The Magic of Light

Review by Merridawn Duckler

Jean Rosenthal, the lighting designer, was only 57 when she died of cancer in 1969, but her impact on modern American theatre was inestimable. Historians say she practically invented the profession of “lighting designer,” a field that had been the domain of electricians and stagehands, mostly male. The way dance looks to us on stage today is directly a result of Rosenthal’s vision of what it means to light dance on stage. Her book, The Magic of Light is part memoir, part manual, and all brilliance. It traces her career through childhood classes at the legendary Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater, to Yale and into a dish-y, vibrant, and tumultuous pre- and post-war theatre world. She worked for everyone from Orson Welles (she claims he was “born bored” with a need to alleviate that boredom with as much personal and theatrical drama as possible) to John Houseman to everyone else. Martha Graham’s career would not have been possible without her. The Magic of Light is indeed magical, not only for the wealth of information and history it contains—dreamy, outdated light plots and focus charts fill the back pages—but for Rosenthal’s own delightful voice shining through the text. Contemporaries describe her as both serene and driven; a small, temperate encyclopedia of a woman who considered lighting an essential element of telling any story. She writes, “In show business we always speak of a theatre as a house. It is the ‘dwelling place’ where our lives are lived at their greatest intensity.” Rosenthal’s book shows the fascinating inner working of that intensity. To read her is to sit by the bedside of a wry, articulate, charming, and legendary artist who left too soon. Sadly, the book is out of print—pristine copies go for as high as $700. If you see one, grab it. Her vision remains essential reading.

The Magic of Light: The Craft and Career of Jean Rosenthal, Pioneer in Lighting for the Modern Stage by Jean Rosenthal and Lael Wertenbaker, Illustrated by Marion Kinsella | Little, Brown and Company in association with Theater Arts Books. 1972 (Out-of-print)