I stand corrected, mood and scenery lighting is a factor in design. However I usually don't worry much about it because my
wash and filler lights take care of it. Remember also that if you are focusing at a acting area 5' high, the beam of lights covering the talent in the
up stage are going to have a lot of light on the back wall. Now in the case that your lights are a
bit focused and the top of the wall is a
bit dark, than you might need to suppliment the wall a
bit just to even it out, but a tapered lighting of the wall isn't a bad thing either.
Only if I need to highlight a piece of scenery do I ever focus a lamp specifically at a wall or on it. Long
throw front fill lights focused on the
up stage especially will
cover the actors and the scenery in addition to other general washes. The challenge is to make the talent "pop" out from their environment and thus you in most instances would not want to have the scenery just as intense as their surroundings much less be the Key Lighting. Thus the main part of lighting the
stage is lighting the talent. All else is secondary. Look into the McCandles "A Method of Lighting the
Stage" for one founding source in this concept in addition to other design books that would support this theory.
On the
down stage apron however I don't think you need to worry much about scenery lighting, no matter how you light the
stage and it's environment - focusing fixtures to light the scenery or just relying on ambient light and washes to do it. There are good valad points to providing sufficient and specific lighting to the scenery as you state.
The pools of light on the
stage or back wall from the talent or Key type lighting would also be covered up by the
wash lighting or proper focusing of the the lights. That's one really good reason you don't want a shiny
stage deck or scenery so it can absorb the focused light and prevent it from reflecting all over the place or being a very well defined pool of light. Also softening the focus of your lights and adding
frost to them helps to prevent this.