Green Light

[fincaman]

Hello, can anyone tell me where the fear of green light comes from, I have been in the cabaret side of the industryall my life and no such fear exists but as soon as you get anyone with a Theatre background they go mad at the mere hint of green !!! why ?

[Andrew C]

It looks foul on skin-tones.

[alistermorton]

If it's the only colour it makes skin tones look a bit, well, dead and awful. When it's combined with other colours it's a different matter, say green side or back light with a fairly neutral face light. Even only a teeny bit just to pick out the skin tone can dramatically alter the effect.

[paulears]

Seems to have become less a problem once Wicked appeared and green makeup became the norm. There was also the old worry that it made anyone with dark to black skin look strange because they didn't just vanish but glowed in a nasty zombie style grey, and with tungsten light, this did happen - and sometimes not evenly - as if black skin perhaps absorbs light unevenly in some people. I do a fair few dance shows and when they ask for green light for the Wicked number, then I did worry about what would happen as the kids don;t generally wear makeup - just costumes. With LED green, the results seem better. PAR cans with primary green suffer from the greying issue on some, but LED green didn't cause me any problems at all.

[adam2]

Back in the day, the general dislike of green was reflected in the fact that traditional footlights and other theatre lights had only red, blue, amber and open white lights, without any green. Green lamps or green colour filter could of course be fitted in place of one of the other colours if needed for a particular production, but this was not the norm.

 

Even further back, some theatres used incandescent gas light, this had a greenish tint which was sometimes objected to, with open gas flames said to give a more flattering light though at the cost of greater gas consumption and consequent heat output.

 

 

 

 

 

[fincaman]

Hello All, thanks for the answersbut the reaction I got was severe, the guy came strutting towards me and almost screamed a green light is an insult in the theatre it means "get off" I hate to keep asking but are there any older lighting techs who would know if it was a superstition from long ago ?

[timsabre]

Hello All, thanks for the answersbut the reaction I got was severe, the guy came strutting towards me and almost screamed a green light is an insult in the theatre it means "get off" I hate to keep asking but are there any older lighting techs who would know if it was a superstition from long ago ?

 

I think it is more that there are a lot of prima donnas (using polite phrasing) in the theatre world... rather than any actual fact or history...

[kerry davies]

If a turn got above themselves it used to be common practice to "pink" them with the followspots and I once hit my Afro-Caribbean Malvolio with a steel blue during the jail scene. He turned a malevolent kind of electric purple which I loved but scared the director and several small people in the audience. Green just looks crap on white faces.

[fincaman]

Well I'm glad my post is causing a few laughsbut I'm going to find a theatre forum and ask there I'll report back

[david.elsbury]

Good for you. You've gotten several correct answers here though...

[fincaman]

Good for you. You've gotten several correct answers here though...

 

Thanks for your comment but I feel sure it goes deeper than that in British theatre however I'll report back either way

 

 

[paulears]

It's a very uncommon superstition in my humble opinion, and is said to go back to one of France's greatest playwrights, Molière. More info by Googling his real name Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, but he was most famous for his stage name, Molière. He didn't die onstage, as many think, but was wearing green, when he collapsed onstage while performing for King Louis the 14th. He continued but some reports suggest he had a haemorrhage - from which he died shortly afterwards at home. Apparently people thought he didn't make it to heaven but I've not bothered to find out why.

 

That's the best I can do - a fair while since I taught this. I'd not given any thought to superstition - I figured we were talking practically. I haven't seen anyone get upset about it for a very long time. The only person I can recall who did make a bit of a fuss was Warren Mitchell.

[Junior8]

Years ago in the fairground and circus world there were people who would have nothing green in their businesses. But it wasn't universal by any means. I think though there must have been some superstition in these sectors which 125 years ago saw themselves as part of the theatre business and used the same trade papers like The Era.