Towards a Solar Powered Dream in High Park

Abstract

For the 2015 edition of Canadian Stage Company’s annual Dream in High Park, I was invited to join the production team as Lighting Designer for the two plays in repertory that summer, The Comedy of Errors and The Tragedie of Julius Caesar, as my thesis project. As part of the thesis, I was asked to approach the project through the lens of environmental sustainability of the lighting design and posed the question “Could the Dream become solar powered?”. What started with two plays and that query has led to a long process of examining my own priorities as a lighting designer trying to balance sustainability and artistry. Rather than a purely design driven thesis, this paper details my approach to sustainability from those 2015 Dream productions through to the present day.