Lighting & Theatre

This year I am not at the Edinburgh Festival, bucking a rule that has held for many years of my life. I have worked on a bundle of shows up there over several years, and […]

It’s been a few crazy weeks.  To summarize roughly, they went something like this… At the end of October, I was lucky enough to be a guest at Fantasycon, which this year was held in […]

‘Tis the season of grass pollen and brown fluff, and all across London people are snuffling, coughing and choking their way through a gently, if variably beautiful summer. Growth is everywhere.  Trees that five weeks […]

In 2020 a new law will come into place across Europe which aims to make lighting more efficient.  This is a Good Thing.  Tungsten bulbs have, in the past, clocked in ridiculously high wattages for […]

Technicians: you’ve got a good bullshit metre.  You gotta have one.  And your bullshit metre is mostly right.  Unfortunately the side-effect of this is that sometimes perfectly acceptable words which can be used in a […]

I do hope I don’t get thrown out of the Association of Lighting Designers for this one… The ALD has a motto.  It’s on its website, it’s on its magazine – ‘More Art Less Tools’. […]

“Cat!  The show went well!  Come have a drink.” “Oh but I was going to go home I haven’t been home for five hundred years every part of my body hurts I can barely walk […]

“Ok so let’s update that to track and can we please put cue 86.5 with ‘at once sweet friend’ and we’re also going to….” “Hello.” “Oh.  Hello.  Sorry, I’m a bit….” “Are you the Lighting […]

This blog has been quiet for a few weeks – apologies.  All the life has been happening! To catch up on some of this, and because people sometimes wonder what a scribbler’s routine (hollow laughter!) […]

Here it is… here it comes.  Can you feel it?  It’s there, just lurking on the edge of your awareness, needling… the voice of self-doubt. Everyone gets it.  Me… I’ve always been lucky enough to […]

To clarify – this was a dance show at the Platform Theatre in April 2016, rather than a book.  It was put on by Alexander Whitley, and I was taken to see it by my […]

There’s a bit of an ongoing barny about how many deeply successful (mostly male) actors in Britain right now are posh.  A mull….  It’s an argument not without a grain of truth to it.  A […]