Stage and lighting design are essential elements of any theatrical or live event. The lighting production can have a significant impact on the experience and is used to invoke a certain mood or contribute to the overall feel of the performance.
The Lighting Design of the Year Award and Emerging Lighting Design of the Year awarded by the LIT Design Awards recognize the efforts of talented lighting designers who improve and perfect the quality of design and quality of light emitted by their designs. We collected some of the best stage and theater lighting designs recently awarded by the LIT Design Awards below.
Prize(s) Winners in Theater Performance Design
Company Antonia Peón-Veiga Iluminación Arquitectónica
Lead Designers Antonia Peón-Veiga
Photo Credits Cristóbal Palma
Award-winning HAMMAM proposes the experience of a collective purge inspired by the traditional practices of sweat or heat baths present in different geographies and cultures throughout history. In an immersive environment, the work explores water vapor and sound as environmental bodies, tactile media, and the bathroom as a social healing practice between the intimate and the public. This project by Antonia Peón-Veiga Iluminación Arquitectónica is a transdisciplinary research and creation project that generates intersections between dance, sound art, performance, and writing, developing pieces in various formats, such as sound capsules, an editorial publication, a dance performance, body practices, and vaporous concerts.
HAMMAM invites us to live a multisensory experience where each element is worked from neuroscience. Vapor, light, and sound were designed on the scientific basis of the effects on the nervous system. The different electromagnetic frequencies of light and their effects on the body were investigated, as well as environmental inspirations around light, steam, sky, clouds and water.
Prize(s) Winners in Stage Lighting
Company EO project / Jésica Elizondo
Client CUATRO X CUATRO
Photo Credits Paulina Cervantes
Other Credits Directed by Shantí Vera
Talented Jésica Elizondo is a stage lighting artist, born in Mexico City. She likes to think of her work as part of an investigation of the processes of transformation and enabling space-time in the living arts. Her work focuses on space conceptualization and light creation and her talents came to the light in the design project she worked on for DISOLVER, an interdisciplinary work by Shantí Vera.
Prize(s) Winners in Interior Architectural Illumination / Theater Performance Design
University California College of The Arts
Lead Designers Congrui Gao
Other Credits Instructors: Margo Majewska
This project focuses on developing a lighting design for the Studio 2 project, that converts an existing theater into a performing space that includes fashion shows. The concept for the project by California College of The Arts student Congrui Gao was inspired by Balenciaga’s 2020 fashion show. Each environment is connected through layers of immersive experience. The interior of the performance space is composed of a single strip-shaped LED screen, and the audience will stand along the edges of the arc to experience a 360-degree immersive experience and the videos on the screen will actively respond to the fashion clothing, creating a sense of mystery, structuralism, and powerful visual impact.
The entire experience of the fashion show is not a static vision, it is an Immersive experience of moving Gestures between the audience and performer. Illuminating public space needs to fulfill a wide range of needs. The design process for this project was structured around 5 layers of light that address these needs and uses these layers as a guide for making lighting design decisions.
Prize(s) Winners in Stage Lighting
Lead Designers Adam Honoré
Project Location Signature Theater, Arlington VA
Signature Theatre continues its tradition of big musicals in intimate spaces with one of the most iconic musicals ever written. Up close in the audition room, feel every heartbeat and heartbreak as hopeful dancers pour out their dreams, memories, loves, and why they dance in a breathtaking display of the tremendous talent it takes to be in a chorus line.
The design of this production reimagined a classic utilizing modern technology while maintaining a period aesthetic. The mastermind behind the lighting design, Adam Honoré is a Harlem-based lighting designer for plays, musicals, and live events. Off-Broadway highlights feature Carmen Jones (Classic Stage), Ain’t No Mo’ (The Public), Behind the Sheet (Ensemble Studio Theatre), and Faux-bia! (Carnegie Hall). Regional collaborations include Arena Stage, Dallas Theater Center, Huntington Theater Company, Shakespeare Theatre Company, and Signature Theatre among others. International designs feature Haydn’s The Seasons (Austria), The Band’s Visit (Manila), Kinky Boots (Manila), and Fun Home (Int’l Premiere, ft. Lea Salonga).
Prize(s) Winners in Theater Performance Design
Company Honoré Lighting
Lead Designers Adam Honoré
Project Location Shakespeare Theatre Company, Washington D.C.
James Baldwin’s ‘The Amen Corner’ tackles the role of the church in the Black community. Set within a storefront church, an apartment, and the streets of Harlem, the design of this play brings an operatic quality to its words of Baldwin. Transcending expectations, the lighting of this production supports the emotion deep within the text which in turn created the world for each of the characters to exist in.
“The production’s lighting designer deserves his own standing ovation. Honoré manages to separate the static set of the combined church and apartment with subtle shading and gives the effect of a long church service with early golden hour light that morphs into a bright, white afternoon”, said a review by Leigh Giangreco, The DCist.
