In this post, we will introduce you to Work Package 2 – Lighting Design, highlighting its role in the CANON II project and sharing what we have been working on over the past few months. Written by Isabel Nielen.
The task of the Lighting Design Working Group is to investigate lighting design as a new area in the documentation of technical theatre, the possible ways of documenting design and designers and how can we represent the designs and their results in the online CANON data base. At the end of the project, we will also provide guidelines about the archiving process for designers, professionals, students and researchers to use.
The Lighting Design Working Group initially focused on researching the characteristics of a lighting designer’s artistic and working process, asking what are the phases a lighting designer goes through when working on a design, and which moments are important to document? At the same time, we realized that we also needed to know more about the context of a production – for example, large venue, small venue, for children or for adults? What was the budget? Which company is producing it? Who is the director? Will the production go on tour? Is it an indoor or outdoor performance?
With this first step, the Database working group set to work adapting the existing Canonbase so that, in the future, lighting designs and lighting designers can also be archived with all the necessary detail included.
In January, during the workshop in Amsterdam, we examined various designs of the Dutch lighting designer Henk van der Geest. Henk van der Geest passed away in 2019 and his total paper archive has recently been added to the Allard Pierson Archive. When we saw some projects from the paper archive it became clear that paper alone is not always very helpful for understand a lighting design. Photos could help a great deal and interviewing the designer would be valuable to give a better understanding of the designer’s artistic choices and the look and feel he or she wanted to achieve on stage. In the case of Henk van der Geest interviewing is of course not possible anymore, but you could interview people who worked with him.
We are now developing guidelines for interviewing and example interview questions. We have tested the guidelines with four test cases, interviewing Floriaan Ganzevoort, Caroline Mathieu, Isabel Nielen and Harry Cole. From these test cases,we are fine-tuning our guidelines further. When finished, they will be part of the help pages in the Canon database.
Part of the Canon project is the requirement to document 4 cases. The cases should be diverse, so we can use and test out different archive methods. The working group selected the following designers, chosen to represent a variety of time periods, nationalities, working methods, and so on:
1- British director who worked with gas and early electric lighting, Sir Henry Irving (1838 -1905) https://canonbase.eu/wiki/Item:Q259
2- Swedish Lighting designer Hans-Åke Sjökvist (1943-2023) / Torkel Blomkvist
3- Dutch Lighting designer Henk van de Geest (1952-2019)
4- German / Czech lighting designer Pavla Béranova
5- Belgium Lighting designers Peter van Praet / Mark Van Denesse (set designer Annette Kurz)
With this list we can research various ways of archiving.
During the coming months we will continue with researching and documenting our archive processes based on the selected cases. And besides that, we will continue with smaller testcases. We also have to start to add the lighting designs and designers into the Canon database.
The members of the lighting design group are Nick Hunt (Rose Bruford College, UK), Isabel Nielen (lighting designer, Institute Lighting Design, NL) Bastiaan Schoof (teacher AHK Amsterdam, Institute Lighting Design, NL) Anders Larsson ( Stockholm University of the Arts Sweden), Caroline Mathieu (lighting designer, researcher VUB/RITCS BE).
At the moment we are reorganising the lighting design working group as Anders Larsson sadly passed away in May 2026. Anders was the head of the Lighting Design Workgroup.
Work Package 5 – also referred to as the ‘data group’ – is a group of people who focus on the development and use of Canonbase. Canonbase is the database of the project, that maps and visualises the history of technical theatre in a new and innovative way; it is the main engine behind the CANON II project.
The database currently contains sources, historical events, people, theatres, equipment, manufacturers, methods and collections, and links them to each other and to other existing information sources.
By the end of Canon II, the data group’s main goal is to have an updated and tested data structure in Canonbase. By doing so, contributors can document lighting design, set design and lighting technology in the database, while also linking them to related lighting/setdesigners, productions, theatres etc.
Along with a new structure, the data group will develop new help pages, guidelines, tools and training materials or update existing ones to ensure users are well supported when contributing to the database. Finally, the data group will also work on elaborating queries, layouts, end-user tools and visualizations within Canonbase.
