Lighting/Projection/Film Design Biographies
Dirk Sarach-Craig
Dirk started his career in 1982 as a lighting technician at the University of Erlangen-Nueremberg.
He then worked as a freelance lighting technician and designer with a variety of theatre companies before doing a lighting design course at the Bavarian Theatre Academy in Munich. Immediately after the course he took up the post of Head of Lighting at the Academy, and in 2001 was appointed Head of Lighting at Cologne theatre. Since 2007 he has been working in England, first at Derby Playhouse and from January 2008 at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry
Trained: Bayerische Theaterakademie August Everding Muenchen
Theatre credits: The boy with a Bomb in His Crisps (Belgrade Theatre); Look Twice (AEWU); Stepping Out (Derby Playhouse); The Tempest (Derby Playhouse) and Salome, Idomeneo, Othello, Intrigue and Love, Aias, La finta Giardiniera, Don Carlos and Le Sud (all for Cologne Theatre); Tristan and Isolde (Prinzregententheater Munich) and Albert Herring, Merry Wives of Windsor and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (all for Prinzregententheater Munich).
Film and TV credits: Effis Nacht (Bavarian Television) and 10 Minutes to Go (a short Movie).
Radio credits: Eine Messe fuer die Stadt Arras and Von der Moderne der Renaissance (both for Bavarian Radio).
Arnim Friess for pixelbox ltd.
Lighting – Projection design – Digital media design
Arnim trained and worked as a photographer and audio-visual media designer in his native Germany, before moving to the UK to study Scenography, receiving an MA at Birmingham Institute of Art and Design. He is founder member of digital content creator pixelbox ltd, which specialises in designing dynamic performance environments, blending media like lighting, slide and video projection, animation, film-making and graphic design. His lighting and projections have been seen not only in theatres around the world, but also in a zoo, a monastery, an abandoned pub and deep down in a cave in the Forest of Dean. Performances in the UK, Canada, the USA, Ireland, India, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Denmark, have spanned diverse arts forms from theatre to opera and ballet via puppetry, Indian dance, experimental music and children’s shows.
Recent designs include: Joe Guy for Theatre Fahodzi at Soho Theatre; Looking for JJ for Pilot Theatre at the Unicorn; One Night in November, Monged, Puntila and his man Matti and the Mysteries for the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry; The Suicide and An Inspector Calls at Theatr Clwyd; Kaos Theatre Mine (Tour) and The White Album at the Nottingham Playhouse.
Past designs have been science-fiction opera The Pitchshifter for leading Dutch contemporary music ensemble Insomnia; award winning Rumblefish, Road and Lord of the Flies for Pilot Theatre; bricks-in-space spectacle Life on Mars at Legolands worldwide; the appearance of hundreds of angels inside St Pauls Cathedral for the City of London Festival; Amour for Oval Theatre, London and the Dance-Centre Toronto; Moll Flanders, Metropolis and The Importance of being Earnest for Kaos Theatre; Paradise for Birmingham Rep; Angels in America at the Sheffield Crucible; Oliver at the Liverpool Playhouse; Mozart’s Mass in C-minor for the Birmingham Royal Ballett; Hanif Kureishi’s My Beautiful Laundrette for Snap Theatre; The Wall, King and Philipp Glass’ Satyagraha for Midlands Arts Centre; Bryony Lavery’s Shot Through the Heart amongst others for Pentabus Theatre and Hard Day’s Night for Hull Truck Theatre Company.
Arnim also works as a photographer and graphic designer, lives in Warwickshire with his wife Susanne, daughters Ella and Amelie, and an overly dramatic cat. He enjoys playing drums and experimental cooking for fearless friends.
Wayne Dowdeswell – Lighting Designer
Wayne trained at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. After several seasons at Contact Theatre, Manchester he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford on Avon and designed many notable productions for The Other Place and The Pit Theatre, Barbican. He later became Lighting Supervisor at the RSC’s Swan Theatre where design credits include: The Rover, The Fair Maid of the West, Hyde Park, Titus Andronicus, The Jew of Malta, Doctor Faustus, The Duchess of Malfi, Edward II, The Seagull, Tamburlaine the Great and The Country Wife. West-End designs from the Swan include: The Shakespeare Revue, The Cherry Orchard, The Jacobethan Season (Edward III, Eastward Ho!, The Roman Actor, The Island Princess and The Malcontent), The Tamer Tamed, The Gunpowder Season (Thomas More, A New Way To Please You, Believe What You Will, Sejanus and Speaking Like Magpies), Breakfast with Mugabe and The Canterbury Tales.
Design work outside the RSC includes: Not About Heroes; Macbeth; The Vanek Plays (London & Prague); Sweeny Todd; The Caucasian Chalk Circle; Present Laughter; Medea (West End and Broadway); A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Piaf; The Coventry Mysteries; The Birthday Party; Not the End of the World; The Truth About Lies; Chasing Fate and Cat & Mouse.
In 2000 he designed the Grange Park Opera season of Eugene Onegin, The Mikado and Rinaldo as well as D’Oyly Carte’s production of The Mikado at the Savoy Theatre and, in 2007, Scottish Opera’s new production of Lucia Di Lammermoor, which transferred to the Mariinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg in 2009.
Wayne received Olivier Award nominations for Edward II, Tamburlaine the Great and Medea.
