Philippe de Loutherbourg: Technology-Driven Entertainment and Spectacle in the Late Eighteenth Century

Philippe de Loutherbourg worked in the London theater from 1772 to 1785, but the implications of his work during this relatively short period transformed the architecture of theater and the way in which performance was viewed. The forms of technology-driven entertainment that he pioneered instigated tensions that still exist between physical and virtual realities. In this essay, Christopher Baugh also shows the ways in which Loutherbourg's work contributes to our understanding of the spectacularization of landscape, topography, and industrial development during the late eighteenth century, and raises questions concerning the role of the spectator.