Katherine Graham is Lecturer in Theatre at the University of York, UK and currently co-convenor of the Theatre and Performance Research Association’s Scenography Working Group. She has published work about light in Theatre and Performance Design and Contemporary Theatre Review and has worked extensively as a lighting designer for theatre and dance. Scott Palmer is Associate Professor in Performance Design at the University of Leeds, UK. His publications include chapters that focus on light, space and the technologies of performance and the monograph Light: Readings in Theatre Practice (2013). Kelli Zezulka is Lecturer in Technical Theatre (Production and Design) at the University of Salford, UK and has previously written for theatre journals and in applied linguistics. A practising lighting designer, she is also a non-executive director of the Association for Lighting Production and Design and editor of its bi-monthly magazine, Focus.
Contemporary Performance Lighting is a coming of age story for the field of lighting design. On the shoulders of a century of technical and artistic progress, a collection of international designers and thinkers usher in a new era for our discipline - one in which meaning finally becomes the central pursuit. Seasoned practitioners and new designers alike will find inspiration in these terrific explorations. * Deanna Fitzgerald, Lighting Designer and Vice Dean, University of Arizona, USA * Light - that immaterial material with the power to dematerialize - performs as an agential force in our daily lives. But within the shadowy realms of theatres, galleries, 'found' spaces and nocturnal outdoor sites, it is employed as a transformational aesthetic medium by artists of technical alchemy attentive to the subtleties and intensities of its 'appearing'. This timely anthology critically celebrates light as a performative medium and an event in itself. Meditating on processes, practices and projects its contributors confront the politics of perception and constructions of visuality to challenge conventional hierarchies and assumptions not only in the world of theatre but within the world as theatre. Chapters explore its relevance to the performing, visual and spatial arts - including architecture and urban design - to reveal how lighting design integrates effects and affects to orchestrate, enliven and shape our individual and communal experiences. * Dorita Hannah, Designer and Independent Academic, New Zealand *