Descending into night: Light, darkness and the theatrical experience

"How shall I convey to you the meaning of shadow in the theatre- the primitive dread, the sense of brooding, of waiting, of fatality, the shrinking, the blackness, the descent into endless night?" (Robert Edmond Jones, 1941:122) In The Dramatic Imagination Jones identifies a scenographic element that has a fundamental impact on the audience experience but that has frequently been overlooked. Since theatrical performances first moved into indoor spaces, darkness has become intrinsic to the staging of performance and the audience experience of the theatre. The aesthetic use of darkness in western performance originated in the court theatres of the Italian Renaissance, and not as some theatre histories would have us believe, in the darkened auditorium of Wagner’s Bayreuth Festspielhaus or Irving’s Lyceum. In reappraising established theatrical histories through a scenographic perspective, this paper will draw on recent research, historical evidence and the legacies of theorist/practitioners such as Adolphe Appia and Edward Gordon Craig. The darkened auditorium of the late nineteenth century and the realisation of the importance of shadow as an antithesis to the bright and evenly-lit stage, became critical to the development of modernist scenography. Through exploring the significance of shadow in the creation of ‘atmosphere’ (Böhme, 2013), this paper will examine the fundamental scenographic role of darkness and its consequent impact on the experience of audiences. References Böhme, Gernot 2013. ‘The art of the stage set as a paradigm for an aesthetics of atmospheres’, Ambiances [Online], URL : http://ambiances.revues.org/315 Jones, Edmond Robert. 1941. The Dramatic Imagination. New York: Theatre Arts Book