Biography

Simon works internationally as a lighting designer for theatre, dance, and opera. He has designed work for most of Scotland’s leading theatre companies.

Recent highlights include Punchdrunk’s Viola’s Room, the world premiere of Disney’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks (UK & Ireland), Islander (New York / London / Edinburgh), Vanishing Point’s Metamorphosis (Scotland / Italy), Vox Motus’s Flight (worldwide) and Robert Lepage’s production of The Magic Flute (Quebec City)

For the National Theatre of Scotland, he lit The Panopticon, Interference, The 306: Dawn, Dragon (with Vox Motus and Tianjin People's Art Theatre), The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish, Roman Bridge, Truant and A Sheep Called Skye. For Vanishing Point, he has designed Love The Sinner, A Love Beyond, The Metamorphosis and The Dark Carnival. For Vox Motus, his designs include Flight, Dragon, The Infamous Brothers Davenport (with the Lyceum, Edinburgh), The Not-So-Fatal Death of Grandpa Fredo, Bright Black and the multi-award winning Slick. Work for Magnetic North includes Lost in Music, Our Fathers, Kora (with Dundee Rep), Sex and God, Pass the Spoon, Wild Life and After Mary Rose.

Other theatre designs include the Runrig musical The Stamping Ground (Raw Material Arts / Eden Court); Group Portrait in a Summer Landscape, Castle Lennox, Christmas Tales, Glory on Earth, The Iliad, The Weir, The Lion the Witch and The Wardrobe, Hedda Gabler, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, The BFG, Bondagers, A Christmas Carol and Cinderella (Lyceum, Edinburgh); A Mother’s Song (Macrobert); Don Quixote, I Am Tiger, Knives in Hens and the world premiere of Roald Dahl’s The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar (Perth Theatre), The Children, Tay Bridge (Dundee Rep); The Season and Honk (Royal & Derngate); Crocodile Fever, Meet Me at Dawn, Letters to Morrissey, Black Beauty, Grain in the Blood and Tracks of the Winter Bear (Traverse Theatre); Muster Station: Leith, Dr Stirlingshire's Discovery and Light Boxes (Grid Iron); A Game of Death and Chance and Enlightenment House (National Trust for Scotland); Crumbles Search for Christmas (West Yorkshire Playhouse); God of Carnage and This Wide Night (Tron Theatre, Glasgow); We Are All Just Little Creatures, Teenage Trilogy, Mamababame and PUSH (Curious Seed);  Fisk, The Lost Things and Feral (Tortoise in a Nutshell);  After The End and Topdog / Underdog (Citizens Theatre, Glasgow); Chalk Farm and The Static (ThickSkin)

Simon has won the CATS Award for Best Design three times - for Flight in 2018, Black Beauty in 2017 and Bondagers in 2015. He won a Profile Award for Outstanding Achievement in Theatre Lighting in 2024 for Ragnarok. Over the years, his lighting has created a Guinness World Record, brought 30,000 people to a windswept Highland Forest, and caused reports of an alien invasion.