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AVL TIMES 35<br />
Shakira Villa‐Symes Lighting Designer<br />
GAME<br />
CHANGERS<br />
Shari Villa-Symes is the only female among the top lighting designers in the<br />
Philippines. A graduate of Theater Arts at U.P. Diliman, she started out doing<br />
technical work as lighting operator and turned pro in 1990. She introduced worldclass<br />
special effects such as the Holofog, Clay Paky Sharpies and reverse cryogenics<br />
on Philippine television (Party Pilipinas, GMA-7). In December 2015 she<br />
went to Austria and teamed up with a foreign lighting team for the Miss Earth<br />
Pageant, another feather in her cap. She divides her time between projects,<br />
concert lighting gigs and her bar/gallery in New Manila called Big Sky Mind.<br />
How did you get started?<br />
I was a Fine Arts student at the UP Diliman<br />
when lighting became such an interest,<br />
seeing the various moods lighting evoked<br />
through the paintings of renaissance<br />
masters. A subject on studio lighting, under<br />
an elective in photography, triggered my<br />
fascination in the technical aspects of recreating<br />
those moods in a controlled environment.<br />
So a year after, I shifted to Theater<br />
Arts where theater lighting was taught<br />
under Professor Amiel Leonardia.<br />
Professor Leonardia taught us the history,<br />
fundamentals and the workings of lighting<br />
stage plays. It was around this time in the<br />
early 90’s, while I was still in UP, when<br />
director Bart Guingona invited me to work<br />
with Lighting Designer Martin Esteva for<br />
Repertory Philippines’ Woman In Black.<br />
Martin then paved the way for me to light<br />
commercially via corporate shows and<br />
concerts.<br />
THE WORLD’S FASTEST GROWING MEDIA FOR AVL TECHNOLOGIES
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