I went to the theater last night

[wsk]

Silk taffeta seems very plausible as it did have the kind of luster that silk would provide. I didn't find anything on the web that showed how it's made but I can imagine that if one were to weave two colors - one color as the warp and one as the weft - you might get the effect that I saw. Somehow I don't think that a silk taffeta kilt would be very practical.

Surely it was not just a purplish fabric that looked different at different places on the stage. The colors would shift if the actress remained in place but merely turned to face a different direction.

[johnnym]

Kind of reminds me of the color shifting ink now being used by the US Treasury for paper money. Don't know how it is done, but the process sounds interesting. I found a hit on google for fabric from the Alsa Corporation by searching for chameleon fabric. There is a photo of a necktie viewed from 3 different angles. Each shot is a different color.

[Jimmy the Celt]

Kind of reminds me of the color shifting ink now being used by the US Treasury for paper money. Don't know how it is done, but the process sounds interesting. I found a hit on google for fabric from the Alsa Corporation by searching for chameleon fabric. There is a photo of a necktie viewed from 3 different angles. Each shot is a different color.

[WHEEL OF TIME GEEKERY]Or the color shifting cloaks that warders wear.[/WHEEL OF TIME GEEKERY] :LOL:

[arrogcow]

Surely it was not just a purplish fabric that looked different at different places on the stage. The colors would shift if the actress remained in place but merely turned to face a different direction.

It could be some color shift fabric, but just because it happened as she was standing in one place doesn't rule out lights. Changes is the lighting, another actor moving and thus causing/stopping a particular light from striking her. I went with light (I teach film lighting BTW, and have lit several stage productions), since she seemed to be shifting from red to blue (i.e. purple - or actually magenta- is the combination of these two lights). Any of the two primary colors would have lead me to this conclusion (red/green = she was wearing yellow. Blue/green=cyan). Now if she was shifting from blue to yellow, that couldn't just be a lighting effect.

Now having said all that, it probably is a combination of the two (fabric, and light). To just be fabric, the lighting would have to be the same color through out the stage or really weird effects might happen, to be just light, ir probably would not be that noticeable unless it were noticeable on other actors bodies/clothing as well.

Adam

[wsk]

Thanks for that explanation Adam.

But ... But ... Wouldn't that sort of special effect require everything else on the stage - furniture, actor's costumes, actor's makeup, etc - to be specially colored to avoid the effect that happened only with this particular actress' dress?

The stage appeared to my untrained eyes to be lit with a uniform, generally electric lightbulb colored white. The lighting designer had it easy for this play. Lights up, lights down, intermission, lights up, lights down, play over, lights up, players take a bow, done.

I have probably not given you enough information in any of my posts in this thread and for that I appologize.