Nearly five decades since it first landed on university syllabi, Designing with Light: An Introduction to Stage Lighting is now in its eighth edition — updated by J. Michael Gillette and co-author Michael McNamara to reflect the technology and industry that today’s students and working designers actually walk into.

The book first appeared in 1978 from Mayfield Publishing, when dimmer racks still ran analog control and computer lighting was a concept, not a given. It has tracked the industry through every major shift — moving lights, DMX, LED sources, digital control — growing and adapting across eight editions while holding its position as the dominant stage lighting textbook at the college level. The 8th edition, published in January 2025 by Routledge, is the most current version of what has been, for most working theatrical LDs, the book they learned the craft from.

This edition is fully updated to cover current fixture technology — LED tape, modern control boards, dimmer architecture, cabling — alongside the fundamentals of electrical theory, drafting light plots, and designing for different stage configurations. It also expands coverage of dramas, musicals, and dance with real design examples, includes perspectives from working designers across theatrical and related industries, and reflects a shift toward more inclusive language and practice. For instructors who have been running older editions, the technology sections alone make the update worth it — this isn’t a light revision.

Who Wrote It

J. Michael Gillette is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Theatre, Film and Television at the University of Arizona, where he spent 33 years teaching stage lighting, media lighting, scenic design, sound design, and technical production. Over that career he designed more than a hundred productions. He is also the author of Theatrical Design and Production, another widely-used classroom reference. Gillette is the originating author of Designing with Light — the book has been with him since the first edition in 1978, growing through his professional and academic life alongside the industry itself.

Michael McNamara is Associate Professor of Theatre at Purdue University and has taught theatrical lighting at the graduate and undergraduate levels for more than 20 years. He came into the book from the working world first: eight years as Resident Assistant Lighting Designer with the Washington National Opera at the Kennedy Center, with credits on over 50 productions alongside design teams from around the world. His professional credits extend to the Canadian Opera Company, the New Israeli Opera in Tel Aviv, the San Diego Opera, the Dallas Opera, and assistant design work at the Royal Opera in London, Seattle, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Portland opera companies. In the Chicago theater scene he has designed at First Folio Theatre — where he’s an Artistic Associate and earned the 2012 Joseph Jefferson Award for Lighting Design for The Turn of the Screw — along with Remy Bumppo, Writers’ Theatre, Shattered Globe, and others. McNamara holds an MFA in Stage Design from Northwestern University, a BS in Theatre Arts from Carroll University, and is a member of United Scenic Artists Local USA-829, the Illuminating Engineering Society, and USITT, where he received the 2017 Founders’ Award. He came on as co-author with the sixth edition and has been steering the technology updates since.

Pick it up on Amazon or directly from Routledge.