Rob Halliday

Rob has worked as a lighting designer, associate lighting designer and lighting programmer around the world for more than thirty years, after starting with the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain and then touring with the English Shakespeare Company.

Rob's upcoming work includes A Possibility, a new work created with the artist Germaine Kruip, which will debut at this year's Manchester International Festival.

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, Melbourne, Syndey and Hong Kong), the spectacular Giudizio Universale (Rome, also featured as part of the Staging Places exhibition at the V&A in London), Amour (London, nominated for an Offie), Cry Baby (London), Shrek (Guildford), the first three shows at the new Storyhouse 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, winner 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 more than a decade, productions there including The Wild Party, Sweet Smell of Success, Working, 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, Jane Eyre, Oh What A Lovely War, Sweet Charity, Follies, Tommy, The Pajama Game, Promises Promises and two productions of City of Angels. 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, Oklahoma! and Evita; in London and elsewhere around the world, Shakespeare in Love, Bend It Like Beckham, Finding Neverland, Betty Blue Eyes, Footloose, Guys and Dolls, Mary Poppins, Miss Saigon, Martin Guerre, Anything Goes, Ragtime, Oklahoma!, Oliver!, the original Les Miserables, Mata Hari, Consent, Man of La Mancha, Billy Elliot and others.

Rob has lectured at trade shows including PLASA, LDI and the Broadway Lighting Master Class, and drama colleges including Rose Bruford, LAMDA, RADA, Central, 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, and Chester Storyhouse. 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 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. His also the co-editor and co-publisher of Richard Pilbrow's final work, A Sense of Theatre, and co-author with the lighting designer Emma Chapman of Theatre Lighting Design: Conversations on the Art, Craft and Life, published by Methuen/Bloomsbury.

He also the creator of the FocusTrack and SpotTrack show documentation software systems,a founder of the Backstage Heritage Collection, which aims to document and preserve historic backstage equipment, creator of the Classic Gear Live area at the annual PLASA Show in London, and is a member of the ALPD’s Save Stage Lighting team, working to ensure the EU considers the special requirements of performance lighting in their Ecodesign and other legislation.

www.robhalliday.com