Blindness, an intense, raw, visceral performance work lit by Christina Thanasoula, directed by Emily Louizou, and premiered at the 2025 Athens Epidaurus Festival, has won two coveted LIT Lighting Design Awards, one for Stage Lighting and one in the Theatre Performance Lighting category.
Christina’s inventive lighting design featured 24 x Astera Titan Tubes, which were used to great effect and were central to the illuminative aesthetic of the piece. This is the first time that Christina – from Athens-based design studio Creative Lighting – has submitted a project for the Awards, and naturally, she is delighted with the results!
Christina commented, “Light is often invisible! Lighting designers work in the shadows with this invisible element, yet we all need to feel seen. These Awards offer the chance of visibility for all of us working backstage. Winning the Award is a great honour, and I want to say a big THANK YOU to the whole creative and technical team who put this show together in just four days in a race against time!”
Blindness, based on the novel by José Saramago and adapted for stage by Simon Stephens, tells the story of a blindness epidemic. The main stage design concept involved recreating an abandoned hospital psych ward, and lighting was essential to building the performance’s visual identity as well as defining location and mood.
Fluorescent-style lighting – characteristic of institutionalised spaces – was used as key lighting, and this was replicated in the theatre using the Astera Titan Tubes. These achieved the excellent light dispersion and smooth, realistic and highly accurate colour shifting needed to help deliver the narrative.
As the Titan Tube has a very contemporary look, Christina and set designer Thalia Melissa worked closely to disguise the fixtures in some battered scenic housings that helped emulate the stark ambience of the psych ward, where they resembled grubby, uncomfortable hospital fluorescents as a central part of the scenography. The tubes were rigged in three rows of seven fixtures that accentuated the 30-metre depth of the space – Venue E of a former factory and one of the festival’s main sites.
This positioning highlighted perspective, while allowing movement effects between the linear rows of lights synced to Irene Skylakaki’s soundscape, complete with flickering effects, which gave additional layers of lighting texture.
Programming this oscillating and sparking was one of Christina’s favourite parts of lighting the project. “This effect accentuated the fast and pacey action of the piece, and I love it when music and light go hand-in-hand,” she noted.
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The other three Titan Tubes were utilised as floor specials
Thanks to the versatility of the Astera LED fixtures, light became a dominant dramaturgical element of Blindness, creating dystopian light-scapes in space and time, shaping the meaning, atmosphere and emotional impact of the performance on audiences. Christina recalls how another lighting designer also working at the Epidaurus Festival was peeking through the backstage door and puzzled by these fluorescent type lights that changed colours! He came in to ask what they were and was amazed to find out … that it was Titan Tubes, totally transformed by being integrated into the set!
Christina’s entry to the LIT Lighting Design Awards also drew attention to the sustainability element of using Astera fixtures. “We all live on the same planet; I hardly believe there is anyone out there not interested in sustainability,” she stated, adding, “Astera is a leading manufacturer in sustainability, offering creative tools with minimum environmental impact, achieving green goals without compromising creativity.”
The LIT Lighting Design Awards™ – a program developed by and operating under 3C Awards, a leading Swiss-based organisation curating and promoting design internationally – recognises the talents and imagination of international lighting product designers and lighting implementers. The multi-category LIT Lighting Design Awards acknowledge lighting as both an art and a science, and as a fundamental element of design, celebrating “creativity and innovation in the fields of lighting products and applications.”
Project entries were assessed by a panel of experts working across all disciplines of lighting. The evaluation process is based on fluid judging criteria that are constantly reviewed and adapted to embrace new technical, social, economic, and ecological requirements. Each jury member is passionately committed to providing a fair evaluation and is assigned categories based on their specific backgrounds and knowledge. All projects are viewed and judged randomly and anonymously to ensure unbiased and fair judging.
Christina concludes, “I had a feeling right from the start that this project and especially its collaborative nature would make it potential award-winning material. The Awards prove that, as a designer, you should always be prepared to be daring and take a few creative risks that can allow for your work to shine.”
“We are incredibly proud to see Astera Titan Tubes play such a central role in Christina’s powerful and imaginative lighting design,” says Sebastian Bückle, Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) at Astera. “Blindness demonstrates how light can become a storytelling force of its own – shaping space, emotion, and narrative. Christina’s ability to transform our fixtures into something so seamlessly integrated and atmospheric is truly inspiring. We congratulate her and the entire creative team for this well-deserved recognition at the LIT Lighting Design Awards.”
For more information, you can visit the Astera website
