Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts named award-winning lighting designer Jane Cox as the new director of the University’s Program in Theater. Cox has been a member of the Program in Theater faculty since 2007 and was recently promoted to senior lecturer in the program. Her appointment will begin on July 1.

Cox has received numerous awards for her work as a lighting designer and recently received the Ruth Morley Design Award from the League of Professional Theatre Women and is nominated for a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lighting Design for a Musical for the current Broadway revival of The Color Purple, directed by fellow Princeton faculty member John Doyle.

Cox was nominated for the Tony and Drama Desk awards in 2014 for her work on Machinal at the Roundabout Theater. She was the most nominated designer in any discipline for the 2014 Henry Hewes Design Awards, being nominated for her designs for Machinal, All the Way, and Dinner with Friends. In 2013, Cox won the Henry Hewes award for her work on The Flick, Annie Baker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play.

Originally from Dublin, Ireland, Cox has taught courses at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts graduate program in theater design, Vassar College, Sarah Lawrence College, University of Massachusetts Amherst, and workshops at the Kennedy Center and universities all over the country.

Since joining the Princeton faculty, Cox has designed lighting for numerous productions at the University and has taught courses in lighting design and advanced theatrical design, as well as a freshman seminar, “The Role of Light in Creative Expression,” and guest-taught for “Transformations in Engineering and the Arts” this past semester. In the fall she will co-teach a Princeton Atelier course, “Reinventing the Guided Tour,” with collaborator Monica Bill Barnes in which students will design and choreograph a live experience giving audiences a fresh glimpse into a local Princeton location.

Cox succeeds Tim Vasen, who led the Program in Theater from 2012 until he passed away in December. Playwright and professor in the Program in Theater Robert N. Sandberg has served as acting director of the program over the past five months.

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