Department of Theatre, Drama, and Contemporary Dance

Appointed to IU in 1985

Prof. Emeritus Rob Shakespeare served the Department of Theatre, Drama, and Contemporary Dance for 29 years. He continues to be an active professional lighting designer specializing in lighting theatre, dramatic architectural environments, historic register interiors, art and museum galleries, and lighting installations. He was Resident Lighting Designer at the Bristol Old Vic in England before moving to North America. With more than 225 theatre, opera, and dance lighting designs, his work has been seen on three continents in such theatres as the Theatre Royal (Bristol, England), St. Lawrence Center (Toronto, Canada), Lyric Theatre (Hong Kong), Randall Theatre (Utah Shakespeare Festival), and Indiana Repertory Theatre. His architectural credits include houses of worship, resorts, skyscrapers, some of the world’s largest bridges (Hong Kong), art museum lighting, and lighting installations (Light Totem commissioned by the IU Art Museum). He has developed and incorporated computer visualization and collaboration tools into his design practice and has presented lectures, workshops and courses on his lighting design process in Asia, and throughout Europe and North America.

He is co-author of Rendering with Radiance: The Art and Science of Lighting Visualization , Morgan Kaufmann 1998, reprinted 2011 by Randolph Fritz. Residencies include Visiting Professor of Lighting Design at Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, Fulbright Professor at the University of Art and Design and Finnish Theatre Academy in Helsinki, where he initiated his research into techniques to seamlessly link lighting between virtual scenography and live performers. He was resident at Laterna Magika in Prague, researching Joseph Svoboda’s final works. Current work includes the IU Principle Investigator for Designing Visually Accessible Spaces (DEVA, NIH R01 EY017835-01). He is currently Adjunct Professor, School of Computing, University of Utah and Principal Consultant for Shakespeare Lighting Design. Rob serves on the Board on the Lotus Festival in Bloomington and is an avid amateur wine maker.