Theatre of Illumination – Anne Barber and Brad Harley

Research focus

Drawing on Christian Boltanski’s work to create a syntax, a theatrical structure using light, time, and image; to explore beyond the two dimensionality of the present shadow puppet style and push it into the third and fourth dimensions while exploring new dimensions of meaning and emotions through lighting.

About the researchers

Anne Barber and Brad Harley are Co-Artistic Directors of Shadowland Theatre.

Anne Barber trained in Theatre at the innovative Dartington College of Arts. She worked for ten years with Horse and Bamboo, the UK’s only horse-drawn theatre. Anne came to Canada, via Bread and Puppet Theater, to join Shadowland Theatre in 1992. She directs most of the company’s productions with a strong belief that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Anne founded the free, weekly theatre program, Stilts & Stories, for young people on Toronto Island, now in its twenty-seventh year. Anne has extensive experience teaching learners of all ages in Ontario schools, colleges and universities, and in hands-on workshops in mask, puppetry, stilt-walking and outdoor performance.

Brad Harley trained as a visual artist and graphic designer and was a founding member of Shadowland in 1983. His theatre work is influenced by Welfare State International (UK), Callalloo Productions (Trinidad) and Bread and Puppet Theater (US). Brad’s expressive design sensibility defines Shadowland’s highly visual aesthetic. No puppet is too big or too small! Brad creates short videos of Shadowland’s productions as well as his own video works. He is in demand as a theatre designer, props maker and creator of complicated animated sculptures and has designed the props for VideoCabaret’s History of the Village of the Small Huts productions since 1983.

Collaborators and credits

Michelle Ramsay, David Duclos, and Anand Rajaram, with Nightswimming’s Brian Quirt, Naomi Campbell, dramaturgy interns Andrea Romaldi and Marie-Leofeli Barlizo, and University of Toronto Graduate Centre student: Katherine Foster.

October 19-21, 2005 at the Glen Morris Studio, University of Toronto Centre for the Study of Drama.