The further development of the Canonbase structure is based on the input from the other Work Packages. They define what kind of information they want to capture in the database and the data group translates this into a new structure. This results in new items, properties and value lists in Canonbase. During and between meetings, the new proposed structure is discussed and further worked on. Simultaneously the data group checks the existing structure and improves it where needed.
Over the past few months, the data group been working on developing a new structure for documenting scenography and lighting design in the database. As a result, new items, properties and value lists related to these fields have been created. So far, the main focus of the new structure has been on the relationship between a design and its designer, the production and other designs.
While updating and expanding the structure of Canonbase, the data group creates new help pages and guidelines on how to put things in the database and update existing ones. For example, the structure on documenting people (designers, architects, authors, etc.) was completely checked, this resulted in an updated help page on how to document people in Canonbase.
New help pages for documenting designs and productions were created (and are still being further developed).
Picture: Structure_brainstorm: a snippet from the online brainstorm board of the data group, where we try to pin down the new elements (items, properties and value lists) in the Canonbase structure.
Picture: Canon_image_ID: a snippet of the Canonbase page on the Taras Shevchenko Ukraine National Opera in Kiev (Q34041). The images showed are stored in the new repository and added to the page of the item via the property ‘Canon image ID’
Since the start of CANON II, the data group has been working on a new repository. Previously, images, videos, documents etc. were stored directly in Canonbase. However, due to some limitations, a decision was made to move them to a separate repository in WordPress. This new repository allows for larger amounts of storage and ensures that Canonbase continues to run smoothly (which could previously be a problem). After testing and writing guidelines, Chris van Goethem introduced the repository during the online project meeting in March. Now, the other project team members started uploading documents to the repository.
Picture: Canonbase_current_view: the current view of the Canonbase website of the National Theatre in Prague (Q12648).
Picture: Canonbase_new_view: a first look of a draft version for the new view of the website for the same item, the National Theatre in Prague (Q12648).
Finally, the data group has been working on a new block-based view of the Canonbase website. This redesigned structure aims to make the platform more visually attractive and significantly easier to read, especially for users who are less familiar with the Wikidata-structure on which Canonbase is built. In this new layout, related information is grouped into clear, coherent blocks. This allows to structure the diverse information in a more user-friendly way.
In the near future, the data group will continue to work on the new structure for documenting lighting design, set design, historical stock sets and lighting technology in Canonbase. Meanwhile, project team members from the other Work Packages will start testing theparts of the new structure that are already created in Canonbase. Aside from this, the data group is continuously improving the help pages, cleaning up the database, etc.
The members of the data group are Chris Van Goethem (RITCS, Belgium), Nick Hunt (Rose Bruford College, UK), Ondrej Svoboda (Czech Cultural Institute, Czech Republic), Jan Purkert (Czech Republic) and Emma Reynders (EhB, Belgium).
Scandlight was held in Stockholm from 7 to the 9 of June. It was three days packed with talks and workshops. Chris van Goethem (BE) and Bastiaan Schoof (NL) kicked off the first presentation on Sunday morning. In 20 minutes, they explained how Canon II came about and what the results have been so far.
This year’s Scandlight event once again brought together many lighting designers and lecturers from lighting design courses in countries all over the world including Sweden, Denmark, Canada, United States, Singapore, Hong Kong, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium and Finland.
At an earlier presentation at Cue in Rotterdam in January, we were able to explain what we had planned. Now, in Stockholm, we could already report that results that have been achieved. We described the work the project has done on a method of gathering information through interviews – a tailored approach to the established oral history technique. We have developed a special questionnaire for this purpose, with questions aimed at capturing information about individual practitioners and productions, as well as the working practices of the past. The method has been trialled through two test interviews, with more planned. We have also started working on two case studies to show how to research lighting designers through archives and other writings – one on Henry Irving and one on Henk van der Geest.
Emma Weil also came to Scandlight to give a presentation about her work. In it, she explained that she had once been the assistant to Hans-Åke Sjöquist, a well-known Swedish lighting designer who will be the subject of the Swedish case study in the Canon project. We asked Emma and she was happy to collaborate with us – when she saw Bastiaan and Chris’s presentation, she already thought it would be a good idea to work together, showing the benefit of showing our work while the project is still in progress.
