Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 2001 - 48

when it too emerged as a design area. I must say, however, that I
love them all and it continues to be a joy to work in the profession.
The one thing that goes through all these disciplines is that we
can't lose sight of who we are as lighting designers and how we
use our tool of light. I don't know anything else. I work long hours
everyday, and I'm not going to retire.
Richard Pilbrow (RP): I, too, consider myself lucky. In fact, I consider myself the luckiest person I ever met. I began attending plays
from the time that I was nine years old and loved everything about
them-it was my life. In England there was no such thing as a
lighting designer in the early 1950s. I had the good fortune of getting a stage management job right out of drama school...but it was
extremely boring. I was dreadfully disillusioned with stage managing by the age of twenty-three. One day I went to a drama book
shop and discovered a copy of Joel Rubin and Lee Watson's Theatrical Lighting Practice. I was fascinated by the light plot that I
found in the book. It introduced me to the profession of lighting
design. In a way, I see myself as an assistant director. A lighting
designer has to catch the vibes or be aware of everybody else's
problems. It's not just where you can put your lights. You're interested in the whole dynamics of the theatrical experience...the
aesthetics of the piece...how it all comes together.
In those days Strand Lighting had a one hundred percent monopoly
on lighting equipment in England. In this context Pilbrow had the
brilliant idea of starting his own lighting company. In the beginning
he simply provided design services for free while providing his inventory of around twenty lights to producers at a reduced fee (about half
of Strand's prices). After about five years of semi-starvation he
started to earn a living at it.
Ken Billington (KB): I turned the lights on for a fourth grade play
and I'm still turning them on today. At the time, it was the biggest
thrill of my life because I thought that I had created magic. I love
what I do. Lighting is a fun thing for me. One thing I don't want to do is
have a terrible time-we can't afford to get all stressed out. In fact, I'll
turn projects down or turn the other way if I feel that the project isn't
going to be a good experience. It's the passion for lighting that I feel
is so important. I believe that all three of us have a passion for
lighting and it's the passion that I look for in young designers.
I've also been very lucky in that people keep asking me to do
things that I have never done before. I had never lit an opera;
someone asked so I did it. I had never done television and someone asked me to do a television show. I tried it because I decided
that the worst thing that could happen was that they could fire me.
I don't do much television lighting but I do some. I do concert
lighting, architectural lighting...and it was all because someone
was brave enough to ask and I was cool enough to take on the job.
It was a revelation for me to discover that if you screw up they
don't take you out back and shoot you.
Somebody said to me at my thirty-fifth class reunion, Are you
going to retire? I said, "And do what?"' Maybe I won't do as much
as I do now, but I don't think retire is a key word in any of our
vocabularies. I light anything. I'll even imagine focusing the street
lights while walking down the street. Lighting is a passion for me.
BW: What did you do in regard to lighting up to the age of
about twenty-five?
Billington began by joining the stagecrew in high school. He ran
lights for school plays, the community players and lights for the

I light anything. I'll even
imagine focusing the street lights
while walking down the street.
Lighting is a passion for me. -KB
dances in the gym... any chance that he could use to light something.
He didn't go to college but instead went right to New York and studied
lighting for several hours a week on Saturday mornings. Instructors
for the classes included many of the most prominent lighting designers
of the time. Among his teachers were Tom Skelton, Peggy Clark and
Chuck Levy. Other teachers who had also taught in the program included
Jean Rosenthal and Tharon Musser. During this time he also worked
Off-Broadway as an electrician and went off and did summer stock
each summer. At the ripe age of nineteen he wrote Peggy Clark to ask
for a position as an assistant, and she said yes. His first assignment
with her was at Jones Beach on Long Island in a 11,200-seat facility.
After that he wrote Tharon Musser and she too said yes.
KB: Luckily people saw my eagerness in lighting design. They saw how
eager I was and didn't suppress that eagerness-in fact, they
helped to develop that eagerness. I can't believe that I was that
lucky. It was a different time...Broadway was very busy. Musicals
were produced all the time...an expensive musical was only
350,000 dollars. These days, it's closer to 15 million. There were
seventy Broadway shows being produced each year as opposed to
thirty-two this past season. It was a very different time. I was
twenty-five and had assisted on thirty Broadway shows, designed a
number of Off-Broadway productions and got my first Tony nomination by the time I was twenty-six. All of this happened while my
contemporaries were still in school.
Pilbrow went to an English boy's school from age twelve to eighteen.
He helped light his school's plays using a lighting system with only
four sliding dimmers into which students would try to plug as many
fixtures as they could find outlets. A highlight of his schooling occurred when he managed to blow the fuse to the entire school. Following his schooling he tried to get into the Old Vic School but was
told that he was too young and went into the Air Force instead. While
stationed at an American airbase he started a drama society and actually did some directing, in addition to working in the technical areas of production. After the Air Force, he went to drama school at The
Central School of Speech and Drama, specializing in stage management. While there he became disappointed and frustrated with the
program-discovering that sweeping the stage appeared to be the
primary duty of a stage manager. While stage managing his classmates' annual showcase production at Her Majesty's Theatre he was
offered a stage management position for the production that was
currently running in the theatre. This occurred two months before he
was to finish his diploma. The school wasn't very supportive of the
idea of his leaving early, but he took the job and received a Class
D Diploma. The only other highlight of this period of his life was
TD & T

W I N T E R

2 0 0 1

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 2001