Jack Knowles

Jack won the Tony and Drama Desk Awards for Best Lighting Design of a Musical and the Olivier and WhatsOnStage Awards for Best Lighting Design for Sunset Boulevard (Broadway/Savoy Theatre). He previously won the Knight of Illumination Award for Barber Shop Chronicles (National Theatre).

He was included in the 2026 Stage 100 list of the most influential people in British theatre.

Jack Knowles pours in illumination from the sides of the stage, turning every face into a Caravaggio
New York Times on Death of a Salesman (Winter Garden Theatre)

ravishingly lit by Jack Knowles
Time Out New York on Death of a Salesman

[Joe Mantello] and [Chloe] Lamford and Jack Knowles (who designed this production’s gorgeous and eloquent lighting) craft a haunting, liminal environment
Vulture on Death of a Salesman

The long grass blows and the sky, thanks to Jack Knowles’ emotive lighting, seems to throb with the promise of other, grander lives playing out somewhere far away
The Guardian on 1536 (Almeida Theatre)

The lighting, by Jack Knowles, like an arena show in your amygdala, is startling throughout
New York Times on Sunset Boulevard (St James Theatre/Jamie Lloyd Company)

lighting designer Jack Knowles manipulates our sense of reality by alternating between glaring, obliterating spotlights and inky darkness
Variety on Sunset Boulevard 

It’s eerie, especially under Jack Knowles’s superbly ghostly lighting
The Independent on London Tide (National Theatre)

One of the most inventive lighting designers around
The Stage