The first time I performed under a real spotlight — not a conference room with overhead panels, but an actual follow spot in a venue with a stage — I kept drifting out of it.
Not dramatically. I did not wander into the wings or step off the stage. I drifted. A half-step here, a quarter-turn there, a slight lean forward during a moment of emphasis. Each movement was small. Each movement was unconscious. And each movement took me incrementally farther from the center of the light, until the tech running the follow spot was making constant tiny adjustments to keep me illuminated.
I did not realize this was happening until the tech mentioned it afterward. He was kind about it. “You move around more than most people,” he said, which I understood to mean, “You have no idea where the light is, do you?”
He was right. I had no idea. I could see the general pool of light on the floor, but once I was in it, I lost track of where the center was. I was focused on the audience, on my material, on the timing of each moment. The light was the last thing on my mind. Which is exactly why I kept drifting out of it.
The Temperature Principle
Dan Harlan mentions something in his Tarbell Lesson 83 lighting section that sounds almost too simple to be useful. He says that temperature tells you when you are in the center of the light. You can feel the focus.
This is referring to traditional incandescent stage lights, which generate significant heat. The center of the beam is the hottest point. As you move away from center, the temperature drops. Your skin — particularly your face and the backs of your hands — can detect this difference.
When I first read this, I thought it was a marginal observation, a nice piece of trivia that had little practical application. I was wrong. It turned out to be one of the most useful pieces of performance advice I have ever received, because it gave me a physical, sensory anchor for something I had been trying to track visually and failing.
The Hand Test
I developed a simple ritual based on Harlan’s temperature observation. I call it the hand test, and I do it at every venue where I perform. It takes thirty seconds.
Before the audience arrives, I ask the tech to bring up the performance lighting. I stand in my performance position and extend one hand, palm up, at about chest height. Then I slowly step in each direction — left, right, forward, back — feeling the temperature change on my palm.
The center of the light is the warmest point. It is unmistakable once you are paying attention. Moving even a foot off center produces a detectable drop in temperature. Two feet off center and the difference is significant.
I find the warmest point. I note it. I look down and identify a reference mark on the floor — a seam in the carpet, a pattern in the wood, a joint in the staging, a piece of tape if nothing else is available. That is my hot spot. That is the center of my performance area. That is where I return to after every excursion to my prop table, after every interaction with an audience member, after every moment of movement.
Thirty seconds. Sometimes less. And it solves a problem that I did not even know I had until that follow spot tech in Vienna diplomatically told me I could not stay in the light.
Why Visual Tracking Fails
You might wonder why I cannot simply look at the light pool on the floor and stay in the middle of it. The answer is that visual tracking of your own position within a light pool is unreliable for several reasons.
First, when you are performing, you are not looking at the floor. You are looking at the audience. Your visual attention is on faces, reactions, and the timing of your material. The pool of light on the floor is in your peripheral vision at best, and peripheral vision is terrible at precise spatial positioning.
Second, if the light has a soft edge — which it should, as I discussed in the previous post — the boundary of the light pool is gradual, not sharp. There is no clear line on the floor that says “light starts here.” There is a fade from bright to dim to dark, and estimating the center of a gradient by visual inspection while simultaneously performing is a task your brain simply does not have bandwidth for.
Third, your perception of the light pool changes depending on where you are standing within it. When you are at the center, the light feels uniform around you. You are not aware that you are in the brightest spot because everything in your immediate visual field is similarly bright. It is only when someone in the audience notices that one side of your face is dimmer than the other that the problem becomes apparent.
The hand test bypasses all of these problems. It uses a different sensory channel — touch rather than vision — and it establishes the reference point before the performance starts, when you have the mental bandwidth to pay attention to it.
The LED Complication
I need to be honest about a limitation. Harlan’s temperature principle was developed in an era when stage lighting was predominantly incandescent. Incandescent fixtures produce substantial heat, and the temperature differential between the center and edge of the beam is pronounced. The hand test works beautifully with these fixtures.
LEDs are different. They are dramatically cooler than incandescent lights. One of their major advantages is that they do not generate the searing heat that traditional stage lights produce. Performers can stand under LED fixtures for hours without feeling like they are being slow-roasted.
