I am a freelance lighting designer and educator for live performance.

Vision and Values

My process centers joyous, open-hearted collaboration. I recognize my own privilege and relentlessly seek to reconceive the production process away from its history of white male dominance. My work uses contemporary aesthetics to support storytelling that challenges outmoded belief systems and societal structures. These include race and class systems, accessibility, gender and sexuality, indigenous oppression, and any other constructs that inhibit empathic action.

Inspired by Nicole Brewer's "Anti-Racist Theatre" training, I pledge:

  • to bravely acknowledge and stop harm in the moment when I witness or perpetrate it

  • to offer empathic support to those who have been harmed, doing my best to repair the relationship

  • to prevent future harm by changing its perpetuating systems

My specific commitments are:

  • to use my privilege to uplift people from marginalized communities — in job recommendations, contracting and hiring, pay transparency and equity, and working conditions

  • to prioritize, listen to, and amplify historically marginalized voices without claiming their ideas as my own

  • to continue the work of educating myself and processing the history of oppression through reading, media, and affinity groups

  • to hold space for those with different accessibility needs than my own

  • to be vigilant in noticing my implicit biases and actively working to counteract them

  • to hold accountable the colleagues, institutions, audiences, and students with whom I work

  • to welcome feedback, acknowledging that I have a long way to go

Biography

Selected New York credits: The Shape of Things (with Carrie Mae Weems at the Park Avenue Armory); Macbeth (directed by John Doyle at Classic Stage); Duat (Soho Rep); Men on Boats (World Premiere: Playwrights Horizons/Clubbed Thumb); This is the Color... (Door 10/Baryshnikov Arts Center); Christina Anderson’s Hollow Roots (with Lileana Blain-Cruz at the Public/Under the Radar); America is Hard to See (LifeJacket/HERE); Rite of Spring (Martha Graham Dance Co.); The Soldier’s Tale (Carnegie Hall); 17 Minutes, Enemy of the People, The Pavilion, Expecting Isabel, Muswell Hill (Barrow Group); The Film Society (Keen / Theatre Row); I Came to Look for You on Tuesday (La Mama); White’s Lies (New World Stages).

I have been a frequent collaborator with director Robert Wilson. Projects include Otello (Festspielhaus Baden Baden, Germany); Il Trovatore (Teatro Comunale di Bologna and Teatro Regio di Parma, Italy); and Oedipus (Ancient Theatre of Pompeii, Teatro Olimpico di Vicenza, Teatro Mercadante di Napoli, Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus).

Regionally: Arden, Berkshire Theatre Group, Magic, Merry-Go-Round, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Pasadena Playhouse, Pittsburgh Public Theatre, Portland Playhouse, Portland Center Stage, Portland Stage, Quintessence, TheatreSquared, Tri-Cities Opera, Westport Country Playhouse, Writers, Yale Rep.

My work in dance, dance/theatre and avant-garde music includes original works with Alethea Adsitt, Jennifer Archibald, Jonah Bokaer, Christine Bonansea, Joshua Beamish/MOVE, Maria Chavez, Ximena Garnica/Leimay, Lane Gifford, Invisible Anatomy, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, LoudHound Movement, Martha Graham Dance Company, Ofelia Loret de Mola, Patrick Lovejoy, Belinda McGuire, Stefanie Nelson, Patricia Noworol, The Nerve Tank (as resident designer), Jennifer Harrison Newman, Waxfactory, Yue Yin, and four major works as associate set designer with Bill T. Jones. I have worked in various capacities on touring productions across the US, Canada, Italy, France, Slovenia, Taiwan, and the Dominican Republic.

I was the associate lighting designer on the Broadway production of Jitney and its national tour, which earned lighting designer Jane Cox a tony nomination. Other associate credits include two seasons at the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy (with AJ Weissbard); the Holland Festival in Amsterdam (for Tyler Micoleau); and at Minnesota Opera (with Steve TenEyck) among many others.

As an educator and guest artist, I have taught and worked with students at Bard, Barnard, Connecticut College, City College, Columbia, DeSales, East Stroudsburg, Fordham, NYU/Tisch, The New School, Princeton, University of the Arts, University of Rochester (where I was adjunct faculty), Quinnipiac, Willamette, and Yale. I am currently Assistant Professor of Scenic/Lighting Design at Portland State University

I earned a BFA with honors from Ithaca College and an MFA from the Yale School of Drama.

Headshot

photo: Josiah Bania

Awards / Honors:

  • Member, United Scenic Artists Local 829

  • Drammy Nomination, pen/man/ship at Portland Playhouse, 2017

  • Barrymore nomination, The Secret Garden with Arden Theatre Company, 2016

  • Recipient of the Opera America Robert L.B. Tobin Director-Designer Prize, 2015

  • Drammy Nomination, A Christmas Carol with Portland Playhouse, 2013

  • Featured in American Theatre Magazine's "Production Notebook" for Quartet v4.0 with WaxFactory, May/June 2010

  • Stanley R. McCandless Fellow, Yale School of Drama

  • George Harrison Senie Scholar, Yale School of Drama