Preface
                                                   by Lael Wertenbaker


 Jean Rosenthal, whom I met in 1958, was a small, compact, soft-
 voiced woman with a heart-shaped face, enormous eyes and a gift for
paying total attention to whatever she was doing. We talked then about
a book on lighting design, the profession in which she was preeminent
and about which I knew very little. It was a mark of her intense profes-
sionalism that she wanted a collaborating writer. Writing, she insisted,
was not her discipline.
 In two concentrated discussions we arrived at an outline and a
method for carrying out the project. She would supply the material in
her own words, dictated, when she had the time. (I was to find that
she had verbal as well as practical command of her field, an easy way
with words, a talent for visual phrasing, and an organized way of think-
ing.) I would edit the material, shape the book. Suzanne Cleaves, my
partner on many free-lance projects, would supply any additional re-
search. Marion Kinsella, Jean's on-the-job lighting assistant who was an
artist and sculptor the rest of her time, would do the illustrations.
 We began bravely, but there was a problem. Jean was one of the
most in-demand professionals in the world. When she was designing
a show or consulting an architect about a building, she concentrated,
disappearing from the rest of her life. I told the publisher: there is a
book, and there will be a book -- one day.
 During the next ten years I spent a lot of odd time with Jean. The
book got little further, but the time was well worth spending.
 Knowing Jean was rewarding. Her vitality, which refreshed rather
than tired you, her profound human courtesy, the provocative original-
ity of her mind, her warmth, which reserved to itself a deep personal
privacy and never invaded yours, were characteristics which made her
a marvelous friend to have.
  To watch her work in the theatre, as I sometimes did, was a study in
 high talent -- genius in my opinion and that of others -- controlled by
 proficiency, knowledge and discipline. The elaborate minutiae of light-
 ing design terrified me. If you took strict care of all that technical detail,
 how could you fail to lose sight of the creative end! If you kept your
 attention on the artistic whole, how could you manage not to forget
 some of the details! I do not understand how she did both, maintain-
 ing the while her radiating deep calm -- but she did.
  The theatre electricians with whom she worked quite literally adored
 her. I retain a mental image of her onstage, surrounded by Joe and Bill
 and Jim and George, who almost invariably towered over her, as they
 listened with something like her own concentration to whatever she
 said, in that soft, courteous voice. I remarked on their devotion, and
 Jean grinned. "They used to long to throw wrenches at my head," she
 said, "for all the extra work I caused them." The devotion grew as these
 union professionals came to understand and take pride in the results of
 what she asked them to do ("Would you move that slightly to the left,
 please, darling!"). They simply gave in. Now she had been in the
 theatre over thirty years, and I felt that her crews constantly restrained
 strong impulses to pat her approvingly and fondly on her short, ruffled
 hair, but Jean, for all her small size and gentle manners, had an im-
 pressive dignity.
   I also see her when the lights had been focused and colored to her
 satisfaction, standing in the light, happily dabbling her fingers in it, as
 if it were a tangible substance, and nodding.
  When she talked to the director or the scene designer or the star of a
 show about what he or she wanted, she closed down her attention to
 each one so completely that it was as if a narrow, high-walled lane
 were constructed between them. Her concentration was physically ex-
 pressed by a kind of focusing with her nose: it would wiggle, and the
 glasses she wore when she was working would slide back into place
 and her eyes would turn in, as if physically, to the visions in her head
 instead of to the exterior scene. And how intently she listened.
 Jean was open to the thinking, the intentions, of others, so ready
and so selfless in serving, as she expressed it, "the creative purposes of
other men" that they sometimes forgot her creative integrity. Her in-
variable courtesy made her seem biddable, but she could, on occasion,
display the character of a miniature, gray-headed Italian donkey. When
she was sure she was right in terms of the mutually conceived artistic
whole, she just stood there, polite and patient, refusing to budge no
matter how she was coaxed, bullied or stormed at.
 Or she bided her time. Once at Stratford, Connecticut, a rehearsal of
All's Well That Ends Well, one of Shakespeare's problem plays with dis-
agreeable overtones, came to a halt when the director, John Houseman,
bellowed, "Jean ! Jean ! Where are you! I can't see!"
 Jean, hidden behind her desk, stood up, and said meekly, "Here I am."
 "GIVE ME MORE LIGHT!" ordered John.
  Jean murmured into her intercom, and before I could blink, the
scene went from dim to bright. "Thank you, boys," said Jean quietly
to the electricians, "you've saved us about twenty minutes." Then she
settled back, narrowing her eyes at the scene, which was laid in the
French king's palace where he lay gravely ill. Studying the effect, she
remarked sotto voce, "He looks wonderfully healthy, don't you think!"

 Me: But what will you do!
 Jean. Oh, it's all right. I'II put it back the way it was later.
 The rehearsal went on, brightly lit.
 "I wish," said Jean wistfully, "I had a pom-e-granate."

 Since her intransigence was never based on egotism, but on what
was best for the production, she nearly always did win such contests of
strong wills. One famous Italian designer, who usually did his own
lighting, had bitterly opposed having her. She disagreed with him on
how to light one set of his and he flung from the theatre in a temper.
When he returned, Jean had completed the lighting her way. He looked
at it, squinted, frowned, and sat down beside her. "Darrrrling," he
said, "I marry you!"

