Beyond the Scenery: Effects Used to Enhance Scottish Rite Ceremony
Lawrence J. Hill

Late nineteenth-century theater was the culmination of a several hundred-years tradition of staging productions called wing and drop or wing and shutter scenery. Theaters throughout Europe and North America relied on painted canvas pieces of scenery along the sides and across the back of the stage to provide a background for the dramatic work. Generally, each theater owned a standard set of drops depicting generic locations used for all plays performed in the theater. There was not a unique setting for each play, so, for example, the same "forest" scene was used repeatedly. A series of mechanical and lighting effects evolved to complement the scenery and to provide a greater range of atmosphere and mood for these settings and the play's demands. These effects are well documented in descriptions of theatrical practices in England and the Continent.

Philip James deLoutherbourg was one the better known English scenic designers. In the 1780's, he experimented with many effects using the available lighting sources and created a series of scenic exhibitions, without actors, called the "Eidophusikon, or Representation of Nature." His small stage, with an opening six by eight feet, created images for the viewer. His effects are described by their titles: "1st Aurora, or the Effects of the Dawn, with a View of London from Greenwich Park.¼ Sun-set, a View near Naples. Moonlight, a View in the Mediterranean, the Rising of the Moon contrasted with the Effect of Fire." In this last scene the moon effect is "formed by a circular aperture of an inch in diameter, cut in a tin box, that contained a powerful Argand lamp, which placed at various distances from the back of the scene, gave a brilliant or a subdued splendour to the passing cloud.¼" The accompanying illustration from an 1896 Scientific American helps the reader to see a later mechanism to create a similar effect. One scene created in the 1782 Eidophusikon provides a graphic image fitting a later scene known to the Scottish Rite.

The fifth scene closes the grand climax. It borrows not its light from the rising or setting sun, nor derives its splendor from the moon. It is a flight, which only the genius of Loutherbourg could reach.

It is a view of the Miltonic Hell, cloathed [sic] in all its terrors. The artist hath given shape and body to the ¼ fiery lake bounded by burning hills. He follows closely the descriptions of the poet. Belzebub and Moloch, rise from the horrid lake, and Pandemonium appears gradually to rise, illuminated with all the grandeur bestowed by Milton, and even with additional properties, for serpents twine around the doric pillars, and the intense red changes to a transparent white, expressing thereby the effect of fire upon metal. Thousands of Demons are then seen to rise, and the whole brightens into a scene of magnificent horror.

The "Miltonic Hell," from the small six-by-eight stage in a drawing room, finds its way into the Scottish Rite Temple in the 18th Degree, often scaled to a thirty-foot wide stage (see colored illustration #19).

During the past fifteen years, the author has been involved in three major projects to document the theaters, the extant scenery, the supporting effects, and related materials about this tradition in the United States. A wide spectrum of entertainment forms and popular cultural phenomena in the nineteenth century relied on similar effects in presentation: the circus, the interest in spiritualism and magic, major exhibitions such as the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and a myriad of theatrical forms. As the Scottish Rite implemented staged ritual across the country, the changing technology of theatrical production can be found in the extant Temples built from the 1890's into the 1920's.

The author's early scholarly work on late nineteenth century popular culture led to a search for evidence of the theatrical past and its preservation by cataloging existing opera houses and artifacts in the state of North Dakota. During this search and photo-documentation, I photographed and obtained complete scenic pieces from studios such as The Twin City Scenic Studio of Minneapolis and Sosman and Landis Company of Chicago. This research led to the connection with Prof. C. Lance Brockman and eventually to the current work on documenting the staging of the Scottish Rite degrees. [See the article by Prof. Brockman, "Catalyst for Change: Intersection of the Theater and the Scottish Rite," pp. #--#.]

The author's first exposure to Scottish Rite scenery occurred in Grand Forks, N.D., where the temple sponsored a Mother's Day concert by the city's two high school choirs. Each year a different setting revealed a standard scene, well painted, in the traditional "stock" manner---a forest vista, a courtyard, an exotic room. Each set of scenery was lighted in colored washes of light from positions above and from the sides of the stage. This is similar to the illustration of the Munich exhibition of 1883 depicted below which shows the first demonstration of electrical lighting in a nineteenth scenery theater.

Each lighting position in the drawing shows an electrical fixture that replaced some form of flame (gas-jet or oil lamp) illumination in existence and use since Renaissance staging developed in the sixteenth century. [Figure Illustration of Munich Exhibition of Electricity. Scientific American Supplement, November 10, 1883: 6535.]While the lighting fixtures have improved in the last 100 years, this drawing shows the basic configuration of a stage setting at the turn of the century incorporated into the staging for the Scottish Rite. In today's theater, there are lighting positions placed throughout the auditorium and stage house with elaborate controlling devices. In contrast to the modern theater I was working in, what I saw each Mother's Day was a standard 1910's theatrical event---setting and lighting done, as I later learned, with the "state of the art" equipment from the period of the Temple's construction.

This article examines several effects used to enhance the ritual and to provide instruction to the members. The effects reflect the changing theatrical practices during the period: "magic lantern" projectors; of transformations; the importance of lighting in the staged ritual; and the growing use of these technologies in combination with standard nineteenth-century mechanical effects.

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This excerpt is from Heredom, the transactions of the Scottish Rite Research Society

Volume III, Year 1994
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