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Christopher Robinson favors Astera

In 2015, New York-based lighting designer Christopher Robinson, of Revolutionary Lighting, landed the job as Head of Lighting for “Hamilton”, one of Broadway’s most acclaimed productions - a role he still enjoys today. From there, he subsequently worked on all the North American productions, touring and resident, of the show up until 2020 when the pandemic changed everything.

Robinson worked hard on re-inventing his work-life balance and seized the chance to learn new skills in the world of lighting for streaming and broadcast video, as that was where the lighting opportunities were during this highly uncertain time. His first Astera purchase was in 2020 - a set of Titan Tubes.

Based amidst the vibrance and hustle of New York, with a wide and diverse network of contacts, he soon found plenty of new, improvised and underground streaming, video and other creative art and community projects popping up, and learned to light a host of different scenarios with the Titan Tubes. For larger projects, he started hiring in more - and different - Astera products, usually from Main Light.

After purchasing the Titan Tubes in 2020, he was soon lighting an increasing amount of music, art, design, fashion and other performance concepts. More recently, he has purchased Astera QuikSpots and QuikPunches. These were an investment made specifically for shows with Miguel Cervantes, the longest-running “Hamilton” lead for whom he has been working since 2022, lighting corporate shows in a Hudson Yards office tower penthouse.

In 2025, to develop the look for these shows, Robinson started renting QuikSpots and QuikPunches from Main Light and decided that he needed to have his own for Cervantes and also for a Guitars Over Guns video shoot that he was booked for. “What convinced me to buy was a show at the Old Navy store in Times Square, where I had to light dancers on platforms, with only a tiny decorative wooden slat available for a rigging point”, he says, adding that these fixtures have been on almost every job since.

The QuikPunch proved ideal for a job via Brooklyn-based audio-visual production company Devlin’s for Armadillo Luxury Rugs at a Lower East Side industrial space, which needed rugs - installed on the walls - lit, plus an enormous fabric sculpture in the yard, complete with its suspension cables concealed. Robinson designed a goal post that was cantilevered over a scenic gallery wall. 

Laura Bickford, sales manager at Main Light who is also his account handler, suggested to use the QuikPunch, so he hooked seven units onto the Unistrut - itself ratchet-strapped to the building structure. The sculpture lighting started at the wall and followed the cascading yarn down onto the floor.

At a New York Fashion Week event staged at the Olney Gleason Gallery in Chelsea, Astera fixtures again provided the desired solution. With no hanging options for lights, Robinson obtained a long-threaded rod for attaching his QuikSpots and QuikPunches to the Unistrut in the ceiling, lighting tables and other features around the room.

During the 2026 Fifa World Cup Final, Robinson lit an entire room for Diageo with QuikSpots, QuikPunches, Astera AX2-50 and AX2-100 PixelBars, plus a few moving lights to ramp up the party vibes, including highlighting a large football set piece behind the DJ with QuikSpots. Although he had not lit molo walls before, he decided to graze them with vertically mounted AX2s.

“It’s the same principle as lighting a brick wall from the floor and letting the shadows cascade up the facade”, he says. As the fixtures were mounted vertically, the light travelled horizontally across the texture. The entrance-way ones were all curved, so those were lit with the QuikSpots and QuikPunches.

For “Sugar Sugar!” - a free, annual outdoor performing arts festival staged at Brooklyn’s Domino Square waterfront amphitheatre - Robinson rigged QuikPunches on bespoke mobile towers and wheeled them to the different stages and areas of the park as required. The towers were made from theatrical base plates with added castors plus a 4 ft stick of truss, one QuikSpot and two QuikPunches, and these provided the primary side light for all stages. “They made sure I could get close to the action wherever that happened to be”, he says.

Robinson adds that the Astera light sources and the Titan LED engine are “fantastic” for key lighting and producing flesh tones, and he also appreciates the zoom as one of the defining features, and in addition to that, “they can be used virtually anywhere”.

(Photos: Clark Studio/Chris Robinson)

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