Dear TheatreArtLife supporters, we are pleased to share three new videos today with women working specifically in entertainment lighting. Part of our collaboration with the wonderful team at Women in Lighting.
Mildred M. Moyo, a.k.a Lighting Bae, is a Stage Lighting Designer from Bulawayo whose career began as a wild and scary dream when she dared to venture into a male-dominated industry and further defied odds by moving from Bulawayo to Harare to grow her knowledge base and network as a lighting designer. The challenges of single motherhood could not stand in her way to learning. She also launched a lighting solutions company called Phenomenal Lighting, the only stage lighting company owned by a female in Zimbabwe. Being the only professional female lighting designer in Zimbabwe, Mildred is passionate about making stage lighting design, in Zimbabwe and beyond, a career path for all regardless of gender and other social classifications. in 2019, she started a series of masterclasses for young people who are aspiring to be lighting designers in Zimbabwe, particularly girls. These sessions became digital in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and hosted a number of renowned lighting designers from across the globe.
Anne Militello is the Founder of Vortex Lighting in Los Angeles and Head of Lighting Programs at the California Institute of the Arts. Ms. Militello is a renown theater and architectural lighting designer as well as an educator and fine artist with a career spanning all aspects of creating with light. Her career began in theater and music clubs in New York City and eventually to Broadway, international opera, and touring concert stages. She was a Show Lighting Designer at Walt Disney Imagineering and Universal Studios before starting her own company which focuses on architectural projects.
She received the OBIE Award for Sustained Excellence, the Paul Waterbury Award of Distinction from the IESNA, an IALD Award of Merit and Themed Lighting Designer of the Year from Lighting Dimensions International among others. She has been featured in the New York Times, New York Magazine, Newsweek, Time Magazine among others and was the subject of a BBC Documentary.
Megumi Yatabe is a senior lighting designer at Nippon Television Network Corporation in Tokyo. With a background in Electronic Engineering, Ms. Yatabe started to learn about lighting when she joined the TV broadcasting company in 1995. She had no previous knowledge or experience in lighting before that, so everything was learnt on the job. Her job at the TV station is mainly to facilitate lighting design for music programs and live streaming videos. Special thanks to PRG and Kaori Hiroki, WIL ambassador in Japan for this interview.
You can watch more interviews here.
The WIL Team – Light Collective, Archifos and formalighting
Also by Women in Lighting:
R.A.W: Jacqueline Hen – Light Artist
The Accidental Feminist: One Man’s Story