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In Remembrance: Andy Phillips - Lighting Designer

Acclaimed, pioneering lighting designer Andy Phillips passed away on September 17th.

Although best known for his lighting work at the Royal Court Theatre in the 1960s and 1970s, Andy Phillips originally trained as an actor before becoming a prop maker - his work including making the Triffids for the film The Day Of The Triffids. He returned to theatre at the Aldwych as the 'young man' working alongside a crew who'd all served together in the Second World War. He then worked as second electrician on tour with Paul Schofield's King Lear for the Royal Shakespeare Company before returning to the Aldwych.

In 1965 he joined the Royal Court Theatre where he was given free rein by the theatre's directors to experiment. This led to the creation of the Court's 'white light' style, which rejected the use of multiple coloured filters in favour of just using correction filters to remove the orange cast of tungsten lamps while retaining the natural skin tone of an actors face. The Court's designers also dispensed with much of the artifice of theatre, removing masking to leave the lighting rig exposed, its structure designed to complete the overall visual picture of a show.

Andy Phillips remained the Royal Court's resident lighting designer until 1972, lighting over 80 consecutive productions, most of which were world premieres. After that time he continued to work regularly with many of his Royal Court collaborators, most notably director John Dexter and their shows together included the two productions for which Andy Phillips received Tony Award nominations in New York, Equus in 1974 and M. Butterfly in 1989.

With two other Royal Court colleagues, Rory Dempster and John Simpson, Andy founded lighting rental company White Light, named after the style of lighting for which they were renowned. Rory Dempster passed away earlier this year.

Though his preferred lighting tool was the Strand Patt 264 profile spot, Andy Phillips was unafraid of new lighting technology if it allowed him to create better lighting, being one of the first designers to use colour scrollers on M. Butterfly and making use of automated lighting on recent shows such as Auntie & Me, his last West End production.

Further enquiries should be addressed to John Simpson at White Light in London, telephone 020 8254 4800, email apjs@whitelightgroup.co.uk.

Andy Philips: Selected Biography

Resident Lighting Designer at the Royal Court Theatre 1965-1972, designing over 80 consecutive productions.

Subsequent productions around the world included:

Equus, Iceman Cometh, Golden Boy, Glengarry Glenross and Galileo at the Royal National Theatre, Equus and M. Butterfly on Broadway, California Dog Fight and Ran in the Skull Off-Broadway, New England, A Patriot For Me and Son of Man at the RSC, Voysey Inheritance and Armstrong's Last Goodnight at the Edinburgh Festival, Waiting for Godot for First Druid Co in Galway, Whistle in the Dark at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, Forza Del Destino at the Paris Opera, Julius Caesar and Creon at Leicester and on tour in India, A

Streetcar Named Desire and Sweeney Todd at Newcastle, Losing Time in Hamburg, Henceforward in Berlin, Job for San Francisco Ballet, A Month In The Country at the Albery Theatre, The Barber of Seville, Way Up Stream and The Arbor at the Crucible Sheffield, Uncle Vanya at the Chichester Festival Theatre and the Albery and In The Company of Men at the RSC. For the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Much Ado About Nothing, Juno and the Paycock, Mother Courage And Her Children, Guys and Dolls, Glengarry Glenross, Comedy of Errors; Playboy of the Western World in Stockholm, Hobson's Choice for the Touring Consortium and Auntie & Me at the Wyndham's Theatre in London.

He received two Tony Award nominations, for the Broadway productions of Equus (1974) and M. Butterfly (1989).

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In Remembrance: Andy Phillips - Lighting Designer

27th September 2004

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