The Changing World of Light on Stage: Adapting Lighting Design Practices to new technologies, approaches, and collaborators

We’ve changed more about light in 25 years than the entire century before.

Michael Rathbun walked us through how LEDs and moving light technology fundamentally shifted the relationship between lighting designers and everyone else in the room. 

Common LED color mixing fails diverse skin tones. Badly. Rathbun didn’t dance around this- he named the problem and demonstrated the solutions we should all know by now. Technology expands possibility, but only if we stay critical about what it flattens or erases.

Projection design entering as a standard collaborator, not a special effect, changes the conversation again. How do you integrate media into the world of the play without it becoming wallpaper or spectacle? The tools shape our approach whether we admit it or not.

Rathbun has designed for Kanye West’s Sunday Service Choir, LA Dance Project, Steppenwolf, Old Globe, and stages from LA’s Hollywood Bowl to Lyon’s ancient amphitheater. He teaches at Binghamton University and belongs to USA 829. His work lives at the intersection of technology and human collaboration - which is exactly where most of us are trying to figure things out right now.

Check his portfolio at mfrdesigns.net if you want to see how these principles translate to actual design.