I went to
USITT back in '05, and the lighting
keynote was from Luc Lafortune. He made some really good points in terms of lighting design (yeah, we're in the Sound forum, I know). The biggest thing I took from it, very revolutionary if you've always had textbook lighting design hammered in your head, is that every light must have a purpose, a reason for being. If it's just there because the equations tell you to put one there, it doesn't need to be there. I take the same principle to cueing (and I think he may have even said this about cueing), if there are too many lights on in a
cue (lights that are in it just because), it's time to rewrite that
cue from scratch. Cool stuff.
I don't expect to be a noise or lighting guy for Cirque any time in the foreseeable future, but I would like to become that good over time.