Rate My Professor Martyn Roberts

Martyn Roberts serves as Theatre Manager, Designer, and Professional Practice Fellow in the School of Performing Arts at the University of Otago, where he contributes to theatre production and education. He earned a Bachelor of Arts from Victoria University of Wellington (BA VUW) and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Otago (MFA Otago). Roberts' professional interests include lighting and stage design, devised and site-specific theatre, installation art, photography, writing, and theatre making. He co-founded the afterburner theatre and art collective in Wellington and Dunedin and co-devised works with the Site Specific Theatre Company, which won four Fringe awards for Hotel in 2006.

Roberts has a distinguished career creating award-winning light and set designs for productions across New Zealand and internationally, including This Other Eden for Opera Otago, The Caretaker, Punk Rock, and Grounded for Fortune Theatre; collaborations with Touch Compass Dance and Taki Rua Theatre; and afterburner pieces such as Man on the Moon, The Telescope, Fog and Mirrors, The Singularity (co-designed with Rob Larsen), and Dark Matter. His work has appeared at festivals in Sydney, Brisbane, Edinburgh, and Glasgow, with light installations exhibited at the Wellington City Gallery and the Prague Quadrennial in 2004 and 2019. He also designed for the 2006 International Festival of the Arts (Dr Buller's Birds), AK07 (Dark Tourists), and Taki Rua's Mark Twain and Me in Maoriland (2010). Awards include multiple Chapman Tripp Lighting Design Awards (1996 Black Monk, 1997 The Lead Wait, 2002 Copenhagen, 2006 Yours Truly, 2007 Maui), 2017 NZ Fringe Best in Fringe for Dark Matter, 2016 Dunedin Fringe Best Design and Best Multimedia for Dark Matter, and various Dunedin Theatre Awards (2018, 2016, 2015, 2014). Notable publications and performances encompass "Transforming the Dark: Using Colour to Compose Sound in Dark Matter" (Critical Stages/Scènes critiques, 2020, with Jeremy Mayall), Cartographies of a Future (Dunedin Fringe Festival, 2022), TwentyNineteen (Dunedin Fringe, 2023), and The Anderson localization (Dunedin Arts Festival, 2025). Currently, he is involved in set and lighting design for the Fission research project, The End of the Golden Weather (2020, Wow! Productions), and a 2020 installation marking 100 years of radio in New Zealand. As chair of Wow! Productions and member of Entertainment Technology New Zealand, Roberts significantly impacts the theatre design field.