The intersection of the arts and engineering offers imaginative and provocative ways to investigate how light affects mood, behavior, and the revelation of form and space. Through collaborations between the two fields, I hope to better understand how we express the human experience with and beyond verbal language and explore the culturally specific ways our imaginations are populated. This hybrid platform raises messy and surprising questions and answers.
Jane Cox is an award-winning lighting designer who works across theater, opera, dance, and music. In her work, Jane investigates how light, shadow, and color impact emotion and reveal space and relationships. Her fascination with the expanse between human experience and our ability to express it in language drives her designs.
Some of Jane’s notable designs include the revival of Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple” and August Wilson’s “Jitney” on Broadway; the National Theatre’s production of “Hamlet” starring Benedict Cumberbatch; the theatrical adaptation of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Between the World and Me” at the Apollo Theater; and “Lucia di Lammermoor” at the Sydney Opera House. She has been nominated for three Tony Awards for her work on “Macbeth” (2022), “Jitney” (2017), and Sophie Treadwell’s “Machinal” (2014).
As a member of Monica Bill Barnes & Company for more than 20 years, Jane has also collaborated with cultural figures and artists like Ira Glass and Maira Kalman. In 2023, she co-organized and hosted “The Future of Race in Design,” a symposium and creative convening at the Park Avenue Armory, and designed “The Weir” at the Abbey Theater in her hometown of Dublin.
Professor of the Practice and Director of the Program in Theater at Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts, Jane focuses on inclusive theatrical storytelling and deepening the program’s relationship with contemporary American theater-making.
