Contemporary Performance Lighting: Experience, Creativity and Meaning

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by Katherine Graham, Scott Palmer, Kelli Zezulka

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.