This is the first major collection of critical responses to performance lighting and includes contributions from award-winning lighting designers, researchers and artists. Showcasing recent examples of work – with case studies of lighting practices in Britain, Europe, the US and China – combined with theoretical and analytical approaches to practice, this will enrich your understanding of the role and potential of light in performance and related creative practices.
This volume explores three core themes and provides a framework for thinking through the role of light in performance:
1. Experience - considers both the audience's experience of light and the ways in which light influences the experience of performers
2. Creativity - examines both the creative, performative capacities of light in performance, as well as the creative practices of lighting designers
3. Meaning - offers an expanded view of performance aesthetics by examining the capacity of light to influence and generate meaning within performance.
The case studies are drawn from a wide-array of lighting practice, including: Jennifer Tipton on the role of light as a structural language in performance; Jesper Kongshaug on the lighting of Copenhagen's Tivoli Gardens; Lucy Carter on her work in installation and dance; Psyche Chui on the productive fusion of Western lighting techniques with contemporary Chinese opera; Katharine Williams on the role of light in feminist political theatre made by RashDash; and Paule Constable on storytelling with light in a range of productions, including War Horse, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time and Angels in America.
Dr Katherine Graham is a lecturer in theatre at the University of York in the Department of Theatre, Film, Television, and Interactive Media. She is currently co-convenor of the Theatre and Performance Research Association's Scenography Working Group and has published work about light in
Theatre and Performance Design and
Contemporary Theatre Review. She has also worked extensively as a lighting designer for theatre and dance.
Scott Palmer is Professor of Light and Performance in the School of Performance & Cultural Industries, University of Leeds, UK. He is the co-editor with Joslin McKinney of
Scenography Expanded: An Introduction to Contemporary Performance Design and with Katherine Graham and Kelli Zezulka of
Contemporary Performance Lighting: Experience, Creativity and Meaning.Dr Kelli Zezulka is a lecturer in technical theatre (production and design) at University of Salford, UK. She has published in the journals
Theatre, Dance and Performance Training and
Behind the Scenes as well as in applied linguistics. Her research interests include lighting design and scenography processes, theatre design pedagogy, interpersonal pragmatics and creative collaboration. A practising lighting designer, she is also a non-executive director of the Association of Lighting Designers and editor of its bi-monthly magazine,
Focus.
Joslin McKinney is Professor of Scenography at the University of Leeds, UK. She is the lead author of the Cambridge Introduction to Scenography (2009) and co-editor of Scenography Expanded (Bloomsbury, 2017). She has published articles and chapters
on scenographic research methods, scenographic spectacle and embodied spectatorship, phenomenology, kinaesthetic empathy and material agency.
Stephen A. Di Benedetto is Professor and Chair of the Department of Theatre Michigan State University, USA. He is Associate Editor (Drama) for
ASAP/ Journal and Associate Editor for
Scene . His books include
The Provocation of the Senses in Contemporary Theatre (2010) and
An Introduction to Theatre Design (2012).
