Cory Pattak, New York City-based lighting designer and host of in 1: the podcast, chats with lighting designer Clifton Taylor to discuss his new book, Color & Light: Navigating Color Mixing in the Midst of an LED Revolution. Taylor details where the idea for the book came from, the process of writing about a technology that is rapidly evolving, and what he hopes readers will get out of it. Pattak and Taylor touch various color topics, from saturation to convey darkness, why certain colors can appear onstage just because of how our eyes work, and using an audience’s preconceived relationship with colors to a designer’s advantage. The two explore the transition from gel-based color to LED sources and how that affects the documenting and recreating of shows, how designers communicate with their programmers, and managing a wealth of fixture types and possible colors while time in the theatre remains as limited as always.
Clifton Taylor has created designs for theater, dance, and opera companies on Broadway, regionally across the United States, and in 17 countries around the world. His designs have been seen in productions by the Alvin Ailey, Martha Graham, and Paul Taylor dance companies, as well as in numerous works for the American Ballet Theatre and the ballet companies of Boston, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and Rio de Janeiro. His international dance credits also include the Mikhailovsky Theatre (St. Petersburg, Russia), the Rambert Dance Company (London), the Ningbo Song and Dance Company (China), the Ballet de Lorraine (Nancy, France), and many others.