Francis Reid is a foremost international theatre lighting designer, lecturer, writer and adviser on theater design and technology.  Because of a growing passion for the Arts, Francis Reid left Edinburgh University before completing his studies in science and psychology.  He worked for five years in stage and production management for repertory drama, touring opera, the Aldeburgh Festival and Edinburgh Fringe.  He then specialized in lighting design and was Lighting Director of Glyndebourne Festival Opera throughout the decade of the 1960s.  He was subsequently responsible for the lighting design for over 300 productions of drama, opera, musical comedies and pantomimes.  Many of these were staged in London, Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels and other major centres of theatrical arts.

From 1979 to 1981, Francis Reid was Director of the Theatre Royal in Bury St Edmunds; and from 1982 to 1987, Head of Theatre Design at London’s Central School of Art and Design.  He taught lighting design at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art from 1965 until 1983, and has been a biennial visiting lecturer at the National Theatre School of Canada in Montreal since 1974.  His extensive lecture tours have taken him to numerous cities in Europe, America, India, South and East Asia, Australia and New Zealand; and hew has delivered learned papers at major conferences all over the world.  He is a member of the British Council’s Drama and Dance Advisory Committee and has served as Director of Studies for British Council International Theatre Lighting Seminars in London in 1988, 1991, 1993 and 1995.

Author of four highly-acclaimed books on theatre lighting and another four volumes on theatre design and technology, Francis Reid was editor of the international lighting review Tabs from 1974 to 1977, and wrote for each of the 56 issues of the professional magazine Cue from 1979 to 1988.  He has reviewed many new theatres for the Architect’s Journal and is a frequent contributor to periodicals and standard reference publications in his field of expertise.

In 1988, Francis Reid joined the independent international accreditation panel to review the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts.  He was appointed Advisor and External Assessor to the Academy’s School of Technical Arts from 1989 to 1991, and served as Dean of the School during in interregnum period in the academic year 1992/93.  He returned to be External Examiner of the School in 1995.

Mr President, in recognition of his outstanding creativity and international achievements in the field of lighting design and theatre technology, his devoted efforts in theatre arts education and his valuable contribution to this Academy, I present Mr Francis Reid for the award of Fellowship of the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts.