Ankit Pandey is a lighting designer, theatre practitioner and educator based in New Delhi, India. They are currently pursuing their Masters in Lighting Design at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University. They have worked in and designed for a wide gamut of performances including but not limited to theatre, music, dance recitals, films, exhibitions and installations. Notable among these are Eden, Pearl's Beauty Salon, Fucking A, The Winter's Tale, Dastaan LIVE, Table Radica, Green Room and ‘Love, Prufrock’. Ankit has also served as the Technical and Art director for various performing arts festivals over the country and collaborated with artists within and beyond borders. They are also a co-founder of Tech Quartet - A technical design and production company based in New Delhi.
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Ankit has also worked in the field of education and mentorship in the last 6 years. Most recently, they worked as the Co-Curricular Professor at the Ashoka University teaching a devised course on lighting design for performances. Previously, with their company, they built Infocus: an online course on performance lighting open to artists and non-artists of all ages with participants from all over the world. They have also served as a mentor and design guide with Aagaaz Theatre Trust- An organisation working with the adolescents, youth and women from underprivileged backgrounds and communities through theatre education.
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As a designer and theatre practitioner, Ankit finds affinity with the theatre of scenography which pushes them towards creating an experience for an audience instead of simply putting up a show. It helps to define their aesthetic and political sensibilities as a designer. The goal is to react to the dramaturgy of the performance regardless of the genre. As an Educator, Ankit aims to create and share a new language of communication through design with the help of intensive experimentation, with more focus on storytelling and less on the resources needed to tell that story. With the education and experience they receive from the Yale School of Drama, Ankit wishes to run a design school/performance space in their home country with and for the community which can find its roots in active collaboration and dialogue.