Christina Watanabe

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Christina was interviewed for Rosco's Spectrum.

 

Christina is the receipient of a 2019 Knights of Illumination award for her work on The Wild Party. Read more here.

 

"one [set design] well augmented by Christina Watanabe's free use of lighting"

-David DeWitt, NY Times

Priceless

"the deft work of Mr. Prather, Ms. Palmer-Lane and the lighting designer, Christina Watanabe"

-Sylviane Gold, NY Times

Nibbler

"Christina Watanabe (lighting design) and Christian Frederickson (sound design) ease the transition into the episodes of Roswell-like visitation with visual and aural effects that are eerie (as they should be) and also gleefully humorous.


The lighting for a number of recent Off-Broadway plays has set a trend of plunging actors' faces into shadow for long periods, often through pages of crucial dialogue. In a production with numerous dark environments, Watanabe's lighting design for Nibbler keeps the players expressions visible even in the dimmest scenes."

- Charles Wright, CurtainUp

"Thanks to the addition of the stunning lights by Christina Watanabe, the images that were cast were magical...colors that melted into one another."

- Michael Block, Theatre in the Now

"a glorious, candy-colored technical wonder. A wall of lamps illuminates the theater, a disco ball sparkles, and a fluorescent moon changes colors overhead...It is a production which embraces the fundamental strangeness of the play, its psychosexual ambiguity and, uneasy negotiation of the boundaries between dreams and reality."

- Eve Houghton, Yale Herald

"...the right balance of eerie and desolate for the play’s tone and locale"

- Amanda Cooper, New Theatre Corps

Dancing Lessons

"Kudos to Penguin regulars Patrick Rizzotti, the scenic designer, Dustin Cross, costume designer, and especially Christina Watanabe for her deeply affecting lighting design."

- Peter Danish, Broadway World

 

"She ingeniously took risks with surreal lighting choices, like a vast, violet, starry, sky splashed across the confined and ugly motel walls against the more realistic, dirty, colors of the harsh reality that’s imagined by May and Eddie."

- Le-Anne Garland, Theatre Is Easy

Dandy Darkly's Trigger Happy

"The lighting design by Christina Watanabe was striking. It was spooky yet optimistic."

- Michael Block, Theatre In the Now

Remains

"Christina Watanabe’s lighting stunningly emphasizes the show’s dramatic moments. Her use of color and her manipulation of shadows in particular turn the stage into a stark and dangerous space. "

-Rachel Lepore, Theatre is Easy