Backstage Pass: Technical Manager
Backstage Pass: Lighting Technician
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Backstage Pass
Backstage Pass: Lighting Technician
Let there be light (at Baybeats)
The house lights dim. The curtain rises. The audience leans forward in anticipation. Then… the stage fills with light, and the band begins to play!
Lights may not always be the first thing people notice, but they are a huge part of creating the mood of a performance. So, who makes all this magic happen? Let’s go behind the scenes to find out!
Meet Janson Seah, a senior lighting technician at Esplanade!
Janson helps bring Esplanade performances to life with his paintbrush—light! On show day, he operates the lights, but his work begins long before the audience arrives.
Planning, planning and more planning
There’s a lot of homework that Janson needs to do before he’s ready to light up a show.
Janson meets with lighting designers from different shows to understand what kind of atmosphere they want to create. Is the show soft and dreamy, loud and energetic, or dark and mysterious?
From these discussions, Janson then creates a lighting plan—a special diagram that details which lights he wants to use and where each one should be placed on stage.
Teamwork makes the dream work
The lighting department is just one part of Esplanade’s technical production team. There are also the sound, staging, production management, and visual media teams!
Janson works closely with all these departments to ensure that all the plans fit together smoothly. Good communication is key so that each show runs safely and as planned!
Bump in: From paper to stage
Once the lighting plan is ready, Janson transfers it into a special program on the lighting board. This program helps Janson operate the lights on show day!
He and his team then work together to rig the lights (hang them up), programme them and operate them on show day. Rigging lights takes a lot of skill and care because the lights are heavy, and sometimes they need to be hung high above the stage.
Janson wears safety equipment like a helmet, gloves, safety shoes and a harness to keep himself safe and protected, especially when he’s working from height!
There is no 'I' in team
Janson’s team is really close-knit and supportive! They learn from each other and exchange lots of ideas about how to light a stage.
When Janson first started as a lighting technician, he knew almost nothing about lighting—he was even told off for being too slow! Instead of giving up, he took that as a challenge to learn more. He kept researching, practising and learning from the people around him. Over time, he became faster and gained more confidence and knowledge. He now shares the knowledge with his teammates, especially trainees under his wing.
The magic of lights
There are many types of stage lights, each with a different job. For example, strobe lights flash quickly to create an exciting effect. Wash lights cover the whole stage with an even layer of colour. Intelligent lights move, twist and change colours automatically!
Janson also uses special tools that make the lights look even more exciting.
Gobos are tiny metal discs that have patterns on them. Shine a light through one and the stage can fill with polka dots, hearts or even the moon!
Sometimes, he uses a haze machine. The haze makes the light beams visible and turns the stage into something even more magical and otherworldly.
Janson the Lighting Designer
Sometimes Janson doesn’t just operate lights—he designs them! He has designed for Esplanade events like Mosaic Music Series, Baybeats and many more.
One of his recent favourites was for a band called Death From Above 1979 that played at Annexe studio. It was a dance-punk and rock ‘n’ roll concert, with lots of crazy lighting!
He was also the lead lighting designer for Baybeats in 2024 and 2025! Find out how Janson lit up Baybeats 2025 in this video.
For Janson, the best part of his job is seeing a crowd dancing, cheering and enjoying the music under the lights he helped create.
In those glowing moments, everything feels worth it.
“You see everyone dancing on the dance floor, and that's happiness for me.”
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