Short Biography

Simon Corder – short biography

Award-winning designer Simon Corder left school in 1978 and joined the circus as a ring boy.

Opera includes productions for: La Scala, Milan; English National Opera; The Royal Opera House Covent Garden; LA Opera; Teatro Colon, Buenos Aires; Greek National Opera; Teatro Regio di Parma; Opera Hedeland, nr. Copenhagen; Teatro delle Muse, Ancona; Teatro Lirico di Cagliari; Teatro Verdi di Pisa; Opéra Municipal, Marseille; Opera Holland Park, London; Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, NY; Opera North, Leeds; Victorian Opera, Melbourne; Operosa, Bulgaria/Serbia/Montenegro; Palau des les Arts, Valencia; OTC, Ireland; Angers Nantes Opera; English Touring Opera; Scottish Opera, Glasgow; Welsh National Opera, Cardiff; Wexford Festival Opera; Hobart Baroque, Tasmania. He designed projections for Operama’s stadium Aida, widely seen in Europe and South America. He was nominated for an Irish Times Irish Theatre Award in 2013 and honoured as a Knight Of Illumination in 2017.

1988-1994 Simon created lighting for the Night Safari attraction in Singapore, the first night-time zoo in the world – since visited by over twenty million people. He went on to light the second, in Guangzhou, which opened in 2000. He has worked as a designer and consultant for Yerevan Zoo, Armenia; Jardin Zoologique de Rabat; Paignton Zoo, Cornwall; Night Safari, Xiamen; Taipei City Zoo; Twycross Zoo, England. Currently, he is a regular advisor and designer at Artis Zoo Amsterdam, and he is revising the light installation of Night Safari, Singapore.

Theatre includes productions for: The Bush Theatre; Lumiere & Son; The Lyric Hammersmith; The National Theatre; Peter Hall Company; Royal Shakespeare Company; Royal Court. His work has appeared several times in the West End, and he was nominated for an Olivier Award in 2004.

Major musicals include: Dancing Shadows, Seoul Arts Center; Arirang, LG Arts Center, Seoul; Frank’s Closet, Hoxton Hall, London; Green Bird, STA Experimental Theatre, Shanghai.

Dance productions include set and lighting for The Featherstonehaughs and The Cholmondeleys 1994-2010, and several site-specific works with Stephen Koplowitz in Britain and Germany. In 2009 and 2011 he designed set and lighting for dance-theatre pieces for Jochen Ulrich at the Landestheater, Linz.

Simon makes his own installation and artworks including fluorescent pieces Bough 1 (London, 2004) – winner of the Lighting Design Awards 2006 ‘special projects’ category; Bough 2 (Glasgow 2006); Winter Garden (Durham 2009). Standing Still (2002) was a night walk through the ancient oaks of Sherwood Forest. Cascade (2006) was a site-specific event in and around the Cascade at The Alnwick Garden, commissioned for a world cultural summit. Fogscape #03238 was made in collaboration with Fujiko Nakaya for the Lumiere Festival in Durham (2015). Bough 3 was a new commissioned fluorescent piece for Lumiere London (2018).