Lee Kennedy

Professor of Drama

As an artist, scholar, teacher, and theatrical lighting designer my work is driven by my boundless desire for creative discovery. I love to imagine, experiment, create, and collaborate. I make art to see what happens, explore what art can be, what lighting design can do, and what the theatre experience can become for me, my students, my collaborators, and our audiences. My primary design medium is light—the intangible medium of sight itself. In live performance my concern is how light visually composes what is seen by the audience as perceived in time through the active layers of human perception and cognition. Beyond the theatre I am engaged with pure aesthetics—how light, though often unnoticed, is the foundational element of art, and media. I am fascinated by how light defines the natural and built worlds we inhabit and deeply affects us as humans in both recognizable and subliminal ways. But only if we notice! For students I seek to break the boundaries of the classroom to create an active, exploratory experience. Only by direct engagement with light, art, media, and our environment can creative boundaries be broken, discoveries made, and new ways of knowing revealed.