Isabella Byrd is an American lighting designer. She has designed plays and musicals, and is known for her close collaborations with major American playwrights.
Isabella Byrd grew up in Houston, Texas. Her interest in the arts was first sparked in childhood, as a student of ballet and modern dance.[1] She attended Houston's High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, where she was introduced to lighting design as an artistic discipline, and went on to earn a BFA in Theatre Design & Technology at University of Cincinnati – College-Conservatory of Music.[2]
Early in her career, Byrd worked as an assistant to designers Jane Cox, Tyler Micoleau, Matt Frey, and Paul Toben.
Byrd is known for her minimalist style and a preference for subtlety and restraint. She has referred to herself as a "darkness designer" and has received positive critical recognition for use of unusually low lighting. Reflecting on the development of this style, she told Broadway.com that "darkness was a really exciting palette that I could use instead of fight against.
The core of her design practice is a careful dramaturgical exploration of the performance text coupled with an intensive and wide-ranging research process.[3] Her approach to theatrical design is just as concerned with time and duration as it is with light and darkness. The key themes across her body of work include an interest in how human scale relates to both architecture and the natural landscape, as well as observations and explorations in contrast, visual lyricism, shadow play, and the uncanny.[4]
Byrd describes the combination of artistry and technical knowledge at play in her lighting design work as "trying to teach the robots poetry." She has cited the poetry of Anne Carson and the visual art of James Turrell and Doug Wheeler as inspirations for her work.
Byrd has designed many off-Broadway productions, including Infinite Life by Annie Baker at the Atlantic Theater Company, Eboni Booth's Pulitzer-winning Primary Trust at Roundabout Theater Company, and Caryl Churchill's Light Shining in Buckinghamshire at New York Theater Workshop.
Her work was crucial to creating the distinctive atmosphere of Will Arbery's Pulitzer-finalist play Heroes of the Fourth Turning, which premiered at Playwrights Horizons in 2019. In that piece, the design elements took inspiration from the darkness and isolation of the setting: rural Wyoming, late at night. Byrd and her collaborators tested the boundaries of how low the light levels onstage could get while still allowing the audience to follow the action of the play, creating the visual effect of figures alternately emerging from and swallowed by darkness, as if balanced on the edge of an abyss. Byrd described this design choice as one that required the audience to make "a literal corneal adjustment."
Byrd's 2020 design for Sanctuary City by Martyna Majok at New York Theater Workshop was a notable example of her minimalist style. Byrd described the play as "begin[ning] with a whirlwind series of small scene-lets or beats. Although some of the scenes were only three sentences long, we were able to use simple light to inform the audience to quickly discern a time jump, as well as the new physical and emotional space. We only used warm to cool white light, keeping it inside that narrow color range."
Byrd made her Broadway debut in 2024 with two shows, both performed in the round: Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club, directed by Rebecca Frecknall, and An Enemy of the People, directed by Sam Gold. She received a Tony award nomination for each show.
She has also worked internationally, designing the London productions of Annie Baker's Infinite Life, Jeremy O. Harris's "Daddy," and Rebecca Frecknall's West End production of Cabaret.
She was recognized with a special Drama Desk Award in 2024. The citation listed her contributions to the 2024 theater season both on and off-Broadway, stating that "her spotlight on quiet, small-scale stories both enchanted us...and mesmerized us."[5]
Byrd is an active member of United Scenic Artists, Local USA 829 and an advocate for pay equity in the live-entertainment industry.
In The New Yorker, Vinson Cunningham called Isabella Byrd "one artist whose lightscapes tend to linger in my mind" and described the way her lighting "exert[s] a strong but delicate harmonic influence" on the plays she designs.[6]
New York magazine's Sara Holdren described her design for Annie Baker's Infinite Life as "crisp, beautiful, and impressively funny."[7]
Byrd worked as a creative producer for the 13P playwrights' collective archival website. She was a design editor and contributor to Chance Magazine[8]
With fellow lighting designer Alejandro Fajardo, Byrd is a co-creator of the Instagram hashtag #thelightin, which collects images of natural lighting effects and phenomena all over the world.
| Year | Production | Award | Category | Outcome | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club | Tony Award | Best Lighting Design of a Musical | ||
| An Enemy of the People | Tony Award | Best Lighting Design of a Play | |||
| Drama Desk Awards | Special Recognition | ||||
| 2023 | Epiphany | Lucille Lortel Award | Outstanding Lighting Design | ||
| Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Lighting Design | ||||
| Henry Hewes Design Awards | Lighting Design | ||||
| The Good John Proctor | Henry Hewes Design Awards | Lighting Design | |||
| 2022 | Sanctuary City | Lucille Lortel Award | Outstanding Lighting Design | ||
| Henry Hewes Design Awards | Lighting Design | ||||
| Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Lighting for a Play | ||||
| Cabaret | Olivier Award | Best Lighting Design | |||
| 2020 | Heroes of the Fourth Turning | Lucille Lortel Award | Outstanding Lighting Design | ||
| Henry Hewes Design Awards | Lighting Design | ||||
| Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Lighting for a Play | ||||
| Obie Awards | Special Citation: Creative Team & Ensemble | ||||
| 2019 | Light Shining in Buckinghamshire | Obie Awards | Lighting Design | ||
| Plano | Henry Hewes Design Awards | Lighting Design | |||
| "Daddy" | Henry Hewes Design Awards | Lighting Design | |||
| 2018 | Light Shining in Buckinghamshire | Henry Hewes Design Awards | Lighting Design |
Isabella Byrd lives in Brooklyn, New York. From 2020 to 2021, she served on the board of directors of the Greene Hill Food Co-op.[9]