Michael Rathbun
Michael Rathbun is an accomplished lighting designer for theater, opera, dance and other varieties of live performance. He is also a member of USA 829, the union of professional theatrical designers and artisans in the United States, and is a professor of Lighting Design at Binghamton University in New York State.
His designs have been seen on stages in New York City, Los Angeles, San Diego, Chicago, Boston, Bangkok, Edinburgh, Frankfurt, Dublin, London and Paris, with some notable institutions including San Diego's Old Globe Theatre, Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre and the LA Dance Project, among others. Notable venues include LA's Hollywood Bowl, Lyon's Théâtre antique de Fourvière and Dublin's Smock Alley.
Some notable credits of his include Kanye West's Sunday Service Choir (associate lighting designer), Theatre Y's devised adaptation of 3 Sisters (lighting designer), Ariel Dorfman's La Muerte y La Doncella (scenic and lighting designer), Benjamin Millepied's Be Here Now (lighting designer), Handel's Giustino produced by Long Beach Opera with an arrangement by Grammy-nominated composer Shelley Washington (lighting designer) and Jez Butterworth's Jerusalem (midwest premier, lighting designer).
He holds a BA in philosophy with a minor in neuroscience from Wells College and an MFA in stage design with a minor in dramaturgy from the Lir Academy, a part of Trinity College, Dublin. Examples of his work can be found in his online portfolio at mfrdesigns.net
PRESENTATION OVERVIEW
The Changing World of Light on Stage: Adapting Lighting Design Practices to new technologies, approaches, and collaborators
Beginning from an exploration of the history of artificial lighting in theatre, this presentation in particular focuses on the changes in the tools, approach, methods of collaboration, and collaborators themselves in the world of light on stage. We've seen more changes in the way in which we incorporate artificial lighting into our theatres in the past 25 years than the century previous. We will explore the effects of LEDs and Moving Light Technology and how the ability to make choices in the moment about color, angle, and beam changes our collaboration with directors, playwrights, choreographers and performers themselves and how the increasing affordability and ease of projection design introduces a new collaborative element and how to integrate such elements into the world of the play. We’ll also discuss some of the challenges that arise from this technology, particularly in regards to lighting a diverse array of skin tones, how common LED color mixing complicates that process, and the solutions available to us, as well as how the tools available to us shape our design approaches. From here, we will explore further how our techniques and practices, both technical and collaborative, evolve and adapt to the new possibilities and challenges in our modern world.
