LDI 2025 - Las Vegas

Rob will return to Las Vegas and the LDI trade show for the first time in years this coming week.

He is there to talk about Richard Pilbrow’s book A Sense of Theatre, in a session with Richard’s son, the architect Fred Pilbrow, that will discuss the book, the National Theatre that is the central focus of the book, and then the constant need to balance the requirements of theatre practitioners and theatre architects when creating new theatre buildings that is actually the book’s over-arching theme. The panel, which will be moderated by Jules Lauve, takes place at 1.30pm on Monday 8th December as part of LDI; it is open to anyone with an LDI show pass.

Rob will also be taking part in the all day Art of Programming event which takes place across Saturday December 8th; Rob was one of the originators of this panel more than a decade ago and is delighted to return to it now.

At other times, Rob will be based on the stand of Lighting & Sound America magazine on the showfloor, talking about both A Sense of Theatre and the book Theatre Lighting Design: Conversations on the Art, Craft and Life, as well as both exploring the show floor for interesting new products and Las Vegas for interesting new shows!

A Sense of Theatre at LDI: [link]
The Art of Programming at LDI: [link]

40 Years of LSi

November marked the 40th anniversary of Lighting & Sound International magazine - and a realisation for Rob that he has been writing for the magazine for thirty-three of those forty years!

The anniversary was commemorated with a special issue of the magazine looking back across those four decades and how the entertainment production industry and its technology have evolved over that time. Rob was delighted to be able to talk in depth to the pioneering show designer Willie Williams about how his work over that period for U2 and others has largely led the way, and also to be able to write about the Live Aid musical Just For One Day as part of a pair of articles looking at the original Live Aid and this new take on the iconic event - with Rob delighted to have been able to take the lead lighting designer of the orginal concert, Jimmy Barnett, to see the new show and to meet its lighting designer, Howard Hudson.

You can read all this and more in the 40th anniversary edition of LSi, available, like every issue of the magazine, online: [link]

Classic Gear Live 2025

Classic Gear Live, the celebration of historic lighting, sound and other entertainment technology which Rob created based on his monthly Classic Gear column in Lighting+Sound International magazine, returned for the third year to the PLASA Show in London, and once again attracted enormous attention.

In a new location this year, upstairs on the balcony at Olympia, the stand collected together a remarkable array of products and, more importantly, a remarkable set of people who first made, sold or used those products to talk about their creation and history.

Products on show this year included ‘Betty’, the System CD ‘organ’ lighting console which ran the lighting for all of the shows at London’s Palace Theatre between 1956 and 1980; Thorn’s pioneering Q-File memory lighting console; ETC’s Microvision, Obsession2 and the fourth Source Four to roll off the production line, celebrating the company’s 50th anniversary; the Vari-Lite VL1, marking the 40th anniversary of Live Aid; other moving lights including DHA’s remarkable Pitching Digital Light Curtain and Martin’s PAL1200; from the audio world, a Revox B77 reel-to-reel tape machine including editing block and a WEM Copicat echo machine, and much more. In a separate area, Classic Gear Live featured the world of psychedelic projection, remarkable effects created using liquids, oils, colour changes and imagination!

The stand also celebrated the 40th anniversary of LSi magazine, with a copy of every issue of the magazine on the stand - Rob realising he’s been writing for the magazine for 33 of those 40 years!

Amongst the many visitors to the stand was lighting designer Andrew Bridge who, with the lighting plan for the orginal Phantom of the Opera spread out before him, explained his design for the show and how it has evolved over the decades.

Rob was also thrilled to host a series of panels at the show, including sessions on Live Aid, on the newly refurbished and re-opened Soho Theatre in Walthamstow, and looking back on forty years of making hit shows with production manager Richard Bullimore, sound designer Andrew Bruce, production electrician Howard Eaton, and Unusual Rigging’s Tom Harper. Videos of these panels are coming soon.

Classic Gear Live will be back at the 2026 PLASA Show, with some more major anniversaries to celebrate… stay tuned for more news!

Classic Gear Live 2025: [link]

"One of the most extraordinary of MIF25...”

A Possibility, the show-artwork on which Rob has been working with the visual artist Germaine Kruip since last September, opened to remarkable acclaim at the 2025 Manchester International Festival, with reviewers describing it as “a majestic artwork, where light itself becomes one of the main characters.”

The first half of the show consists entirely of light - and of darkness, with the environment of the Royal Northern College of Music carefully controlled to ensure that light is only seen where intended, nowhere else. In the second half, four percussionists arrive on stage bringing another level to the experience.

Rob was delighted to work with the visual artist Germaine Kruip, composers Hahn Rowe and Emily Howard and dramaturg Bart van den Eynde to create this remarkable, unique piece of work - and also to return to the Manchester Festival ten years after helping to create the acclaimed show Tree of Codes.

