Oh For A Muse of Fire: January 2026

McCandless Stage Lighting: A Comprehensive Guide

https://www.azarpixel.com/mccandless-stage-lighting/

https://youtu.be/wqMYsjHU5rU?si=PeZlFHSCdFXGT6GY

https://youtu.be/2uHDlAFxhWo?si=OZ3Ye_ID-PrAv_oY

https://youtu.be/y95-MktSco0?si=9lpVrQS8TSdFs9J6

https://youtu.be/h0-SCoN_Xqs?si=isXAqFIRaCvM7d_s

A Few Principles of Lighting Design

As mentioned before, lighting design is very personal, and there is no right way to approach it. Different shows have different demands, and different lighting designers have different artistic styles.

Having said that, there are some general principles of good lighting design that are worthbeing aware of, if only to know when you’re breaking them.

• Make sure actors faces can be seen!

For most shows being able to see the actors’ faces is key to their performance – the face is the most expressive part of an actor’s body and audiences generally don’t like being deprived of their expressions (the exception here is dance shows, where sidelighting the body is often more important). This is where good facelight (also known as keylight) comes in. Usually your frontwash will do a lot of the heavy lifting here.

However, good facelight isn’t just about having enough light on people’s faces, it’s also about ensuring that the shape of the face is visible. Traditionally this is done by lighting the two sides of the actor’s face in slightly different colours, usually a cool white and a warm white. This allows the three dimensions of the face to be more visible, and makes different scenes and locations feel more distinct as the balance of cold and warm facelight can vary from scene to scene. This is the idea behind why many lighting designers rig both a warm and cold front wash.

• Only light what you need to!

A lot of lighting is about guiding audience attention – usually the brighter an area of the stage, the more people’s eyes are drawn to it. Where possible, it is always good to ensure that the main playing area (the space the main action is occurring) is brighter than the rest of the stage. This is where good focusing is crucial – you don’t want a light to spill over and hit too much of the stage or your ability to draw focus to one area is reduced.

You definitely don’t want to light anything that isn’t within the stage space (e.g. the auditorium ceiling or walls, or the audience) unless it is a very conscious artistic decision.

• Make sure your frontwash is even!

Audiences are sensitive to unlikely changes in brightness on an actor’s face, and nothing is more jarring than an actor walking across the forestage and their face getting darker and lighter as they walk in and out of pools of light. Spend some time focusing your front wash to make sure it is as even as possible to someone walking from stage right to stage left, and downstage to upstage. Also, double check if it’s still even when the tallest member of your cast walks across it.

Remember that lights are cones, so even if the stage floor is evenly lit, the performer may

not be:

• Think about multiple angles on each location!

One of the best ways to quickly build a rig is draw your set plan and then place an

imaginary actor at different locations. Then ask yourself – where is their face light coming

from? Are they being side-lit, are they being top lit? Then place lights in answer to these

questions. Then once lights are placed for all the main playing spaces, start pruning down

lights that are performing the same function, until you have a core rig. Then add in

specials and any lights that aren’t for lighting actors (e.g. for lighting set pieces).

As a general rule, the more angles you hit an actor from, the more three dimensional they

will appear, the more they will pop out from the scene, and the better the state will look.

Often this requires a good knowledge of each scene’s blocking (where actors will be at

different times). Constructing a design around where people stand at important moments

really helps those moments look good, and helps you emphasise the key parts of the

production as a whole.

• Think about transitions!

Lighting transitions can make or break a show’s lighting design. Some shows call for bold

transitions and effects, some for subtle changes, but almost all demand that the fade

times fit the action of the show. Even sketch comedy (often a relatively lighting-agnostic

genre) relies on the suddenness of a snap blackout.

When planning your design, think about how one lighting state should get to another.

Mark where in the script you want the transition to start and finish, how long it should

take, and whether the whole rig should fade together, or different sets of lights come on

in stages.

Ultimately you will always edit transition timings during the technical and dress

rehearsals, and often later across the show. Getting them just right, and in sync with the

rhythms of the performance, are what really help the lighting blend in and bring out the

best in the production.

• Think about what is motivating your lights to look as they do!

This is a bit more conceptual than the above tips, but is a good way into thinking about

lighting.

When designing a lighting state, it is important to consider what factors are contributing

to how it is lit. These factors are often referred to as motivations – what is motivating a

light to be that colour, or to come from that angle?

In a naturalistic lighting style, a light is usually motivated by the lighting sources that

would naturally be in a scene. For example, the lighting of an interior room during daytime

could be motivated by how the sun’s light enters the room – if there is a window on stage

left, the light from that side should be a cool white to mimic daylight, while light from

stage right should be warmer, mimicking the light from electric lamps that illuminate the

inside of the building. Conversely, a room at night will be motivated by where the artificial

lights are located. A table lamp turning on may motivate other lights in that area to

produce a bright warm light to mimic the table lamp’s illumination. In naturalistic lighting

design, ensuring lights are motivated in a way that is consistent with the set design and

script is key to selling the location, time of day, and, above all, the reality of the show’s

world.

In other styles, lighting may be motivated by something entirely theatrical or non-

naturalistic. In musicals, often the motivation is the music itself – lights change in time

with beats or choruses to emphasise the music – or perhaps the motivation is the

movement of the soloists, the stage lighting up where they walk, rather than mimicking

how the location would naturally look.

Ultimately motivation is an answer to a question. In most productions, it should be

implicitly clear to an audience why the lighting looks or behaves as it does. When they

subconsciously ask, ‘Why did the lighting change, or why does it look like that?’, your

design’s motivation gives the answer: ‘Because there’s a window stage left’ or ‘Because

this is the last chorus of the act one finale and it needs to look like a showstopper’.

You can also introduce motivation where there isn’t anything about lighting in the script. If

you’re ever lighting a state that isn’t giving you anything to work with, decide on a fitting, if arbitrary, motivation – add a window; add a streetlamp; add a sunrise; decide on the time of year. It will help your lighting lift the production, and help you come up with visually interesting and distinct lighting states.

https://www.adctheatre.com/media/5037/an-introduction-to-stage-lighting-at-the-adc-theatre.pdf

Oh For A Muse of Fire

Saturday, January 31, 2026

Set design

Stage Lighting

Classical Greek Theatre

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