets, and this scenic effect has been forgotten over the decades. Stained glass windows in cathedrals will glow, enhancing the setting for a degree. Many Scottish Rite stage crews no longer realize the potential for each painted setting as a lot of the backdrops are no longer used during a reunion. Declining membership, shrinking stage crews, and the loss of backstage “memory” are all factors that now conceal these popular visual effects.
As Scottish Rite theaters continue to upgrade their lighting systems, some theatre consultants and system installers fail to understand that potential of historical backdrops and their lighting needs for degree productions; borders lights are replaced with a few individual lighting instruments. Clients are promised that the actors will be more visible with modern lighting, yet the painted illusion becomes collateral damage. Some of the new lighting systems for Scottish Rite stages have destroyed the historical aesthetic of the venue when the primary focus is redirected to the sole illumination of the actor – not the stage picture. Instead of placing an character within a scene as part of a unified whole, the performer is now placed in the midst of unevenly lit stage pictures that appear flat and unrealistic. The magic is disappearing.
The Hastings Scottish Rite was one just example of how a new lighting system was designed and installed for a historic venue without taking into an account that the purpose of the stage and that majority of performances would use painted drops. Sadly, all of the painted scenery now shows a series of “hot spots” across the top, accentuating wrinkles and other flaws on the painted surface. The previous border lights that provided a general wash over the painted surface were replaced with instruments that were not intended to illuminate large-scale paintings.
In terms of modern lighting systems in Scottish Rite theaters -the Scottish Rite scenes from the 1920s that incorporated spatter into the painting process do better than those without. However, there is only so much the scenic artist can do to protect a composition from poor lighting conditions.
To be continued…
