New Book on Contemporary Performance Lighting: Experience, Creativity and Meaning published
Unique collaboration between PCI academics, practitioner-researchers and professional theatre lighting designers is first critical anthology on subject.
A new book, Contemporary Performance Lighting: Experience, Creativity and Meaning has just been published by Bloomsbury Methuen.
This is the first critical anthology focused on performance lighting in the English language and is edited by Dr Scott Palmer and two early career academics who both recently completed PhDs in light in the School of Performance and Cultural Industries (PCI). Katherine Graham, University of York and Kelli Zezulka, University of Salford (and part-time lecturer in PCI), were both co –supervised by Dr Palmer and Prof. Joslin McKinney.
This work emerges from and builds on an initiative established during postgraduate study – Leeds Performing Light event, which was co-sponsored by the PCI PLACE research group, industry and professional organisation (now renamed as) Association for Lighting and Production Design (ALPD) and brought together academics and leading professional lighting designers.
Speaking about the book Dr Palmer said: “In providing an international vehicle and establishing a platform for two recent PhD/early career researchers, the work also offers an interesting collaborative model. It features strong PCI connections and contributions in addition to the three editors.”
In providing an international vehicle and establishing platform for two recent PhD/early career researchers, the work also offers an interesting collaborative model. It features strong PCI connections and contributions
The volume is a 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 enriches the understanding of the role and potential of light in performance and related creative practices.
Core themes
Thie book explores three core themes and provides a framework for thinking through the role of light in performance:
- Experience - considers both the audience's experience of light and the ways in which light influences the experience of performers
- Creativity - examines both the creative, performative capacities of light in performance, as well as the creative practices of lighting designers
- Meaning - offers an expanded view of performance aesthetics by examining the capacity of light to influence and generate meaning within performance.
This is a book about light, about the work of lighting designers and about what light does in and for performance. To think about light in performance is also, inherently, to think about the experience of space and time, and the ways in which performances are assembled from their materials and for their audiences.
Seasoned practitioners and new designers alike will find inspiration in these terrific explorations
The book has already drawn critical praise: Deanna Fitzgerald, Lighting Designer and Vice Dean, University of Arizona, USA, said ,“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.”
The book, Contemporary Performance Lighting Experience, Creativity and Meaning by Katherine Graham, Scott Palmer and Kelli Zezulka is available now from Bloomsbury Collections.
