I've been passionate about and involved in the technical side of theatre since I was a teenager - and probably spent more time in theatres when I should have been revising for exams! Out of all that came a career, first in live theatre (plays, tours, musicals, opera, ballet - you name it!) as well as film and TV in the UK, central Europe, South Africa and Asia, which later developed into designing performing arts spaces - project viability, space requirements, the look and feel of the room, technical installations (stage engineering, infrastructure, production lighting etc.). Getting all that to work to the satisfaction of the end-users, while other members of the design team often want to do things differently (did I say architects??? Hmmm!), is a challenging and engrossing cross-discipline exercise, involving architecture, structural, IT, electrical, machinery, mechanical, photometrics, physics, operational logistics, theatre planning, performance needs, lighting, acoustics ... phewww the list goes on and on! But you get the idea.

Join me to take a (very) compacted session on the complexities of designing Performing Arts venues, that will work!