In the Victorian period, the expression in the limelight meant the
most desirable acting area on the stage, front and center. Today, the
expression simply means someone is getting public recognition and acclaim.
The limelight effect was discovered by Goldsmith Gurney in the 1820s based on his work with an oxy-hydrogen blowpipe. Scottish
inventor, Thomas Drummond (1797-1840), built a working model of the
calcium light in 1826 for use in the surveying profession.
The calcium light was created by super heating a
cylinder
of quicklime (calcium oxide) with an oxy-hydrogen flame that gives off a
bright light with a greenish tint.
Eleven years later, the term limelight was coined to describe a form of stage illumination first used in 1837 for a public
performance at the Covent Garden Theatre in London.
By the 1860s, this
new technology of stage lighting was in wide use in theaters and dance halls around the world. It was a great improvement over the previous method of stage
lighting, candle powered footlights placed along the stage apron.
Limelight lanterns could also be placed along the front of the lower balcony
for general stage illumination providing more natural light than
footlights alone.
A lighthouse-like lens (Fresnel lens) was developed that could direct and focus
concentrated light on the stage to spotlight a solo performance. Actors and performers must have felt they were living in the heyday of the theater.
The term green room has been used since the Victoria period to describe the waiting area performers use before going on stage. Theater lore has it that actors would sit in a room lit by limelight to allow their eyes to adjust to the harsh stage lighting, preventing squinting during their stage entrances.
Although the electric light replaced limelight in theaters by the end of the nineteenth century, the term limelight still exists in show business, as does the term green room.
Today, the green room is used by celebrities before they appear on talk shows, but it is not usually painted green. The room still performs a similar function as in the Victorian age--to prepare a performer to go on stage.
London's oldest active theater site, Theater Royal Drury Lane, opened in 1663 in the early years of the English Reformation. Four theaters have occupied this site over the years.
The first theater burned down in 1672. It was rebuilt by Christopher Wren and reopened on March 26, 1674. One-hundred and seventeen years later, Irish playwright, Richard Brinsley Sheridan had the building demolished and opened a larger theater in 1794. That building burned down only fifteen years later in 1809. The current building was rebuilt and reopened in 1812. Presently, it is owned by Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Theater Royal Drury Lane was really the first
modern proscenium arch theater which provided a visual frame for the
audience with permanent wings to the left and right of the stage to hide
and shift scenery on and off the stage.
Learning about theater lore from a backstage tour is a fascinating excursion into the past. On the Royal Drury Lane Theatre tour at Covent Garden in London, the tour includes guides who dress in period costumes as they trade off their docent duties for quick costume changes.
At one moment, a Victorian cleaning woman comes singing "I could have danced all night" down a staircase with a feather duster, then an eighteenth-century, English nobleman in costume suddenly appears and continues the tour. Next, a woman from the gaslight period comes out in a red dress and tells about how the theater was in her day. The tour is quite entertaining.
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Learning the origins of words from these tours is an article of faith, but because it is lore, I have a willing suspension of disbelief. For instance, I learned that the term "crew" as applied to the backstage crew derives from a little known fact.
In the early nineteenth-century, the new theater owners rebuilt and redesigned the theater once again. They hired out of work sailors who were between sea tours to work backstage; they became known as "the crew." These sailors devised the system of pulleys and battens which raise and lower scenery from the loft above. This innovation created new staging opportunities for playwrights and directors.
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On the Shakespeare's Globe Theater tour, I learned the origin of the term "box office."
At the various entrances to the original Medieval theaters in the sixteenth-century, patrons would place their pennies in a ceramic box as they entered the theater. These boxes were collected at the box office. The theater owners would "break the bank" there for security reasons.
Today, box offices are where patrons purchase tickets for events, but the term has an additional context also. It has come to be associated with the amount of money a movie or play takes in.
"Good box office" means the production is making money; "box office poison" means the producers are losing money. Weekly and yearly figures are important to the entertainment industry and are reported widely around the world.
