John Marsland – Senior Lighting Technician

John Marsland has worked at Glyndebourne for 15 years.

In his role as senior lighting technician, John works on the practical electrical elements seen on stage during the Festival and Autumn Season. Read on to find out what his favourite, and most fantastical projects have been.

Photo by Alun Callender

The baby-making machine from Les Mamelles de Tirésias, part of the Poulenc Double Bill, Glyndebourne, Festival 2022, photo by Bill Cooper 

As a senior lighting technician, my main focus is on production electrics. This means I look after any practical electrical elements in a production – from lamps to neon signs to baby-making machines!

While I work primarily for the Lighting department, I also work closely with the Props and the Production teams, too.

I started working in theatre, getting to know the craft of it all, and then I went into lighting.

Technology has moved on a lot since then, and we now use LEDs (light-emitting diodes) more on stage. During Autumn Season 2026, The Barber of Seville has a lot of LED lights as part of the back wall of the set.

The Barber of Seville, Autumn Season 2026, Photo by Craig Fuller

The Merry Widow, Festival 2024. Photo by Tristram Kenton

The Merry Widow from Festival 2024, had so many wonderful elements and it had a real ‘Broadway’ feel to it.

The set had a big house and all the windows and pillars had to be lit up. We also had some palm trees with light up coconuts. I’d really like to work on this again, if it comes back!

I love seeing something go from an idea to reality. We will be given a storyboard which is basically a wish list for the designers, and we try to make everything possible!

We come up with some really crazy options sometimes. Then we will start prototyping and trying things out before working on the final designs.

La traviata, Festival 2014. Photo by Richard Hubert Smith