Sandee Chew, 27 • Lighting Designer

It was a good thing that Sandee Chew stumbled into her profession. The 27-year-old was an electrical engineering major at the University of Houston when she decided to take on an advanced course in lighting design. Sandee admits that she wasn’t too blown away when she attended the introductory class but she wanted to learn from her professor, Kevin Ridgon, a two-time Tony Award nominee for his work in The Grapes of Wrath.

But her interest and passion for light escalated as she learnt more about it (she had to keep light journals, making notes about her observations of sunlight for the day, amongst other issues) and she especially loved how its an intangible medium. “You can’t explain light. You need to experience it,” Sandee explains. “In film the camera moves, drawing your attention to the subject. But when it comes to theatre, there’s only one space and light is used to focus on, draw attention to or take away attention at the right moment. It’s the camera’s eye on stage.”

Since graduating, Sandee has been involved in productions like Broken Bridges: The Musical, Electric Beckett, Going North and many more. However, Sandee says that her proudest work to date was on Equus, the production by Sunway College’s Department of Performance + Media which premiered in May. The play challenged her creativity as she had to work with the basics to light a full dramatic production. Sandee worked with the limitations and maximized what was available by making lighting facilities out of unconventional items like longan tin cans, aluminium foil and black cardboard. With that sort of resourcefulness and a genuine will to improve, Sandee is definitely Blue Chilli material.

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