by Until Richard Pilbrow came along, the job of the lighting designer in British theater was to light the actors and make the set look right. Richard, who has died aged 90, recognized that stage design had the potential to be architecture in motion, and that photographic projection technology could allow stories to be told in a different way.
Inspired by the Czech “schemer” Joseph Svoboda, and creative American lighting designers such as Tharon Musser, Richard brought vision, technical expertise and talent to the craft, making stage lighting an expressive and essential part of theater design. He played a central role in the construction and design of the National Theater on the South Bank, London, in the 1960s and 70s, and his legacy can be seen in almost every contemporary stage production in the world.
In 1957, with a loan of £150 from his father, Richard acquired a stockpile of lighting equipment stored under the stage of the Drury Lane theater and formed a company, Theater Projects, with his wife, Viki Brinton, and Bryan Kendall. . At first they rented equipment, but gradually the team became the leading sound and lighting designers of the 60s, 70s and 80s. Later they became the leading consultant in theater design, working on more than 1,800 projects in more than 80 countries.
After making his mark as a lighting designer with the 59 Theater Company at the Lyric Hammersmith, in the early 60s Richard was asked by Laurence Olivier to advise on the new Chichester Festival theatre, and then, in 1963, to become its director. lit for the newly created National Theater at the Old Vic, where he lit, among others, the inaugural production, Hamlet, and the world premiere of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967).
Olivier then brought him to the advisory committee for the future development of a National Theater on the South Bank, to help mediate tensions between the practitioners on the committee and the architect, Denys Lasdun.
Lasdun designed the seating spaces and stages in the Lyttelton and Olivier auditoriums and Richard oversaw the technology, including Olivier’s innovative drum rotation, where two semi-circular lifts could be raised and lowered independently and, although lowered , is rotated by a sub-step. level. Its completion was long delayed but, since it was commissioned in the 90s, it has been used widely and successfully. Other innovations included computer-controlled power flying for scenery (adapted from television studio systems) and a computerized lighting desk.
Richard and Lasdun developed an effective working relationship, after which Lasdun invited him to collaborate on a competition for the Genoa Opera House. By the time the Lyttelton and Olivier theaters opened in 1976, however, it was clear to Richard that the disproportionate amount of space, the isolation of the balconies and the unfriendly material of concrete made it difficult even for the most accomplished people. . actors express themselves without amplification, which leaves both audiences and practitioners frustrated.
As a result, when the design of the Cottesloe (now Dorfman) theater was commissioned to Theater Projects, Pilbrow asked his colleague, Iain Mackintosh, to design it with the audience tightly gathered around the stage – the shape of had previously been dismissed as anachronistic by audiences. advisory committee. The so-called “courtyard theatre” became the model for many Theater Projects buildings around the world.
Born in Beckenham, Kent, Richard was the son of Marjorie (née Hayward), a music teacher, and Gordon Pilbrow, a property developer and Olympic fencer who took part in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. he walked the fence and arranged for instruction from the national coach. It was in vain: Richard was more interested in playing with his Pollocks toy theater and in the attraction of the Beckenham Children’s theatre. He later told me that his interest in lighting may also have been inspired by growing up during the second world war and watching the floodlights, flares and fires of the blitz from the outskirts of South London.
After attending nearby Bickley Hall prep school, then Cranbrook School in Kent, Richard did his national service in the RAF, becoming a corporal. He went to the Central School of Speech and Drama, where he met Viki, and together they helped transfer the school’s show in the year of their graduation, 1955, to the Queen’s (now Her Majesty’s) Theater in the West End . They married in 1958.
Her Majesty offered Richard a job, as assistant stage manager of the Broadway play The Teahouse of the August Moon. He was exposed to the work of Peter Larkin (who designed the original lighting in the USA) and George Schaefer (who adapted it for the West End), and began to see the possibilities of a discipline that was just in its infancy. United Kingdom.
In 1963 the American director Hal Prince brought A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum to London, and asked Richard to do the projections. As a result of this Richard was involved as a co-producer on a number of musicals directed by Prince that transferred to the West End from Broadway, including She Loves Me, Cabaret, Company, A Little Night Music and Fiddler on the Roof. In 1968 Richard lit the US musical Zorba for Prince, making him the first British lighting designer on a Broadway show.
Richard produced the film Swallows and Amazons (1974) and a 1977 television series about the popular musical, All You Need Is Love, by Tony Palmer. An indefatigable organiser, he co-founded the Society of British Theater Technicians and the Society of Lighting Designers.
He wrote an indispensable guide to his craft, Stage Lighting (1970; revised 1997), and a memoir, A Theater Project (2011). In the last years of his life, Richard was working on the history of the building of the National Theatre, A Sense of Theater – to be published this spring – in which he claimed that he was mistaken at the time to see the challenge. technical terms rather than theatrical terms, and that his work over the next five decades led him to propose a return to the model of Victorian and Light theaters – a horse-shaped auditorium that includes the stage and tiered seating on different levels , which created a sense of unity between actor and audience.
For all his concern with design and technology, Richard was always passionate about the medium itself: he thought that the human element – the actor – had to be at the center of the event and, in all undertakings, that the whole must be the same. the sum of its parts, technicians as much as artists.
His marriage to Viki ended in divorce. They had a son, Fred, and a daughter, Abigail. In 1974 he married Molly Friedel, also a lighting designer, and they had a daughter, Daisy.
He is survived by Molly and his family.
• Richard Pilbrow, lighting designer, born 28 April 1933; he died 6 December 2023
