Featured Publication: Designing with Light
Publication Title
Designing with Light: An Introduction to Stage Lighting
Author
Publisher
Routledge
Publication Date
January 2025
About the Book (from the publisher)
Now in its eighth edition, Designing with Light introduces readers to the art, craft, and technology of stage lighting to help them create designs that shape the audience’s emotional reaction to—and understanding of—a stage production.
This new edition is fully updated to include current information on the technology and equipment of stage lighting: lighting fixtures, lamps, cabling, dimmers, control boards, and LED tape, as well as electrical theory. Readers will learn how designed light is used to enhance the audience’s understanding and enjoyment of a production. The book includes specific information on drafting the light plot, explores the challenges of designing for different stage configurations, and provides examples of lighting designs for dramas, musicals, and dance. It also features comments and thoughts from active designers from both mainstream theatrical productions and related industries, and has a new emphasis on diversity and inclusion-related practices and language.
Written for students of lighting design and technology as well as professional technicians and designers, Designing with Light offers a comprehensive survey of the practical and aesthetic aspects of stage lighting design.
About the Author
Michael McNamara is the Faculty Lighting Designer for the Department of Theatre and Dance at Purdue. For eight years he was Resident Assistant Lighting Designer with the Washington National Opera at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC where he worked on more than fifty productions with design teams from around the world. More recently he has served as Associate Lighting Designer at the Canadian Opera Company, the New Israeli Opera in Tel Aviv, the San Diego Opera and the Dallas Opera. He has also been an Assistant Designer at the Seattle, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Portland Opera companies and at the Royal Opera in London.
Michael has designed at numerous Chicago-area theatre companies including First Folio Theatre with whom he won the 2012 Joseph Jefferson Award for his design of The Turn of the Screw. He has designed 19 other productions with First Folio. Other Chicago theatres include Shattered Globe, Remy Bumppo, Eclipse, Writers’ Theatre, Griffin, Dolphinback, Magellan, Pegasus Players, and Theatre at the Center. Outside of Chicago he has designed at the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, Skylight Music Theatre, the Pacific Conservatory for the Performing Arts, and the Phoenix Theatre in Indianapolis. He has designed and taught as a guest artist at the University of Kentucky, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Wheaton College, Huntington University, Beloit College, and Marquette University.
Michael received his Master of Fine Arts degree in Stage Design from Northwestern University and holds a Bachelor of Science in Theatre Arts from Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. Michael is a member of United Scenic Artists Local USA-829, the Illuminating Engineering Society, and the United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT) where he has previously served as a Director. He has also held various offices with the Midwest Regional Section of USITT where he was the 2017 recipient of the Founders’ Award in recognition of his contributions to the organization.