Category: Borders

Part 690: Proper Lighting for Scottish Rite Stages

In 1881, The Building News included the article “Art on the Stage.” A small section addressed the scenic artist’s involvement with lighting at the time:

“The last thing that the scene-painter does before the production of a new play is to have his scenes set upon the stage at night in order that he can arrange the lighting of them. The “gas-man” of a theatre is the artist’s mainstay. It lies in his power to ruin the finest scene that was ever painted. Ground lights turned too high upon a moonlight scene, calciums with glass not properly tinted, or the shadow of a straight edged border-drop thrown across a delicate sky – all these things are ruin to the artist’s most careful work. The proper lighting of a scene is, therefore, a matter that requires the most careful study. The artist sits in the centre of the auditorium and minutely observes every nook and comer of his scene under the glare of gas. Here a light is turned up and there one is lowered until the proper effect is secured. The gas-man takes careful note of his directions, and the stage-manager oversees everything. Long after the audience has left the theatre on the night before the production of a new play, the stage-hands, the artist, and the stage manager are at work, and the public sees only the charming result of their labours when the curtain rises on the next night.”

Over three decades later, electric border lights and other lighting instruments replaced their gas predecessors. In 1913, Bestor G. Brown, western sales manager for M. C. Lieelley & Co., wrote a letter to William G. Bell at the Austin Scottish Rite about the proper way to light a Scottish Rite stage. He cited the recently installed lighting system at the Santa Fe Scottish Rite installed the year before. Brown described the electric border lights:

“Each border ought to be hung the same way as we hang our scenery, on counterweighted cable; it requires a little larger counterweight frame for these border rows on account of the weight. We ordinarily install the border rows where we furnish the fixtures, at the time we install the scenery.”

A stage lighting pamphlet was created by M. C. Lilley during the early twentieth century to identify the recommended lighting equipment for Scottish Rite stages. The equipment for a Scottish Rite stage was classified as border lights, ground rows, floor pockets, strip lights, bunch lights, arc lights, dimmer plant and switch board. M. C. Lilley & Co. offered either three-color or four-color options for border, strip lights and ground rows.

Of the colors, a three-color system for the Scottish stages recommended by M. C. Lilley & Co. included white, red and green. In the case of their four-color systems, the company recommended white, red, blue and amber. Around this same time, the increased use of amber was noted by scenic artist Ernest Albert. In 1913, Albert addressed appropriate lighting colors for the stage. It was in an interview with “The New York Dramatic Mirror,” He commented, “we are now avoiding many of the hard qualities of the electric light by greater use of ambers, straw colors, and pinks.”

The M. C. Lilley pamphlet also noted the additional expense incurred by a four-color light system

noting, “The incorporation of the fourth color not only increases the size of the fixtures, but materially increases the expense. For the majority of Masonic stages, the three color lights are found to be ample.” That being said, the three-color systems of white, red and blue appear to be visually more successful, for the night scenes.

For a stage depth of thirty feet, six border rows were recommended, with each border measuring the same length as the proscenium width. Similarly, there would be a minimum of six ground rows, each measuring four feet long.

To be continued…