Jeanette Yew

Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew is an Assistant Arts Professor and Head of Lighting Design Training in the Department of Drama’s Production and Design Studio. She holds an MFA from California Institute of the Arts and a BA from the University of Washington Phi Beta Kappa.

Jeanette is an award-winning lighting designer for theatre, opera, dance, musical, music performances and installation. Moreover, she is a projection designer with extensive experience designing for new works and original adaptations. As a designer, Jeanette aims to create a visual environment that is organically integrated into the landscape and language of the production. Her designs are described as “clever” and “inventive” (NY Times) and that “contains the vibrant richness of a Caravaggio painted in neon”. Her designs have been seen at the Park Avenue Armory, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Rose Theater Jazz at Lincoln Center, Baryshnikov Arts Center (BAC), A.R.T./New York, Lucille Lortel Theater, HERE Arts Center, St. Ann's Warehouse, La Mama ETC, The Kitchen, ArtsEmerson, Manhattan School of Music, MOMA PS1, Joyce SOHO, Bard Music Festival, REDCAT, Highways Performance Space, and internationally at Havana (Cuba), Prague (Czech Republic), Lima (Peru), Edinburgh (Scotland), Tokyo (Japan), Graz (Austria), Shanghai (China), and Bloemfontein (South Africa). Jeanette’s lighting design for KPOP! won the 2017 LIT Design award in Theater Performance, and also received the 2018 nominations for Outstanding Lighting Design for the Lortel and Drama Desk. Her projection design for Relevance was also nominated for the 2018 Lortel. Additionally, she received the Bel Geddes Design Enhancement award for her lighting and projection design for Ludic Proxy and Higher Glimmer. Lastly, Jeanette is also a generative artist in devising interdisciplinary productions combining contemporary puppetry aesthetics with technology. The New York Times described her recent project, Act 4 of The Iceman Cometh, with Target Margin Lab as “consistently inventive”.

Prior to her appointment at NYU, Professor Yew was appointed as Lecturer in Lighting Design at the University of Texas at Austin Department of Theatre and Dance. She has also worked with students both as an educator and as a designer at Stony Brook University, Barnard College, Sarah Lawrence College, Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts and the School of Drama at The New School, Seoul Institute of the Arts, Parson School of Design, Kean University, New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts (NYCDA), and University of Rochester International Theatre Program.