Visual pressure theory: A dramaturgical approach to stage lighting design in contemporary dance performance

Stage lighting in contemporary performance is increasingly recognised as a dramaturgical mechanism that shapes perception, space and spectatorship. However, the role of controlled visual limitation in generating perceptual tension has received limited scholarly attention within scenographic discourse. This study introduces Visual Pressure Theory (VPT) as a lighting-centred conceptual framework that explains how lighting generates dramaturgical effects through the strategic deployment of light and darkness. Using a practice-based and autoethnographic approach, the study draws upon the researcher’s role as the lighting designer for EPHEMERAL: An Evening of Contemporary Dance at DPAC, Malaysia. Analysis of lighting compositions, photographs, lighting plots and supplementary audience perception data examines five analytical dimensions, namely perceptual restriction, cognitive completion, spatial fragmentation, affective tension and temporal instability. The findings demonstrate that controlled visual limitation regulates spectators’ perceptual engagement by directing attention, intensifying emotional responses, encouraging embodied spectatorship and supporting meaning-making through absence and ambiguity. Supplementary audience perception data corroborate the perceptual conditions identified through the practice-based analysis. The study contributes VPT as a theoretical extension to scenographic discourse by explaining how controlled visual limitation functions as a dramaturgical mechanism that organises perception and structures spectatorship through lighting composition in contemporary performance.