Friday Theatre Trivia! To be “in the limelight” is to be the centre of attention. The phrase stems from the original lighting in theatres where light was literally provided by lime boxes. Hydrated lime (a mineral) would be set alight and, hopefully, contained within the box but many theatre fires resulted. Clearly the best lighting was closest to the lime box so an actor would try to stand there and be ‘in the limelight’.
Posted on: Fri, 14 Nov 2014 16:23:39 +0000