As we enter our third phase of our new project, Dysbiosis, we are a team that continues to grow, and so here we have it: our latest spotlight on our newest team member, Amy Daniels. Amy joined us to present our first public sharing of Dysbiosis at the Omnibus Theatre last month as part of the 96 Festival and will be leading on the lighting design for Dysbiosis here on out.
Amy has been a lover of theatre since she can remember. She studied English Literature at the University of Sussex, then fell in love with all things production during a year abroad at Stony Brook University in New York. She works on a wide range of performance, with an emphasis on the political, the playful and the pondering. Find her full credits and portfolio on her website – www.amydanielslighting.com
Tell us about yourself and your creative practice.
I’m Amy (she/her), a London-based freelance lighting designer (with occasional stints as a technical stage/production manager!) I’ve been working across a range of live performances as a technician since the end of 2017, and during a 4-year stint as Technical Manager at Camden People’s Theatre, I began to focus my practice towards lighting. I am heavily influenced by a broad range of artistic/cultural sources, including visual/fine art, live music & film, and draw on the relationship between humans & light, including scientific disciplines like chronobiology and optics. I am especially drawn to visual artists who use light as a primary artistic medium, such as Olafur Elliason, Jenny Holzer, Bruce Nauman & Nam Jun Paik. I am also passionate about environmentally sustainable artistic & cultural practice and making the artistic spheres accessible to all.
What does queer ecology mean to you?
It’s the idea that we don’t take the “objective” or “scientific” meanings of ecological concepts we have been taught as gospel, and an understanding that mainstream scientific and ecological discourse doesn’t always reflect the kind of variation and diversity amongst human beings and the natural world.
What did you discover about yourself and the way you work during the Dysbiosis R&D week?
I learned more about how I work as a creative collaborator within a wider process: everyone in the room brought an interesting and unique skill set and breadth of ideas to the table. This way of working meant that our output blurred the lines between disciplines and was a truly collaborative process!
A key inspiration during the R&D week?
The literature of queer ecology and philosophy: for example, Timothy Morton’s Being Ecological and Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto. Also: the visual output of Paul Burgess, Dybiosis’ designer. Looking through his sketchbook was very inspirational in terms of thinking about what we want the audience to experience and take away from the performance. And always inspiring me is the visual artist Olafur Eliasson with his incorporation of lighting principles into art and installation.
What has stayed with you from your research into queer ecology?
I have found the relationship between our environment – where we live, work and spend our lives – and our personal connection to nature really interesting. Living in London, we are all guilty of keeping the ‘city’ and ‘nature’ separated in our minds: a classic example being the idea of ‘escaping’ the city to be in nature, but also our alienation from the ‘natural’ processes which govern our lives like the natural rhythms of time through our use of technology to escape time.
What are you currently excited about creatively?
I’m excited about using light and light sources in unconventional ways. My practice has always prioritised lighting as a primary storytelling element: often giving performers handheld lighting sources like industrial work lights to create dynamic, choreographed stage lighting, facilitating collaboration with choreography/movement. And Dysbiosis is no different! Using light sources onstage has been a core part of the project so far: giving some of the agency lighting designers usually keep to themselves to performer/facilitators.
Top image: Amy, right, on stage as part of the Dysbiosis work-in-progress showing at the Omnibus Theatre, June 2025. Credit: Devika Bilimoria.
