Lighting & Theatre

… that technicians can’t.  This could also extend to musicians, dancers, any artisty type really that the director doesn’t want to upset.  I hasten to add that 99% of all actors and artists I’ve ever […]

Last night I slept 8 unbroken hours for the first time in… oooh… a while.  It’s been another tech-tastic week, and it’s not quite over yet…. Thankfully!  When I come to that point where I’m […]

As a lighting designer, I’m sometimes asked to make things ‘blue’.  Here is what ‘blue’ means to me: Daylight blue – the cheating blue that turns a yellow tungsten lens to the not-quite-white of daylight […]

Things I have learned while lighting music gigs: 1.  You can’t have too many fingers.  In theatre, you create a state, make it balanced and beautiful, save it, and move on.  In music, you layer […]

So again I’ve been reminded that I’m ‘scary’. In theatre I can be very scary indeed in the face of inadequacy and incompetence, and this is fine and I will not apologise for it.  If […]

Before I begin, let me say: I have worked on dozens of shows with amazing and wonderful people.  The thought process that follows describes rare, bad moments.  Alas, however, the bad moments are always more […]

So as part of this twitter thing, I’m trying something new.  For the next week or so, I’m in Edinburgh as a lighting designer, working on a show on the Fringe called Crazy Glue.  And […]

I wish I didn’t have to say this, but a lot of the time, anywhere between 30-80% of a lighting designer’s job is a battle against adversity.  On massive productions this may not be the […]

I love it when you reach a point in a creative relationship where you get to say ‘no’.  There are various different levels of conversation you can have with a director or designer.  With someone […]

I don’t watch Eurovision. Honestly, it’s just not my cuppa tea, even as a curious lighting designer who sometimes lights music.  And if I do watch, I tend to turn the sound down. For any […]

I have now been a theatre lighting designer for three years and… oooh… six months, give or take.  I say ‘I have been’ but in my first secondment out of RADA a large part of […]

Let’s not kid ourselves.  Northampton is not the glamorous throbbing heart of the North.  Once it was clearly awesome.  It has a museum dedicated to the history of shoe manufacture, which once it was a […]