Joshua Benghiat’s lighting design work spans theater, opera, dance, and live events, with a particular focus on classical music presentation and broadcast. He currently serves as lighting designer for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, where his work is seen in performances at Alice Tully Hall and the Daniel and Joanna S. Rose Studio, as well as on CMS livestreams and documentary projects, including Chamber Music Society Returns on PBS.
Josh has designed concerts and events at many of North America’s leading music venues, including David Geffen Hall, Frederick P. Rose Hall, the DiMenna Center for Classical Music, Bing Concert Hall, and Roy Thomson Hall. He designed several seasons of Lincoln Center’s White Light Festival and, as part of Lincoln Center’s Restart Stages initiative, lit the Jaffe Drive venue, including Continuum, curated by violinist Nick Kendall. He is also a lighting consultant and designer for pianist Hayato Sumino’s North American tour.
His theatrical design and associate credits include productions on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and at regional theaters including Center Theatre Group, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Goodman Theatre, Alliance Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Syracuse Stage, McCarter Theatre Center, Barter Theatre, and Geva Theatre Center.
Josh previously served as Associate Artistic Director of the Jewish Plays Project, where he played an active role in new play development. He is a longtime associate to Allen Lee Hughes, with recent collaborations including Hamlet in the Park and the Broadway productions of A Soldier’s Play, Topdog/Underdog, Ohio State Murders, Home, Our Town, and The Balusters.
As a freelance designer with Ferri Lighting Design & Associates, Josh has worked on broadcast projects for CNBC, ESPN, Cheddar News, Scripps, and NBCUniversal.
An early adopter of CAD technology for lighting design, Joshua has more than thirty years of experience drafting in Vectorworks, as well as in 3D modeling and rendering. He is also an independent developer of lighting design-focused plug-ins for Vectorworks, with several of his solutions integrated into the shipping release of Vectorworks 2014. His Savvy Series, BeamViz, and ProjectionViz plug-ins are used by lighting and projection designers worldwide across theater, opera, dance, events, and television.
Josh is a Lecturer in Design at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale. He has previously served on the faculties of Brooklyn College and the Fashion Institute of Technology, and has been a guest lecturer in the theater departments of UMass Amherst, Rutgers University, DePaul University, and NYU’s Department of Design for Stage and Film.
He received an AB from the University of Chicago and an MFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter.