About
Rob has worked as a lighting designer, associate lighting designer and lighting programmer around the world for more than twenty years, after starting in theatre with the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain and then touring with the English Shakespeare Company.
As a lighting designer, his recent work includes the acclaimed dance show Tree of Codes with director Wayne McGregor and visual artist Olafur Eliasson (seen in Manchester, New York, Paris, London, Aarhus and Melbourne, with Sydney coming soon), the first three shows at the new Storybouse Theatre in Chester, Hello Dolly, Buried Child, Sweeney Todd, Oliver! and West Side Story at the Leicester Curve, Dietrich Letters touring the UK, Goodbye Barcelona at the Arcola, Glengary Glenn Ross and The Women for Mountview, The Wizard of Oz on tour in the US and in New York, Daddy Cool in the West End and Berlin, the UK and US tours of My Fair Lady (with David Hersey and Oliver Fenwick, winnder of the Touring Broadway 2008 award for Best Production), and the UK tour of Equus (with David Hersey, nominated for the 2008 TMA Lighting Award).
He has lit the Royal Academy of Music's showcase musicals for the most of the last decade, productions there including A My Name Is Alice, A Chorus Line, Cabaret, A Little Night Music, The Baker's Wife, The Wiz, Sweeney Todd, Into The Woods, Happy End, City of Angels, Jane Eyre, Oh What A Lovely War, Sweet Charity, Follies, Tommy, The Pajama Game and Promises Promises. For LAMDA, he has lit Candide, Kiss Me Kate, Maggie May, The Fix, City of Angels and Hair. Other designs include Our Country's Good for Guildhall, The Recruiting Officer in Colchester, Hamlet for the Neuss Festival, Is There Life After High School at the Bridewell and Groping For Trouts In A Peculiar River at BAC, which was nominated for the London Fringe Lighting Award.
As Lighting Programmer and Associate Lighting Designer, translating other lighting designer's visions into the practicalities of modern day automated lighting rigs; in this role his shows have included, in New York, the Tony-award winning Red, Tony-award nominated Equus, Hamlet, Mary Poppins and Oklahoma! and the new production of Evita; Shakespeare in Love, Bend It Like Beckham, Finding Neverland, Betty Blue Eyes, Footloose, Guys and Dolls, Mary Poppins, Les Miserables, Miss Saigon, Martin Guerre, Anything Goes, Ragtime, Oklahoma!, Oliver! and many others in the UK and around the world. He is currently re-creating the lighting for Billy Elliot on its UK tour, having previously worked on the show in Holland and on its US tour; he is also the lighting programmer for the Kenneth Branagh Theatre Company's year-long residency at the Garrick Theatre.
Rob has lectured at trade shows including PLASA, LDI and the Broadway Lighting Master Class, and drama colleges including Rose Bruford, LAMDA, NIDA and the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts. He has helped specify lighting equipment for venues including the Leicester Curve and CAST Doncaster, one of the first venues in the UK to use the Source Four LED fixtures. He writes regularly for a range of lighting industry publications, including Lighting & Sound International (including the monthly Classic Gear column), Lighting & Sound America, Live Design and The Stage. His first books, Entertainment in Production vols 1 & 2, collect together the best of these articles from 1994-1999 and 2000-2006; they are available now from Entertainment Technology Press. He also the creator of the FocusTrack and SpotTrack show documentation software systems, and a founder of the Backtage Heritage Collection, which aims to document and preserve historic backstage equipment.