…was something intriguing to me. I recently discovered this little tradition while working at the Lyric Theatre in downtown Stuart. I was there to create images for their annual magazine.
That morning I walked inside to discover a single bare bulb glowing in the center of the stage….
I inquired… “It’s the ghost lamp”, replied Bert, as he pulled back one of the large curtains. Well I love ghost stories, so I inquired further. According the executive director of the Lyric, John Loesser, it is old “theatre lore”. A lamp burns through the night inside all old theatres and is standard practice on Broadway.
According to a Playbill Magazine story published 2005, many of Broadway’s busiest theatres continue to be busily haunted by spirits, some with well-known names and histories.
“Each night after the applause dies, the curtain falls, the audience vanishes, the cleaners dust and the lights are killed, great theatres become dark and silent places. This is when the theatre ghosts make their entrance and strut and fret their hour upon the shadowed stage, illuminated only by the ghost light, the solitary lamp that is required to burn through the night on every Broadway stage.”
Well, ghosts or no ghosts, the light, and the lore are so cool to me I was determined to use it in a photograph.
The opportunity came Thursday in the form of the Lyric staff portrait….
I hauled in a bunch of my gear to light 15 people on the dark stage. After a bunch of light adjustments, tweaks and tests, here we go, a nice portrait of some nice people…
…but I needed something more interesting…
“The Ghost Lamp!!” I thought, or perhaps it was whispered to me while I was atop the ladder.
I pushed all the gear aside, and moved the lamp to center stage. It was going to come together, with only this simple light I thought.
I gathered everyone around the light, climbed back up the ladder, held it steady, and….
there it was..the shot, courtesy of the ghost lamp.
-tw
Link to the full playbill.com story:
http://www.playbill.com/features/article/93486-The-Ghosts-of-Broadway
Finally, we reached the end of the river, the place where the Miami Canal (C-6) begins its 77 mi journey up to Lake Okeechobee.
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