Cecilia Durbin’s lighting is subtle and dynamic

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof 

at Kansas City Repertory Theatre

Robert Trussell, KC Studio

September 16, 2019

‘Requiem for Black Marie’ looks appropriately sordid. The evocative set by Cecilia R. Durbin consists of little more than a raggedy couch and a slanted wall of windows — part “Caligari” skylight, part scrim separating the characters from the miserable events on the prewar Berlin streets. (“Have you been outside lately?” they ask each other.)

-Rachel Saltz, The New York Times

June 18, 2013

Cecilia Durbin’s lighting design is gorgeous.

Murder Ballad

–Dynamite “Murder Ballad” at Detroit Public Theatre
A2 View, Mostly Musical Theatre

October 21, 2016

Pay special attention to the lighting design by Cecilia Durbin, an oft-overlooked yet crucial element that plays a pivotal role here with trippy effects, mood lighting, and blinding bursts to mask magical transformations.

Sideways Stories from Wayside School

at Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble

-Kristin Baver, The Press Enterprise

July 11, 2015

Theatre Horizon’s bleak yet riveting production features captivating performances…and [is] backed by a strong design team.

Cecilia Durbin’s lighting is key to the mood of Yousefzadeh’s production.

In the Blood at Theatre Horizon

-Neal Zoren, NealsPaper

May 7, 2015

The blending of styles and moods is what Rome and Menzies have spent countless time perfecting—every lighting sequence, dynamic, staging set-up, phrasing—they are all there to usher in a total and complete picture of a relationship, and to step back from this relationship, to recall and remember.

Farrington and set designer Cecilia R. Durbin have worked up a clever conceit: To both open each new scene and indicate the passage of time, Sage pulls out props and costumes from a series of onstage backpacks, each one less childishly decorated than the previous. The backyard fence set, meanwhile, creates a sense of both freedom and entrapment.

Mickey & Sage at The Incubator

-Alan Scherstuhl, The Village Voice

September 26, 2012

It’s Lighting Designer Cecilia Durbin who creates a visually stunning opening and closing moment with the harsh white light capturing Eugene Gant like a flashbulb of a camera; forever memorializing him as he was in that inescapable photograph. Durbin’s subdued amber light for the family at the end of the production is another brilliant moment; shrouding the family in a background shadow as Eugene steps forward into the light, separating himself from the family that has held him back for so long.

Cecilia Durbin’s lighting [is] spot-on.

We Are Proud to Present a Presentation about the Hereo of Namibia, Formerly  Known as South West Africa, from the German Südwestafrika, Between the years of 1884-1915

-Howard Shapiro, Shapiro on Theatre

Newsworks  – WHYY

November 6, 2013

The dynamism and breakneck pace, the violent thrashings of Mickey’s bat and Sage’s baton, the artless sidewalk chalk drawings and funky, footlight-positioned backpacks all lend to the ethos and reinforce the yard as the kid’s world apart. A superbly simple set by Cecilia R Durbin (who also designed the nuanced lighting) presents movable shiplap fence that serves as the kid’s makeshift canvas, where Sage writes her name alongside her many grade school loves and where Mickey muses on the inner workings of the universe.