This advantage creates a complication for the hand test. The temperature differential under LED lighting is much smaller, sometimes negligible. You may not be able to feel the center of an LED spotlight the way you can feel the center of a traditional fixture.
There are workarounds. Some LED fixtures still produce enough warmth at close range for the temperature difference to be detectable, even if it is subtle. If the venue is using a mix of LED and traditional fixtures, the traditional ones will give you the reference point you need.
But the more reliable approach with LED lighting is to modify the test. Instead of using temperature, ask a colleague or the tech to stand in the audience position and tell you when you are centered in the beam. Mark the spot. Use that as your reference for the performance. The principle is the same — establish a known center point before the show — even if the method of finding it changes.
Or, if you are alone, pull out your phone and set it to record video from the front row. Walk your performance area, then watch the video. You will see immediately where the center of the light falls on your position. Mark it. Done.
The Practical Impact
The difference between performing with a known hot spot and performing without one is subtle but cumulative.
When I know where center is, I stand there with confidence. I am not subconsciously wondering whether I am properly lit. I am not making tiny corrective movements based on a vague sense that maybe the light is slightly to my left. I am planted. Grounded. Present.
When I move away from center — to my table, to an audience member, to the other side of the stage — I move with purpose and I return with purpose. The return is not a random drift back toward approximately where I was standing. It is a deliberate return to a known position, and there is something about that deliberateness that the audience can feel even if they cannot articulate it.
Harlan talks about how standing in one place and delivering makes you appear intelligent, confident, likable, and entertaining. The hot spot reference point enables exactly this. Not because it forces you to stand still — you should absolutely move when movement serves the performance — but because it gives you a home base. A place to return to. A position you trust.
Without that reference point, performers drift. I drifted. Every performer I have watched who does not know about hot spots drifts. Not because they are careless but because the human body naturally shifts and adjusts and repositions, and without a sensory anchor, those micro-movements compound over time until you are standing two feet from where you should be and the lighting is doing nothing for you.
The Bigger Lesson: Physical Anchors for Performance
The hand test is really about a broader principle that I have come to value deeply: using physical anchors to free mental bandwidth for what matters.
Every piece of information you track consciously during a performance is a piece of mental bandwidth you are not spending on the audience. If you are consciously thinking about whether you are in the light, that is bandwidth taken away from reading the room, timing your pauses, connecting with the person in the third row who is leaning forward.
A physical anchor — a mark on the floor, a temperature sensation, a known reference point — moves that tracking from conscious attention to physical habit. You feel the warmth on your face and you know you are centered. You see the tape mark on the floor in your peripheral vision and you know you are home. You do not have to think about it. The anchor does the thinking for you.
This principle extends far beyond lighting. I use physical anchors for prop positions on my table, for microphone cable routing, for the exact position of my phone when I use it as a music controller. Each anchor is a tiny investment of attention before the show that saves a much larger investment of attention during the show.
The hotel room is where I internalized this habit. When I practice late at night in whatever hotel I happen to be in, I set up my practice space with deliberate reference points. The card case goes in the same position relative to my body. The practice surface is always the same distance from my working hand. The light falls from the same direction. These consistencies mean that when I eventually perform the material in a real venue, my body already knows the spatial relationships and I can focus entirely on the audience.
The Thirty-Second Investment
Thirty seconds. That is what the hand test costs. Arrive at the venue early enough to do it. Ask the tech to bring up the lights. Stand in your spot. Extend your hand. Find the warmth. Mark the center.
It is the smallest possible investment in your performance environment and one of the highest-return investments I have ever made. Because it is not really about the light. It is about certainty. About knowing, before the first audience member sits down, that you have a home position that the lighting supports. About eliminating one more variable that could pull your attention away from the only thing that actually matters: the people you are about to perform for.
I think of it now as part of my pre-performance checklist, alongside testing the microphone, checking my props, and reviewing my set list. It is not glamorous. It is not creative. It is a thirty-second physical test that gives me information I cannot get any other way.
Harlan was right. Temperature tells you when you are in the center of the light. And knowing where the center is — truly knowing, physically and spatially, not guessing — changes the way you stand, the way you move, and the way the audience sees you for the entire duration of the performance.
Find your hot spot. It takes thirty seconds. It is worth every one of them.