Hina Nishioka is a long way from the Pacific Ocean.
As an aspiring ballet dancer in Japan; a student the University of Victoria where she turned to theatre after a knee injury; as staff on a cruise ship, seeing moving stage lights for the first time; or, these days, living and working in Vancouver, Nishioka has always relied on the ocean to bring her serenity and joy. But she’s spending this summer on the shores of Lake Ontario where she’s got a job as an assistant lighting designer at the prestigious Shaw Festival. No whales for miles.
Still, the gig is a good one, soaking up wisdom from renowned lighting designers like Bonnie Beecher and Kevin Lamotte. How to talk to directors for example, or how to “trust the process and let’s move on. The detail will come”, as Nishioka puts it, quoting Lamotte admiringly.
Nishioka thinks a lot about light. When she first came to Canada, she remembers fumbling around interior spaces, looking for more brightness. In Japan, she says, “we have ceiling lights in all the rooms.” Her interest encompasses rock shows, dance, film, and commercial events, as well as theatre. “Lighting design is almost DJ’ing for the music,” she marvels, recalling her internship with designer Gigi Pedron, who tours with Queens of the Stone Age. “It changes the music, for sure.”
Lighting design can be mysterious even for theatre insiders, who might glimpse the designer for the first time at a run-through, scribbling esoteric diagrams into a tablet. After hanging what can be hundreds of lights with the crew, the designer’s true artistry begins. They often work late into the night, selecting the instruments required for each cue, determining intensity and fade timings, mixing colour on a digital palette, and programming complex live moves. The process is technical and time pressure can be extreme, yet it’s also instinctive and spontaneous, as they paint the story of the show in light.
Lighting supports the narrative in many ways, says Nishioka. It can be realistic, moving us from a sun-filled room to a moonlit glade. Or it can reach into metaphor, using saturated colour, rhythm, and contrast to lift a moment beyond the here and now. Lately, Nishioka has been exploring colour theory, especially the effect of colour on emotions. She studies watercolour for its endless variations of shade, tone, and tint, and observes how light is used compositionally in representational paintings too. Bright light may make a central character the focal point, she has noticed, but someone in the background might also be subtly highlighted. “And I don’t want to lose that background character,” she says, “because that might be something important in a later scene. I try to light everything!” she laughs, “Only, in different ways…”
Nishioka’s favourite part of working in theatre are the conversations, “seeing rehearsals, and secretly listening.” Maybe because of her background in dance, timing is very important to her. Nothing is more satisfying than when a cue completes on the exact word she was aiming for.
As an early-career artist, Nishioka knows all about financial uncertainty. The year she graduated, the pandemic shut down live performance for two seasons. She pivoted to film and TV and continues to work as a programmer in media, live music, and recently, corporate events, to subsidize the low wages in theatre. Working across so many media as both a programmer and designer gives her a unique perspective – and an edge. “I have more technology knowledge to help designers, and myself,” she explains, “to achieve what I want to do in lighting design, doing complicated sequences.”
Nishioka dreams of one day lighting Classical ballet. After all, that’s where she started, and now that she’s developed an eye for design and an appreciation of story — all those theatrical conversations — “I’d love to try doing Swan Lake or something.”
For now, she finds inspiration in unexpected places. She likes watching animé, especially the work of the great Hayao Miyazaki. “He is so mindful about where the light is coming from,” she marvels, “he has beautiful shadows (…) which he uses for emotional depiction. You can see it on the character’s face when the emotion is changing.” In contrast she cites the animé show Mononoke, “completely opposite for my aesthetic,” but stimulating in its colourful, organized chaos.
But Nishioka seems to gain the most inspiration from nature. “One thing that is completely different in Japan is the moon,” she says. “It is whiter in Canada. We always think of the moon as yellow in Japan.”
One thing is certain. Wherever she may have started, and wherever she’s going next, Hina Nishioka looks at the whole world with eyes wide open to the light.
Hina Nishioka is a 2024 recipient of the Siminovitch Theatre Foundation’s inaugural Emerging Artist Grant.
Vanessa Porteous is a theatre artist, filmmaker, and writer based in Calgary. From 2018 to 2021 she was Jury Chair of the Siminovitch Prize.
Photograph: Measure for Measure at Bard on the Beach Studio Theatre (2024), photographer Tim Matheson; director Jivesh Parasram; set Ryan Cormack; costume Alaia Hamar; lighting Hina Nishioka; performers Scott Bellis, Leslie dos Remedios, and Craig Erickson.