It is hoped and expected that, like that show, A Possibility will be seen around the world. Details to follow as they are confirmed.

Gallery: [link]
Show information from MIF25: [link]

A Possibility...

Now that it has been officially announced, Rob is delighted to be able to reveal that he will be back in Manchester this summer, working with the visual artist Germaine Kruip on her new work A Possibility, which debuts at this year’s Manchester International Festival.

The show is a fascinating interplay of light and dark, space, sound and silence, and how your mind perceive all of those things.

The performance has been created by Germaine Kruip with composers Emily Howard and Hahn Rowe and dramaturge Bart Van Den Eynde. It performs at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester from July 17th-20th 2025.

A Possibility: [link]
Germaine Kruip: [link]

Now You Can Enjoy The Lighting Conversations

The new bookTheatre Lighting Design: Conversations on the Art, Craft and Life, officially launches today - Thursday 25th July, 2024.

Rob has been helping fellow lighting designer Emma Chapman with this book over the last few years, assembling fourteen fascinating interviews with leading lighting designers (plus a fifteenth, with the wider lighting team behind the musical Billy Elliot) into one place, where they provide a powerful reminder that there aren’t really rights or wrongs in lighting, just ideas, inspiration, determination, practice - and a little bit of luck along the way.

The designers featured cover a vast range of experience: Neil Austin, Natasha Chivers, Jon Clark, Paule Constable, Rick Fisher, Richard Howell, Howard Hudson, Jessica Hung Han Yun, Mark Jonathan, Amy Mae, Ben Ormerod, Bruno Poet, Jackie Shemesh and Johanna Town. It’s fun when they agree with each other, more fun still when they disagree!

Theatre Lighting Design: Conversations on the Art, Craft and Life is available now, direct from its publisher Bloomsbury Methuen, or from wherever you prefer to buy your books in person or online.

A sneak preview: {link}

Direct from the Publisher:
Order in the UK: {link}
Order in the US: {link}
(Availability in Australia to follow during August)

Via Amazon:
Order in the UK: {link}
Order in the US: {link}
(Availability in Australia to follow during August)

Billy: Back In Japan

Rob is delighted to be back in Japan - and back for real, not just virtually! - where he is re-mounting the musical Billy Elliot for its 2024 season.

Rob has a long association with this show, back to the 2011 US Tour; he has since re-created Rick Fisher’s design in Holland, for the UK tour and in Japan and Korea, as well as moving the original London production to a new lighting control system along the way.

The Japanese production first appeared in 2017; it was re-mounted in 2020, but in the height of the Covid travel restrictions that was one of the three productions Rob worked on remotely from London, alongside Waitress (also in Japan) and Billy Elliot in Seoul.

This new production, in a new theatre - Tokyo’s Brilliant Hall in Ikebukuru - continues the gentle evolution and upgrading of the rig, this time replacing the ETC Revolutions with Martin Encore fixtures. The big Vari-Lite VL3500s and VL3000 Washes that have been part of the show since it began remain in place, however; the rig is supplied by PRG.

The Billy Tokyo lighting team includes a number of old friends from previous productions in Japan, including Mata Hari and Waitress, led by Yuta Watanabe, with Sonoko Ishii interpreting.

Billy Elliot previews in Tokyo from July 27th, and opens on August 2nd; it will also play a season in Osaka later in the year.

(Billy Elliot is also the subject of the last interview, with the lighting team that made and now re-makes the show, in the new book Theatre Lighting Design: Conversations on the Art, Craft and Life, to be published by Methuen-Bloomsbury on July 25th but available to pre-order now!)

Billy Elliot Tokyo: {link}
The Book! {link}

Theatre Lighting Design Conversations

Rob has had not one but two books on the go over the last few years. As well as helping with Richard Pilbrow’s A Sense of Theatre, he has been working with fellow lighting designer Emma Chapman on a book called Theatre Lighting Design: Conversations on the Art, Craft and Life.

It is a simple premise: conversations with fourteen lighting designers (plus a group chat with members of the team who’ve looked after the lighting of the musical Billy Elliot since its debut), talking about their working lives in lighting: where the ideas come from, how they consider light, how they talk to directors and designers, the tools they prefer, the things they struggle with, the things they love. Each conversation is fascinating in its own right. They’re more fascinating still when taken together, particularly where different designers disagree with each other!

It is quite a cast list of designers: Neil Austin, Natasha Chivers, Jon Clark, Paule Constable, Rick Fisher, Richard Howell, Howard Hudson, Jessica Hung Han Yun, Mark Jonathan, Amy Mae, Ben Ormerod, Bruno Poet, Jackie Shemesh and Johanna Town.

The book is published by Bloomsbury/Methuen, and though it won’t reach bookshops until July 25th, it is available for pre-order now

Pre-order in the UK: {link}
Pre-order in the US: {link}