During the Q&A session that followed the first three talks, a considerable number of questions were asked and answered. There seems to be a great deal of interest in the Canon II project!
In January 2026, after our first start-up Canon II meeting in Brussels, the team met again in Amsterdam. It was a chance to dive deeper into our research, exchange ideas, and visit a few fascinating institutions along the way, including our associate partner, the Allard Pierson museum.
We started with a visit to the Dutch National Opera & Ballet, where Cor van den Brink and Coen van der Hoeven welcomed us warmly. The lighting designers, working for the NO B lighting department, gave us a fascinating look at how opera lightings designs are documented in practice. We saw a wide variety of drawings, material lists, notebooks and photos, as well as the digital file structure used to store and reuse lighting designs. Later, we learned that this is actually a standard method used by many European opera houses.
Afterwards, we continued the discussion at the AHK Amsterdam – Academy of Theatre and Dance, where we met for a project meeting and reflected on what we had seen.
Next day we visited the Allard Pierson archive in Amsterdam Zuidoost. In a rather plain-looking building on the edge of the city, we were warmly welcomed by Lisa Lucassen and Gonneke Janssen, two collection specialists working with the Theatre Collection.
We split into two groups for a guided tour of the archive. Lisa and Gonnneke had already laid out some designs by Henk van der Geest for us, based on materials we had requested in advance. There was a lot to explore: drawings, lists, and original documentation, including th “PanCan” – a kind of moving mirror stage light. During the visit, we also looked at theatre spotlights from the collection and saw a book by Nicola Sabbatini.
Besides our own meetings at the AHK, one of the highlights for me was the visit of the Baron van Slingelandt model theatre at Allard Pierson museum. Made in the 18th-century as a chamber theatre of Baron van Slingelandt. This miniature stage was used in living rooms to demonstrate how theatre worked. With real set changes and lighting.
Artist Arne Hendriks has created his own version of the principles of the Slingelandt Theater that visitors can touch, explore and work with themselves. It was a great reminder that theatre heritage is not only something to preserve, but also something to experience and keep alive.
Among the case studies in the scenography section is a production of *Parsifal* at the Goetheanum in Dornach, near Basel. Rudolf Steiner’s vision of staging this opera there was realised almost 100 years after his death.
Richard Wagner’s final work, “Parsifal“, was described by him not as an opera but as a ‘sacred festival stage play’ and premiered in Bayreuth in 1882. Wagner died just one year later. His widow Cosima imposed a 30-year (until 1914) ban on performances outside the Bayreuth Festival Theatre. At the request of King Ludwig II, who had been a major patron of the work, she made an exception solely for him, allowing special performances in Munich in 1884/85. The NewYork MET ignored the ban in 1903.
The stage design from the premiere production is the longest-running production in Bayreuth and was finally renewed in 1930 after 48 years. The famous theatre painters, the Brückner brothers from Coburg, Germany, executed it based on preliminary designs by Paul von Joukowsky. Due to the ban on performances elsewhere, this design long set the style for subsequent productions as well.
The anthroposophical movement, and above all its founder Rudolf Steiner, has always been fascinated by this work. And so, even during Steiner’s lifetime, the desire arose to stage *Parsifal* at the Goetheanum in Dornach.
Steiner died in 1925, and a good two years earlier the original building had been destroyed by arson. However, the Goetheanum, rebuilt according to his designs, did not open until 1928.
Although the building offers 1,000 seats and features a traditional stage house with the technology common at the time, it lacked an orchestra pit. All musical performances – primarily eurythmy – require only a few musicians, who were accommodated on the stage itself. It is thanks to the patron Alexander von Glenck that an orchestra pit was installed at his expense in 2022, and a production team was subsequently found to develop a staging. Since 2023, there have been three performances each year shortly before Easter, the traditional time for this work due to its content (the third act takes place on Good Friday).
Goetheanum, Dornach – Stage – photo: Stefan Gräbener
The relatively young set and costume designer Walter Schütze (who originally comes from a background in architecture) and the director Jasmin Solfaghari now had to grapple not only with the usual challenges but also with aspects of anthroposophy and, above all, eurythmy. Eurythmy became an integral part of this production and significantly broadens the scope of the more or less standard design process. Stefan Hasler, the director of eurythmy at Dornach, thus came on board as the third member of the creative team and had to familiarise the director and the set and costume designer with this specific subject matter.
