Brandon Wardell
I am a Lighting and Scenic Designer based
in Chicago, IL. For the past twenty
years I have worked in theatre, opera, and dance in and around the city. I began my career building scenery and
hanging lights, but since earning my MFA from Northwestern University I have
been a full time designer and educator.
Art has always been a part of my life.
As a young man I studied drawing, painting, sculpture, and played the
violin; but photography was my first love.
There is something about capturing a particular moment–the framing of
the subject, the movement, the interplay of light and shadow—that fascinates me. Theatre design takes these same elements and
elevates them to a grand scale, bringing time, action, and the human voice into
the mix.
Theatre cannot record lives as accurately as film, nor engage with the texture of the world like paint, but in theatre there is storytelling like no other. The truth of these stories lives in the voices and bodies of the actors, in the words they speak and the places they take us. As designers we conjure the world, and in that collaboration create something wonderful.
At Loyola University Chicago, theatre was something I did for fun while working towards a degree in Anthropology. By the time I finished that degree, theatre was my focus. Later, while studying for my MFA at Northwestern, I brought my passion for human stories and photography together as a designer for the stage. My work is inspired as much by the actors as it is by any artistic vision for the stage. I am a visual storyteller, just one component of many that come together to create a singular experience for the audience, and to tell our particular story.
