Book excerpt: The Art of Light on Stage is the first history of theatre lighting design to bring the story right up to date. In this extraordinary volume, award-winning designer Yaron Abulafia explores the poetics of light, charting the evolution of lighting design against the background of contemporary performance. The book looks at the material and the conceptual; the technological and the transcendental. Never before has theatre design been so vividly and excitingly illuminated. The book examines the evolution of lighting design in contemporary theatre through an exploration of two fundamental issues: 1. What gave rise to the new directions in lighting design in contemporary theatre? 2. How can these new directions be viewed within the context of lighting design history? The study then focuses on the phenomenological and semiotic aspects of the medium for light – the role of light as a performer, as the medium of visual perception and as a stimulus for imaginative representations – in selected contemporary theatre productions by Robert Wilson, Romeo Castellucci, Heiner Goebbels, Jossi Wieler and David Zinder. This ground-breaking book will be required reading for anyone concerned with the future of performance.