A symposium lasting several days accompanied the project in its premiere year, 2023, featuring numerous lectures by all those involved from every field, which were subsequently compiled in a publication.
This production is also particularly well-suited as a case study, as all the material – ranging from the set and costume design to the technical planning and implementation, as well as the aforementioned accompanying lectures and the general development process in collaboration with the director and the eurythmists – is readily available. All those involved are available for discussions and, if required, interviews, and as the production was also staged this year, it was possible to attend a performance in person.
Dr. Stefan Gräbener, april 20th, 2026
Richard Wagner: PARSIFAL
Goetheanum, Dornach, Switzerland, march 20th 2026
Director: Jasmin Solfaghari
SetDesign, Costume, Video: Walter Schütze
Goetheanum-Eurythmie-Ensemble
Else-Klink-Ensemble, Eurythemum Stuttgart
Director Eurythmy: Stefan Hasler
Philharmonie Baden-Baden
Vokalwerk der Opernfestspiele Heidenheim
Conductor: Roland Fister
Performance march 20th 2026, creative team
Jasmin Solfaghari, Walter Schütze, Stefan Hasler – photo: Stefan Gräbener
Links
Paul von Joukowsky – Wikipedia de
Max Brückner (artist) – Wikipedia en
March 2026 post from Sweden by Anders Larson.
At the beginning of the year, it became clear that STTF, the Swedish OISTAT, together with a number of theatre technical organisations and universities, had received approval for the Erasmus+ project Canon II and would be able to start the three-year work. The kick-off meeting for the project was in Brussels in September 2025 and the first physical project and working meeting was held on 14 – 17 January of 2026, which this time was in Amsterdam.
In the Canon II project, SLF (The Association of Swedish Lighting Designers) is responsible for building up in-depth knowledge and information on how lighting design could be documented and archived for the future. One of the reasons why SLF will be responsible for this is that after the passing of the two lighting designers Hans-Åke Sjökvist and Torkel Blomkvist, the Music and Theatre Library had to take over a large amount of drawings and other documentation, and this will also be the focus when the group gathers for the second physical meeting, which will be in Stockholm on 10-14 June this year.
During the meeting in Amsterdam, the entire project group was able to learn, among other things, how the Dutch National Opera & Ballet works to manage its documentation from the productions that are performed at the opera. They showed an overview of how it has been done previously, mainly in paper form with photos and printouts of direction and running charts from the various productions.
Nowadays, they have increasingly collected all documentation in a digital archive, but this was more like a systematized file management system for all information about a production, than a fully designed digital system to future-proof the lighting information about a production.
As well as looking at how we interpret archives from the past, the Canon II project will produce guidelines that will help theatres and designers now who need to document their work.
Report on the CANON II lecture at CUE by Isabel Nielen from the Netherlands.
On Wednesday 14 January at CUE 2026, Bastiaan Schoof (NL) and Chris van Goethem (BE) gave a lecture on CANON II: preserving the heritage of lighting designers, set designers and theatre technology.
How can a company or designer preserve their legacy digitally in a sustainable way? Why should we keep records? And how do you store them so that they remain accessible in the future?
During the lecture, it emerged that CANON II had grown out of an earlier international project, namely CANON – THE HISTORY OF THEATRE TECHNOLOGY. The aim was to raise awareness and understanding of the history of theatre technology in Europe.
If the history of theatre technology is not documented and preserved, a great deal of knowledge and experience will be lost. Because technology is constantly evolving and the people who still have experience with old techniques are literally dying out. How, then, can one understand the historical context or the lighting designs of theatre productions if one does not know how the technology worked at that time? Furthermore, many technical collections are in private ownership; it is important that a place is established, such as an open database, to ensure these collections are not lost and can be made available for study and research.
The CANON I outputs included 100 ‘stories’ of the most significant practices, technologies, individuals, places, artefacts and buildings from the history of theatre technology.
The CANON I results can be found on the website. And on the CANON I database
What is CANON II about?