 I worked with Jean once on a script of my own. This was on the
sound and light production at Boscobel, in Garrison, New York, for
which I wrote the drama she lighted. Sound -- as for radio drama --
was on tape; the lighting took the place of live actors and movement.
She lit that lovely house, interior and exterior, the Hudson River bank
and all outdoors in patterns following the sequences drawn from his-
tory. There is a chapter on Boscobel in this book, but it does not include
the night after night when Jean worked on that immense site until three
or four in the morning, ordering a chaos of outlets, cues, a technical
empire into a design. It was astonishing to see what a tenth-of-an-inch
difference in focusing the light on a single tree could make. It was
miraculous to see light from the huge "infranors," which needed twenty
minutes to warm up, sweep over the lawn exactly on the word she had
chosen for the cue. My part in the venture was over, and the chief
contribution I made to those nights was to improve my sense of awe
and to do the driving. When Jean was behind the wheel, her gift of
concentration on what she was doing wavered alarmingly.

  The validity of a book by Jean Rosenthal is obvious. She was a pioneer
 in the art and craft of lighting design, originating many techniques that
 have since become commonplace. In her field she is a historic figure,
 recognized for her particular creative genius. Since her major contri-
 butions were in the theatre, which lives on only in faulty memories and
 dusty work sheets, old programs and insufficient photographs, it seemed
 essential that the credit line "Lighting by Jean Rosenthal" should have
 been amplified into this book, a heritage important to students of the
 theatre, to designers and architects. How she thought about lighting --
 the important thing -- will not change with changing techniques.
  How she thought about light seems to me to have a value for any-
 body. This is a subjective conclusion. Being with and working with
 her, I found that I was gaining a new awareness, a conscious awareness
 of light, which had nothing to do with "how to." And there is nothing
 more exciting than an expansion of one's personal consciousness.

 Of course I have always responded to light, to its kind and quality.
Who does not! If I have fancied myself peculiarly sensitive to gloom or
glare, that is a common form of egotism. But, as in listening to music,
there are many layers of awareness, of pleasure and pain. Deepening
awareness creates fresh intensity. Even those obvious visual pleasures
-- sunrises and sunsets, sun slanted through woods -- have been inten-
sified for me. And to be more aware is to have greater control. I can
cope better now with the unhappy moods brought on by troubled or
"heavy" light, key up or down the spontaneous euphoria of brilliant
days. I do not mean to exaggerate, but increased awareness is growth,
and the best teachers of awareness are the masters in any field.

 After all the years of delay, this book actually evolved in the harsh,
gray light of tragedy. Jean was taken mortally ill in 1968. Whether she
knew that she could not live much longer, I do not know. I think not.
Her vitality seemed so indestructible. That she was very ill indeed could
not be denied, even by one as stubborn as she was. Her affliction by
cancer was sudden. The operation was major. After that, she was
never well again.
 Jean had not been sick before, not really, in all her life. She counted
on her robust health, inexhaustible energy, her Herculean working
capacity. To be knocked down, to lie about, to suffer such pain, came
as a surprise as well as a shock. She regarded her illness with detached
interest and admitted that it gave her new comprehension of the
normal condition humaine. Her impatience was for its restrictions. In
the hospital, subject to all the indignities and debilitation of major sur-
gery, as soon as she could sit up she covered her bed or the floor of that
hospital room with huge designs and insisted on receiving her working
confreres. The doctors gave in, finally admitting that her indomitable
energy needed this outlet. Her mind remained clear, although the hours
when she could concentrate were foreshortened.
 One thing she could do, even when supine and too depleted for
visitors, was to talk into her recorder on the subject of lighting. In the
morning hours she dictated, at long last, the essential material for this
book.
 She would choose a subject from our outline for the book and state
what she thought about it, one idea at a time. Where she left gaps,
she indicated them. We had time, Jean and I, in the hospital and
during a period of what resembled recovery on Martha's Vineyard,
where she shared a lovely house with Marion Kinsella, to talk over the
tapes and how they would be organized into the book. Then she
returned to New York -- and to work. In April 1969, she went back
to the hospital.
 For thirty-seven years, from ages twenty to fifty-seven, Jean had
lighted Martha Graham's ballets. It was the first work she ever did, and
it was fitting that it should be the last. Martha Graham had created a
new ballet. Jean insisted on attending rehearsals in a wheelchair, and
on designing and lighting the production. On April 20, Archaic Hours
opened in the Graham repertory at the New York City Center, with
"Production and Lighting by Jean Rosenthal." On May 1, Jean died.

 To complete this book, to shape it from her material, to keep its
integrity, has been labor dedicated to her memory, with love. Any one
of those with whom she had worked whom I asked for help gave it,
unstintingly. The reader will find quotations from what they said in
the margins and an acknowledgment of such sources within the hook.
We all believe that Jean would have approved of her written legacy,
and what she contributed to the art and craft of lighting design will
never be lost. All is never lost when a great and talented human being
dies.