Ryan works internationally as a Lighting Designer for theatre, musicals, opera and dance.

He trained at Rose Bruford College, graduating with a First Class BA Honours Degree in Lighting Design. Ryan was awarded a Masters with Distinction in Art & Politics from Goldsmiths, University of London following his research into ‘Political Light’.

Ryan was awarded ‘Best Lighting Design’ by the Off West End Awards for Bacon.

In 2019, he received the ‘Michael Northern Award for Excellence in Lighting Design’ from the Association of Lighting Designers. 

Theatre credits include: Olion (Frân Wen); Snakes & Ladders (Southwark Playhouse); Rope (Theatr Clwyd); Swim, Aunty, Swim (Belgrade); Hir (Park Theatre); Bacon (International Tour); Breeding (King’s Head); Grimeboy (Birmingham Rep); Isla (Theatr Clwyd/Royal Court); Curtain Up (Theatr Clwyd); Rocky Road (Jermyn Street); When the Sea Swallows Us Whole (Vault Festival); Wind of Heaven (Finborough); Cyrano de Bergerac (The Watermill); Crave (The Other Room/RWCMD); Hauntings & Pork Pies (Theatre Clwyd/National Trust); Easy Virtue (The Watermill); The Island (Fio/UK Tour); Cardiff Boy (Red Oak Theatre/The Other Room); The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives (Elufowoju, Jr. Ensemble/Arcola Theatre); Dames (Siberian Lights/Pleasance London); Finding Mr Hart (Blackburn Cotton Exchange); The River (Red Oak Theatre); Landmines (Bridge Company/Ovalhouse); Flew the Coop (New Diorama Theatre).

Musicals include: Cinderella: Rock ‘n’ Roll Panto, Red Riding Hood: Rock ‘n’ Roll Panto (Liverpool Everyman); Sleeping Beauty (South Mill Arts/Wisecracker Ent.); Pippin (UWTSD, Cardiff); Becoming (Stratford Circus); Robin Hood (The Watermill); Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (Bournemouth Pavilion); Wondertown (Bohemian Theatre Co.); Assassins (Stratford Circus).

Dance credits include: Can This Place be a Temple? (The Place, UK Tour); TRAPLORD (Southbank Festival Series); Natalia Osipova: Force of Nature (New York City Center); Vortex (Russell Maliphant Dance Company); To Start With (Sadler’s Wells); Shades of Blue (Sadler’s Wells/BBC Arts); Codi (National Dance Company Wales/National Tour); Young Associates: Mixed Bill (Sadler’s Wells); Greater than Lion (Kennedy Muntanga Dance Theatre/Messums Gallery); Generation Goldfish (Bayerisches Staatsballett); NYDC X Russell Maliphant (Sadler’s Wells); Left from Write (Norwegian National Ballet II/Linbury, Royal Opera House & European Tour); When It Arrives; Shall We Just Retire to the Lake? (Messums Gallery, Wiltshire); Together, Not the Same (Sadler’s Wells).

Ryan has worked as an Assistant/Associate Lighting Designer for LDs including Michael Hulls, Urs Schönebaum, Richard Howell, Hansjörg Schmidt, Nic Farman, and Dan Saggars.

As Associate: An Enemy of the People (Duke of York); Nick Mohammed: The Very Best & Worst Of Mr Swallow (Duke of York); Breaking the Waves (Detroit Opera; Opéra Comique); Forbidden (Aditi Mangaldas Dance Company, NCPA Mumbai); Bad Jews (Arts Theatre, West End); Umm Kulthum & The Golden Era (London Palladium); Faustus: That Damned Woman (Headlong Theatre/UK Tour); Spiral Pass (Lyon Opera Ballet); The Thread (Sadler’s Wells; Megaron, Athens); Toujours et Près de Moi (ERRATICA/International Tour); Under Glass (Clod Ensemble/UK Tour); Orfeo ed Euridice (Longborough Festival Opera).

Ryan has mentored students at Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama and is a Visiting Tutor at Rose Bruford College.

Ryan is an Associate Artist of Red Oak Theatre Company and Bohemian Theatre Company.

VORTEX

“Gorgeous imagery … a 30ft billow of chiffon that curls and bellies through the air like a topsail in a high wind and supplies a home for Ryan Joseph Stafford’s prismatic lighting”

– Louise Levene, Financial Times

“loosely inspired by the flow and energy in the paintings of Jackson Pollock, and uses five dancers under Ryan Joseph Stafford’s lighting to create a series of images that conjure paint and structure through movement and light … his sinuous body seeming to melt into the surface, illuminated by golden light. As the piece progresses, it constantly plays with pictures of creativity, making shapes out of shadows, out of dancers bowing beneath an arcing bucket in flight, or sliding down the slanted wood like figures in Michelangelo’s Last Judgment”

— Sarah Crompton, The Guardian

“lighting designer Ryan Joseph Stafford casting striped light across the dancers’ bodies, as if in the thick of a bamboo forest.”

