About
Megan Reilly is an award-winning lighting and media designer for theater, dance, and immersive experiences. As a designer, she grounds her practice in knowing that all environments tell a story and influence audiences psychologically, emotionally, and biologically; her job as a designer is to guide an audience along a director’s journey with intention and consideration for both the work and the needs of performers and audience members.
Her work has been seen across the United States and internationally in Edinburgh (Edinburgh Fringe Festival with Toronto’s Toasterlab), Dublin (Smock Alley Theatre with spoken-word artist Felispeaks), Portugal, and Avignon. She is an eight-time nominee and two-time winner of the B. Iden Payne Award for Outstanding Lighting Design, and her work was selected for the Gallery Exhibition of World Stage Design 2009 in Seoul, Korea and the 2025 Spectacles Vivant Scénes Numeriques showcase in the Festival d’Avignon.
Regionally, her work includes THE WORLD GOES ‘ROUND (Milwaukee Repertory Theatre), A CHRISTMAS CAROL (TheatreSquared), YELLOW FACE (Lyric Stage Company of Boston), and MATILDA (TheatreSquared).
Immersive theatre work includes the long-running CABAL (Walking Shadow Theatre) and her own virtual reality performance BEYOND THE GARDEN OF ADRIAN, a restaging of Adrian Howell’s 2009 performance. She is also a published scholarly writer on the subject of immersive theatre and virtual performance.
She is an assistant professor of lighting and media design at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a proud member of USA 829.
News & Projects:
Lighting Design: Cinderella, Prescott Park Arts Festival, Portsmouth NH, Summer 2026.
Lighting Design: The World Goes ‘Round, Milwaukee Repertory Theater, Milwaukee WI, September 11 - November 1, 2026.
Lighting Design: Urinetown, The University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison WI, November 19 - December 6, 2026.
Projection Design: Ushuaia Blue, The University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison WI, April 15-25, 2027.
Writing & Presentation:
PUBLICATION NEWS! The Routledge Companion to Immersive Arts and Media, a manuscript bringing together 74 distinct voices from the academic and practitioner community, including Neurodivergent Labor: Audience Care on the Spectrum by Megan Reilly, will be out in March 2027.
Performance/Showcase: Beyond the Garden of Adrian at Spetacles Vivant, Scènes Numériques, part of the Festival d’Avignon, July 7-8, 2025, Avignon, France.
Paper: “Beyond the Garden of Adrian and the authentic actor-audience connection,” at the Contemporary Theatre and Drama in English Conference 2024, Innsbruck, Austria, May 2-4, 2024.
"Light and Darkness: How sunlight supports a narrative at Sintra’s Quinta da Regaleira." Theatre and Performance Design, March 5, 2024.
Session Chair & Panelist: “Virtual and Augmented Reality Performance Research” USITT 2024, Seattle, March 20-23, 2024.
Panelist: “Artistic Principles in Media Content Creation with Adobe After Effects” (substitute panelist) USITT 2024, Seattle, March 20-23, 2024
Panelist: “A Neurodivergent Community” USITT 2024, March 20-23, 2024.
Paper: Accessible (im)Possibilities: Designing for Disability in Immersive Performance as part of the Practice/Production Symposium. MATC 2023, Minneapolis, March 9-12, 2023.
Session Chair: USITT 2020 Virtual Performance Series: Finding Pandora X Case Study
Sensory Accessibility Headset - Proposal created for the San Diego Opera Hack in July 2019 by Megan M. Reilly, Collin Huse, Sarah Mosher, and Jacob Sundstrom; the headset would enable audience members on the autism spectrum the opportunity to control the intensity of their own experience, mediating the experience of a performance according to their needs. Download available here as well as on the hack’s official site.
"Looking for a Game with Consequences: Exploring the Emotional Depths of 'The Tension Experience'," No Proscenium, November 28, 2016.
"My Tension Experience, Part 2," HowlRound, November 2, 2016.
"My Tension Experience, Part 1: Exploring Extreme Immersive Theatre," HowlRound, September 16, 2016.
Presenter: USITT 2016 Lighting & Scenic Design Poster Sessions - posters can be downloaded & viewed below:
"When the Gods Interfere in Your Design: The Unpredictability of Designing for Interactive Theatre."
"Great Wall of Pi: Multimedia on a Budget"
"Learning from the Gamification of Theater," HowlRound, June 18, 2014.
"The Right Chair," HowlRound, April 18, 2013.
Interviews & Press:
UW–Madison virtual theatre project featured at Festival d’Avignon - UW School of Education Newsletter
“Live on stage: How theater can thrive in a digital age, ” by Allison Garfield, The Cap Times, September 19, 2024.
“Shining a Light on Neurodiversity in Higher Ed,” by Autumn Sanchez, also published in the Wisconsin State Journal, March 12, 2024.
Panelist, “Thank You Five,” a live discussion on making theatre in a virtual world.
“Finding Connection in Virtual Performance,” a part of a series titled “Faculty Members Across the Arts Bring Creative Lens to Critical Issues” in the Winter 2021-22 issue of Learning Connections.
“Thinking Outside the Black Box: Theatre reinvents itself to bring audiences back” by Lili Sarajian. Interview given to Curb Magazine for their annual issue, published December 13, 2021.
Feature: Who Lights Our World: Megan Reilly | TheatreArtLife; February 10, 2021.
“‘Ann’ at TheatreSquared.” Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Podcasts, Listen to a NWA Democrat-Gazette Features Podcast as features writer Lara Jo Hightower chats with members of the design team and cast of “Ann.” Recorded February 21, 2020.
"Ethics & Immersion," StoryForward Podcast episode 101, guest spot recorded September 25, 2016.