Paule Constable - Lighting Designer

Recent designs include: Warhorse, St Joan, Women of Troy, Some Trace of Her, Waves, Paul, The House of Bernarda Alba and Coram Boy for the National Theatre, Ivanov for the Donmar season at the Wyndham’s, as well as The Chalk Garden, Othello, The Man Who Had All the Luck, The Cut and Proof for the Donmar, The Good Soul of Szechuan and Vernon God Little at the Young Vic, Evita in the West End, Play Without Words, Dorian Gray and Highland Fling for Matthew Bourne and Moon for the Misbegotten at the Old Vic, as well as many productions for the RSC, the Lyric, Hammersmith, the Royal Court and for Theatre de Complicite. She has designed opera throughout the world, including Giulio Cesare, Cosi fan Tutti, Carmen and St Matthew Passion at Glyndebourne, Marriage of Figaro, The Magic Flute, Faust and Rigoletto at the Royal Opera House, Satyagraha and Rosenkavalier at ENO, Tales of Hoffman for Salzburg and Peter Grimes for Opera North. Recent dance credits include Seven Deadly Sins for the Royal Ballet and Naked for the Ballet Boyz.
Awards include: Hospital Creative Award in Theatre 2006 for contribution to theatre, 2006 Olivier Award for Best Lighting Design for Don Carlos, 2005 Olivier Award for Best Lighting for His Dark Materials, LA Critics’ Award for Amadeus 1999. She has received a further five Olivier Award nominations and a Tony nomination for Coram Boy on Broadway in 2007.
Paule is a technical associate of the National Theatre.

"I have aimed for a painterly feel, a gentler palette than in lighting a modern musical – it looks much more like a Hogarth painting than a Disney show. Hogarth was earlier than Dickens but they were both great at creating a sense of the life of the streets, of the sort of people that Oliver meets along his journey. One of the great challenges is the sheer size of Drury Lane. The whole of the stage has to be lit, but the focus of the lighting – as of the action – has to be Oliver himself. The lighting, like every other aspect of the show, has to draw the audience out of the auditorium, on to the stage – and into Dickens’s London. What I want to achieve with the lighting it is something dark and beautiful. This very dark production is also a vibrant and lively one, and there is a lot of beauty in the story. As a team, our job has been to get these two factors working together, to make the show what it should be."