Connor Sale

About the Project

Alexithymia is a journey through the four main emotions (sadness, happiness, fear, and anger) through the lens of a puppet named Friend. The design followed their journey in a fashion that painted the entire environment in the overwhelming emotions that Friend was experiencing.

Market Boy is a play that shows the decline of the free market in London in the 1980's, told through the experience of a boy going through his adolescence. The design followed the arc of this decline through the Boy's eyes, going from colorful and bright to unsaturated and heavy.

Urinetown is a musical about overthrowing a powerful, corrupt company who regulates water, specifically in the bathroom; however, it highlights the limits of a revolutionary act and of excessive idealism. The design followed the strict structure of the musical and showcased it in a self-aware fashion, as the characters often referenced the fact that they were in a musical.

Above the Water, shown in the video above, is a movement piece that follows the journey of loss through the different stages of grief. This section of video, filmed at a dress rehearsal, shows the fleeting nature of colorful memory and follows the performer as they crash into the water of their own despair.

About Connor Sale

Connor has been the Lighting Designer for a plethora of projects in both the Theatre and Dance Departments. Recent credits include Alexithymia, Above the Water, Case Study: Contact, and Urinetown—all within the Theatre Department. His freshman year summer, he worked as a Production Intern at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Western Massachusetts. He also worked as a Venue Technician at the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland. Additionally, he had the opportunity to be the Lighting Design Intern for his professor Heather Gilbert’s Broadway debut with The Sound Inside at Studio 54, which is currently nominated for a Tony for Best Lighting Design of a Play.

This spring, he had an installation at the C33 gallery as a part of the Hyperlink show. He’ll be in Chicago for the next year but is unsure of where he’ll end up next as the world opens back up. He finds joy in roasted cashews, performance-based art that allows you to project your own extreme emotions onto extreme/absurd images onstage, and low maintenance plants that look nice. You can find more of his work at connorsale.com.