Lighting Design Beyond Theatre: A Book Review By Chontelle Gray

Lighting Design Beyond Theatre 

By Allen Branton and Sharon Huizinga 

Routledge, 2025, 172 pages 

Hardback $200; Paperback $57.99; eBook $52.19 

Review by Chontelle Gray

Lighting Design Beyond Theatre by Allen Branton and Sharon Huizinga is a book designed for students of lighting design, emerging designers wanting to explore designing lights beyond the traditional theatrical industry, as well as instructors teaching design for nontheatrical events. Lighting design is often taught with a focus on designing for plays, musicals, operas, and dance. When designers find themselves in other venues or arenas of design, they are often left to figure out how to adapt what they know about lighting to these other environments, which frequently include different approaches than standard theatrical design. This book sets out to help designers by providing an approach to the fieldcraft of lighting in the entertainment industry. It is focused more on a holistic approach to successfully designing and adapting to the industry. It is not a book about light plots or how to program cues, rather it focuses on the reality of the industry and what is involved with working in venues that do not work with the same schedules, timelines, and environments as we are often used to with theatre productions.

‍

‍

When I picked up this book, I expected it to read like a textbook, and I thought I might learn a few things, but as someone who has been in technical theatre for almost 40 years, I didn’t expect an eye-opening experience. I was greatly mistaken. I found this book to be both informative and delightful. The book includes short interviews and stories along with covering the history of lighting for events and concerts. The stories and interviews also offer insight into the experiences of people who design non theatre events. I felt like I was learning from their experiences and gaining a better understanding of how to approach this type of project.

The authors speak with a wealth of personal experience. Allen Branton is a lighting designer for stage and television with a career spanning over 50 years. He has worked with prominent musicians and performers, including Diana Ross and U2. He has also designed the lights for notable events, including the MTV Video Music Awards, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Inductions, the Emmy Awards, and two Super Bowl Halftimes. Sharon Huizinga is an Associate Professor of Lighting at the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music (CCM) and Project Director for the Academy of Live Technology at Rock Lititz. She has been the Lighting Designer and programmer since the beginning of the millennium, working with artists in several countries across multiple entertainment genres.  

The book begins with a brief history of the industry and how lighting in concert venues and other arenas of entertainment grew out of necessity. It demonstrates how the approach has always been different than working on a traditional production since it is not based on the script to stage theatre approach. This history section includes interviews from designers who were part of the development of entertainment lighting design. The photos and diagrams in this section are wonderful, and I learned a lot more about the beginnings of this branch of our industry.

This book is structured like a conversation between the two authors. There are moments where the two voices become one, and you are gaining the same insight from both, and there are moments when one section is delivered primarily by one or the other. The authors detail their approaches to various problems and their process of design. The book gives insight into the challenges of designing in this non-traditional environment and offers suggestions. I feel as though it can continue to serve as a guide and inspiration as the industry continues to evolve and change.

The stories are wonderful, the insight is solid, and the images are stunning. It is a wonderful book to experience and a helpful guide to this portion of the industry, with which many of us have limited prior contact. I would highly recommend this book to designers, educators and students, and really, to anyone interested in the history and development of the modern lighting experience.

‍

Click here to find your own copy of Lighting Design Beyond Theatre

‍

Chontelle Gray is a faculty member in the Department of Theatre and Dance at Casper College in Casper, Wyoming. She teaches courses in scenic and lighting design. You can reach her at chontellergray@gmail.com.

‍