Note 15 — THE NEW ART OF THE THEATRE

The new methods of stage lighting make possible all kinds of color combinations and effects. The use of the plaster horizon (or of the cyclorama, a cheaper substitute, usually a straight semi-circular curtain enclosing the stage, made of either white or light blue cloth), combined with high-powered lights set at various angles on the stage, makes outdoor effects possible, the beauty of which is new to the theatre.[15] Nowadays footlights are not invariably discarded, but where they are used they are wired so that groups of them can be lighted when other sections are dimmed or darkened. When the setting shows an interior scene with a window, though the scene may be lighted from all sides, the window seems to be the source of all light. A good deal of the lighting on the stage is what is known in the interior decoration of houses as indirect lighting; colored lights are produced most simply by the interposition between the source of light and the stage of transparent colored slides, gelatine or glass.