Working across the UK and internationally, Joshua has built a reputation for bold, inventive and emotionally resonant design that moves fluidly between intimacy and spectacle. His work often combines sculptural lighting with integrated video and projection design, crafting immersive environments that transform theatres, landscapes and found spaces into living narrative worlds.
Joshua’s recent and acclaimed productions include Kenrex at Sheffield Theatres,The Other Palace & Off Broadway NYC, which received a 2026 Olivier Award nomination for Best Lighting Design, The House Party for Headlong and Chichester Festival Theatre, The Hot Wing King & The Odyssey at The National Theatre, Measure for Measure for the Royal Shakespeare Company, Noughts & Crosses & A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, The Human Body & Love & other acts of Violence at Donmar Warehouse, Wolf, Witch, Giant, Fairy for the Royal Opera House, and A Raisin in the Sun for Headlong.
Joshua Pharo
Joshua is an Olivier Award nominated lighting and video designer whose work spans theatre, opera, dance, live music, installation and large-scale immersive performance.
His practice is driven by atmosphere, emotion and the relationship between light, image, sound and space, creating visually striking worlds that are both cinematic and deeply human.
His wider body of work includes collaborations with companies and venues including WildWorks, Young Vic, Royal Exchange Theatre, Graeae, Manchester International Festival, Unlimited Theatre, Fuel Theatre and Theatre Royal Stratford East.
Alongside theatre, Joshua’s work extends into film, music, opera and installation, where he continues to explore how technology and design can deepen emotional storytelling and collective experience. His interest in how theatre, film and installation meet has been something he has explored with Mydd and is excited to explore further.
His work pushing the boundaries of technical design in landscape theatre has been hugely exciting, fascinating and profound.
Joshua was nominated for the 2026 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Lighting Design for Kenrex and received the 2025 Profile Award for Outstanding Year in Theatre for his work across The House Party, A Raisin in the Sun, The Hot Wing King and Kenrex.
As part of DAUR, Joshua brings a longstanding commitment to experimentation, collaboration and fearless visual storytelling, helping shape immersive and multidisciplinary work that is emotionally rich, technically ambitious and rooted in shared experience. His interest in people, place and storytelling is a passion he is thrilled to continue exploring with the DAUR team.