CANON II is a three-year Erasmus+ project funded by the E
uropean Union. It investigates how we can preserve lighting and set designs, along with the associated technology, for the future. The CANON II research project focuses on lighting design, lighting equipment and set design. Four case studies will be examinedand developed for each topic. The existing Canon database will be updated, expanded and made more accessible to the public. At the same time, we are developing guidelines on how to document these elements, so that the Canon database can continue to grow even after this project has ended.
Who is involved?
The project is supported by the following project partners:
Erasmus University College Brussels, Belgium
Berlin University of Applied Sciences, Germany
Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance, United Kingdom
Svensk Teaterteknisk Förening, Sweden
Institut Umeni Divadelni Ustav, Czech Republic
Stichting Instituut Lichtontwerpen, Netherlands
In addition, there are many associated partners involved across the various countries
You can’t put light in a box!
How exactly to document lighting design is the subject of this research. Light is quite elusive and, regardless of the technical implementation, it is more than just the number of lights or a percentage. Light creates atmosphere and emotion; to understand a realised lighting design, you need context regarding the location, the space and the direction. In practice, it appears that lighting designers do little or no archiving for the future. Digital files are no longer usable or readable after a few years. Archives are private or scattered and not organised according to our field. Furthermore, archives are not always accessible. It is much easier to archive documents and objects than lighting designs and stage sets. Often, the press photos of a production are close-ups that do not give a good impression of the entire stage set.
As an example, Bastiaan showed two photos of the lighting design by Henk van der Geest for ‘Le Figaro’ – one a publicity photo taken from the wings, where no audience member saw the production from, and the other the audience’s view. A good press photo often captures details of a performance, whereas for a picture of the lighting design, it’s better to see the whole stage.
Why are we doing this, and for whom?
We are undertaking this project because it is important to document and catalogue developments in the theatre sector. Not only the technical aspects, but also the creative side of the field. Many contemporary developments stem from the past. History teaches us about the present and provides perspective and context for the future.
For example: why were so many theatres destroyed by fire (around that time)? It was due to the rise of gas lighting! New technology brings about change.
The database will be made public and can be used by professionals, students, teachers, collectors and other archives. The aim is to make it easier to find information and link it to other archives and information sources. In doing so, it is important to look beyond national borders.
Archiving makes room for new insights
Chris showed an image of a lighting design from the Allard Pierson Museum’s archive. In it, the design is laid out entirely like a musical score. It was the lighting script for *Poppetgom* by Scarabee. That’s another way to do it!
A fine example of a lighting design that you wouldn’t immediately expect to see presented in this way.
What exactly are we going to do?
Please let people in the field know about this research project!
At the end of the talk, a public appeal was made regarding the Stichter table. Chris found the light table in an archive but doesn’t know how it works. The audience was asked if anyone had ever worked on this table or knew someone who had? And it turned out that among those present, there were about four people who had worked with a Stichter table in the past!
The lecture ended with an appeal to anyone who might still have historical or recent theatre materials stored away in an attic or shed somewhere: please feel free to get in touch!
Chris van Goethem – chris.van.goethem@ehb.be
Bastiaan Schoof – bastiaan.schoof@ahk.nl
Cue 2026 is the leading theatre technology trade fair in the Netherlands. On the exhibition floor, you’ll find everything related to theatre technology in the fields of lighting, sound and stage design. There is also a program of talks lezingen programma.
In recent years, the question of mediation has played an increasingly important role in the arts, cultural institutions, and the corresponding fields of researching and teaching. Mediation can be pedagogical, political, cross-disciplinary and cross-media, intertwining, reconciling and culturally effective, etc. The symposium Building Bridges: Collecting, Researching and Mediating the Performing Arts, will gather representatives of the performing arts, theatre and dance researchers, archivists, librarians and curators to discuss what connects us: the shared passion and curatorial or scientific curiosity about the performing arts in all their facets – present and historical.
The notion of “building bridges” forms the dramaturgical framework of the symposium.
Chris Van Goethem and Stefan Gräbener presented and explained the upcoming phase 2 of the CANON project during the poster presentation and in personal discussions.
https://www.sibmas.org/conference/building-bridges-symposium-2025
https://www.sibmas.org/conference/building-bridges-symposium-2025/programme-6-7-june-2025
