An Incandescent Consequence

AN INCANDESCENT CONSEQUENCE

I have been following with a great deal of interest the responses from some of the world’s leading theatrical lighting designers to the EU’s proposed 2020 legislation regarding lighting fixtures. As much as it will not directly affect me, a Lighting designer based in South Africa, the indirect repercussions will be significant. Most often technological trends are set by first world countries and countries with less resources follow suit as a matter of course. Whether it's politically or artistically driven is neither here nor there, eventually the third world will follow. Tungsten will be hung out to dry and it's once proud voice will leave not with the bang it deserves but with a whimper barely heard above the battle cry of this new order. The call for the retention of any vaguely viable theatrical lighting fixture will be so urgent that designers will settle for something rather than nothing. As a result, too few voices will be left campaigning for the survival of Tungsten and they'll silently and smoothly, as they have always done, fade to black, their last hurrah the red shift mirroring the anger in the heart of the Lighting Designer.

There are many cases for and against Tungsten but in countries like South Africa, where theatres are on their knees, struggling to survive, the loss of Tungsten as a lighting tool will be a damning blow. Theatres, particularly the smaller ones, cannot afford the high-end LED products, those products that come closest to replicating Tungsten. Theatres will be forced to compromise and settle for inferior LED sources and this is where the greatest damage will be done. Small independent theatres more often than not create magic with very little, Tungsten is very forgiving and allows it, in fact Tungsten welcomes it, LED can’t and doesn’t. The upshot of this is that the move to affordable inferior LED sources will result in a seismic shift in how we will be expected to perceive the world through the medium of theatre. The divide between reality and the imagination will grow ever wider and become harder for us to bridge. Suspension of disbelief will require a far greater commitment from an increasingly challenged audience, the once short hop from truth to fantasy will now necessitate a catastrophic leap that to quote Macbeth, will “o’erleap itself and fall on the other”.

In the history of theatre, change has always been progressive in favour of the needs of the stage. Never has change been regressive, from candle power through gaslight and limelight to incandescent, every light source that has replaced the previous one has been justified by the superior quality of light that it produces. Can we honestly argue that for theatre use, LED offers a better quality of light than Tungsten? We humans are the slowest of learners and as a result we are constantly giving history the opportunity to repeat itself, the music industry’s decision to move away from vinyl is a case in point. Will this proposed ban come undone when the realisation hits home that LED is no substitute for Tungsten?

Tungsten is a powerful tool in the Lighting Designers arsenal, it offers the subtlest of brush strokes, the most delicate opportunities for sculpting the human form. In painting terms it is the oil of light, in sculpture, it is the clay. It is gentle and bold, pliable and resilient.

Perhaps the key to this lies in the term “incandescent”. By definition, ”incandescence” is the emission of visible light by a body, caused by it's high temperature, yet it is so much more than that. It has no boundaries, it exists beyond the instruction manuals and data sheets associated with the lighting industry, it graces the pages of writers and prophets, it rolls off the tongues of orators and poets, philosophers and astronomers and gives birth to words like ”luminous, intense, radiant, glowing, sparkling”. It triggers the imagination, a single word that has the power to ignite a sentence or paragraph with it's presence and it is the same with the stage. It is impossible to gloss over the word ‘’incandescent’’, or to flippantly disregard an incandescent source, by its very nature it demands attention and respect and in turn an emotive reaction. How much of that emotion are we discarding along with the outlawing of Tungsten? How much of the magic are we packing away to lie dormant as museum pieces and hidden in the pages of history books?

There is no emotive word to describe LED’s, in both light and language, LED’s cannot be said to be incandescent and as a result of this they do not demand a passionate response. Yes, they emit heat but they do not rely on heat to ‘glow’ or ‘sparkle’ and it is this warmth, a warmth beyond colour, beyond touch, beyond understanding that creates the magic that is needed for stage lighting.