Stuart Billinghurst

A family of makers

I grew up surrounded by people who made things.

Before I was born, my father built our home computer from a Tangerine kit and housed it in a hand-built wooden case. He repaired our cars and taught me how to work on mine. When one of my first cars needed an engine rebuild, we stripped it down together, had the cylinders rebored and rebuilt it piece by piece. In time, he also built the house we lived in.

My mother spent her entire career as a seamstress. Beginning in London’s fashion cutting houses before going on to run her own bespoke dressmaking business, she dedicated her career to a craft that demanded patience, precision and an exceptional eye for detail.

Growing up, making things was not unusual; it was simply how problems were solved. If something broke, you fixed it. If it did not exist, you worked out how to build it.

It started with a torch

Apparently, I’ve been doing the lighting for longer than I can remember.

I am told that, outside my aunt’s house in Cardiff, I stood with a torch and a tennis racket trying to make patterns across the front of the building. When anyone asked what I was doing, I replied: “I’m doing the lighting.”

I do not remember it. My family do. Apparently, not much has changed.

Taking things apart to understand them

I never really enjoyed breaking things. I enjoyed understanding them.

My first computer was a Texas Instruments TI‑99/4A, with its distinctive black keyboard and brushed aluminium case. Later came a Compaq PC, while our home became one of the first in the area with internet access and probably one of the only houses for miles with its own 10Base‑T network.

Curiosity quickly became practical. I took plugs apart, sat in a skip stripping components from a television with a soldering iron, built joined bicycles into a tandem and assembled my own DJ setup and lighting from component kits bought from Maplin and Radio Shack.

Theatre later became the place where that curiosity found a creative home. I understood how equipment worked before I understood lighting as an art; studying and practising theatre showed me how technology could shape emotion, timing and story.

The first control system

At sixteen, I decided to build my own lighting desk.

After first using a Pulsar desk at school, I wanted to understand how lighting control worked rather than simply operate it. With help from my physics teacher, I designed and built a prototype computer-controlled lighting desk around a BBC Micro.

RAM chips and digital-to-analogue converters stored values for each channel and controlled thyristor circuits. It was all built by hand — an early version of the same instinct that now drives my touring systems, set electrics and show-control work.

At roughly the same age, I also built and installed lighting bars in my village hall, scrounging equipment from wherever I could to give its “old time musical” productions some proper technical theatre.

There is no photograph of the BBC Micro desk. It was built long before carrying a camera in your pocket was normal; what survives is the way it taught me to think about control systems.

“This is where I belong.”

I skipped class because I had already decided where I belonged.

Theatre first excited me at school: being part of a group, helping make something happen and having something useful to offer. I understood how much of the equipment worked, but I had not yet learned the art of lighting.

My first show was an outdoor production of Grease, where I worked on sound. I skipped a class to attend rehearsal. When my home economics teacher came to find me, I told her that this was where I belonged and what I wanted to do as a career. The conversation did not go especially well, but I stayed.

Learning the whole stage, not just the lights

At the time I thought they were making the wrong decision. They were absolutely right.

I applied for a BTEC in Performance with a lighting bias. Instead, I was pushed towards stage management on the basis that I already understood the basics of lighting and needed to understand the other backstage roles. I disagreed at the time, but it was the right decision and gave me a much broader understanding of stagecraft.

Around the same time, I became lighting operator for the 13-piece soul band The Soul Destroyers — my first proper paid work. I continued lighting them until moving to Devon in late 1999. I still love live music lighting, but theatre and its creative possibilities have always felt like home.

Computing was never really a detour

It gave me another set of tools to bring back to theatre.

After struggling to establish myself in professional theatre in Wiltshire, I moved into another field I understood: computers. I worked for a small healthcare business building databases before joining Lucent in Malmesbury, where I brought practical and telephony skills into Tier 2 support from October 1998 to October 1999.

With Y2K approaching, I decided it was time for a change. I moved to Devon, worked with an events company and through several roles before joining the University of Plymouth in 2005.

I had kept my hand in with occasional smaller lighting and live event work. By the time theatre became the centre of my working life again, the industry had changed: lighting desks had become computers, show control had become software and networking had become part of everyday production.

The computing, telephony and networking knowledge I brought back proved invaluable. Those years did not take me away from theatre; they gave me the skills to bridge creative ideas and the increasingly connected systems behind modern productions.

Enthusiasm opened the door

I got the job not because I had all the skills, but because I had enthusiasm.

When a technical role became available within the university’s Theatre and Performance department, I applied and said at interview: “This is my dream job.”

I got the job not because I already had every skill they needed, but because I had enthusiasm. Over the next ten years I embedded myself in the department, supporting incoming companies, productions and student work while continuing to learn.

Everyone learns differently

Teaching helped me make technical knowledge useful, not merely correct.

After completing the Master’s, I gained a teaching qualification. Exploring different teaching methods reinforced what I already knew from my own schooling: there is no single right way to explain an idea.

That understanding shapes how I work with students, performers, creatives and venue technicians — whether I am demonstrating a desk, writing an advance or handing over a complete touring system.

A partnership years in the making

I had followed their story for years. Then they asked if I knew anyone.

Le Navet Bête had graduated from Plymouth University shortly before I joined the department. As alumni, they returned as visiting practitioners and with Christmas productions, so I had followed their story from near the beginning.

Later, while freelancing for the Barbican Theatre, I looked after them at the Athenaeum in Plymouth. Rather than simply opening the building, powering up and sitting back, I got stuck in: helping build props, solving lighting and sound problems and supporting whatever the production needed. I did the same the following year with Treasure Island.

When their Technical Director changed career after Covid, they asked whether I knew anyone who might be interested. I said I would. They were delighted, and a brilliant partnership began.

The moments that made it feel real

Lowry, Edinburgh and the first reveal of a lit set

Standing at the technical position on the Lowry’s Lyric stage after Covid was a magical moment. Theatre was on its knees, yet I was moving forward, controlling a major venue and trusted with a company’s show.

At the Edinburgh Fringe, I designed a lighting plot for Friendsical — a show I had never seen — in one of the festival’s leading venues at the Assembly Rooms. When Miranda later sat with me in a bar and said they would love me to join the tour, it felt like another “have I made it?” moment.

Even now, one of the best moments is watching Le Navet Bête walk into a newly lit set for the first time. With the added set electrics, I can now say: “It looks good — but watch this,” and make the world time-travel, pulse or transform into the underworld.

All the threads come together

Creative ideas made practical

Today, the things that once looked unrelated — lighting, electronics, theatre, networking, teaching, programming, electrical work and telecommunications — come together in the same projects.

I design lighting and sound, build set electrics and practical effects, create show-control and touring systems, adapt productions for unusual venues and help companies turn ambitious ideas into reliable shows.

Outside theatre, I became the internet service provider for our valley because nobody else was going to do it. I now also look after Totnes Christmas Market and its light switch-on because, after the lights failed one year, they brought me in to make sure it did not happen again.