In the 1990s Sven lit small scale theatre shows and complemented
this with lighting for movies, advertisements and music videos in
Germany. Coupled with the subsequent study of theatrical Lighting
Design in London this led Sven to develop a keen interest in digital
technologies and their potential for the stage.
Since 2001 he has been an associate of Mesmer, a collective of likeminded people that explore and promote the use of imagery and projection in the live arts.
For the National Theatre, London Mesmer has provided design
and production services for over twenty productions and has established
a video department to introduce technologies and techniques that have
become de-facto standard today. With Mesmer he also conceived the video system and process that brought to life the technologically groundbreaking musical The Woman in White.
Over the course of the last decade, Sven’s work has been displayed
all over the world. His range of collaborators includes some of the
most established and celebrated artists of the age, among them
directors Michael Blakemore, Matthias Hartman, Jonathan Kent, Robert
Lepage, Simon McBurney, Trevor Nunn, Deborah Warner, David Leveaux and
Francesca Zambello, choreographer Helgi Tomasson, conductor Valery
Gergiev and set designer George Tsypin.
His most recent projects include Deuce, directed by Michael Blakemore on Broadway, Complicite’s A Disappearing Number, directed by Simon McBurney, Disney’s The Little Mermaid on Broadway, directed by Francesca Zambello, Swan Lake for San Francisco Ballet, Theatre For A New Audience’s off-Broadway Hamlet and the re-staging of the Mariinsky Theatre’s Ring Cycle
under maestro Valery Gergiev in St Petersburg in Russia and for the
Royal Opera House, London. Current and future projects include
collaborations with New York’s Guggenheim on the Blaue Reiter art
movement, the musical Wonderland in Tampa Bay and Houston and the opera Die Frau ohne Schatten at the Mariinksy Theatre in St Petersburg. He is based in New York and London.
For more information, please go to the www.svenortel.com