— Lyndsey Winship, The Guardian

“beautiful lighting”

— Siobhan Murphy, The Stage

“gorgeous stage pictures … Maliphant and lighting designer Ryan Joseph Stafford layer dappled light over the dancers and a series of props. Gold-lit limbs unwind in front of a tipped plane of wood, suggesting a giant easel. One sequence of shadows looks like a forest, or like the rumpled textures of a finished Pollock painting. As they move through it, the cast of five seem to flicker, like an old film. Later, they create the same jittery effect in full light, like an illusion that turns out to be real.”

— Zoe Anderson, Independent 

SHADES OF BLUE

“This is also wonderfully lit (this time by Ryan Joseph Stafford) … At one point the dancers seem threatened by their environment itself, as the stage lighting rig comes crashing down, pinning them in a crouch beneath its blue glare.”

– Sarah Crompton, The Guardian

“The movement doesn’t just happen, it detonates: a feeling consolidated by Ryan Joseph Stafford’s epic lighting effects.”

– Louise Levene, Financial Times

“Visually … Shades of Blue is absolutely enthralling, thanks in large part to Ryan Joseph Stafford’s powerful and imaginative lighting design”

– Teresa Guerreiro, Culture Whisper

“Ryan Joseph Stafford's lighting design is inspired and innovative in its use to tell the story”

– Charlie Wilks, Broadway World

“The lighting by Ryan Joseph Stafford, that does so much to build and shape the work, becomes a physical presence as the lighting bars descend at frightening speed to stop just short of the dancers.”

– Maggie Foyer, Seeing Dance

GRIMEBOY

“The music (composed by Auden Allen) is infectious, with fast lyrics and thumping bass; the actors’ choreographed movements in the fight scenes are also deft and there is very striking lighting (lighting design by Ryan Joseph Stafford)”

– Afria Akbar, The Guardian

CODI

“Plaudits to lighting designer Ryan Joseph Stafford, who effectively recreated the suffocating atmosphere of deep-shaft coal mines.

Combined with Matsena’s arrangement of bodies this gives the work moments of painterly beauty, reminiscent of past masters such as Caravaggio.”

– Teresa Guerreiro, Culture Whisper

ROCKY ROAD

“..a fine example of onscreen theatre wrought with the suspense of live drama and employing the aesthetics of film. Ryan Joseph Stafford’s lugubrious lighting creates an almost black-and-white effect with its shadows and squares of light”

– Afria Akbar, The Guardian

“Special mentions must also go to design (Ceci Calf), lighting (Ryan Joseph Stafford) and sound (Dan Samson), each working in perfect harmony to provide a claustrophobic sometimes horrifying atmosphere throughout the play.”

– Kiefer Williams, North West End

SHADES OF BLUE (BBC iPlayer)

“prison cells of light and zombie motion … the chaotic repetitions of protest and imprisonment capture an emotion of 2020 better than anything else in ‘Dancing Nation.’”

– Brian Seibert, New York Times

“The standout”

“Its anger, urgency and power overcome the limitations of the digital format, bursting through the screen”

– Sarah Crompton, The Guardian

“striking imagery, legible ideas, political bite”

– Lyndsey Whinship, The Guardian

NOT QUITE JERUSALEM

..lit with poetic imagination by the also new and one-to-watch Ryan Joseph Stafford: his handling of density, saturation and fading, combined with an unerring sense of what to do with the set, make his work a joy in itself.

– Julian Eaves, British Theatre

..the set and lighting design (Ceci Calf and Ryan Joseph Stafford respectively) make excellent use of the small space at the Finborough.

– Laura Fuller, Broadway World

Being lit pitilessly and tenebrously by Ryan Joseph Stafford – there’s a fine sun-slatted moment too – makes heat palpable.

– Simon Jenner, Fringe Review

The lighting by Ryan Joseph Stafford and designer Ceci Calf make the Kibbutz setting so authentic.

– Penny Nair Price, Saturn Herald

Design by Ceci Calf and lighting by Ryan Joseph Stafford create a believable world with some beautiful images.

– Derek Benfield, UK Theatre Web

WIND OF HEAVEN

…lithe changes in lighting help create a world imbued with a heavenly glow.

– Mert Dilek, The Stage

The lighting design by Ryan Joseph Stafford is glowingly warm for much of the play, but there are also poignant apocalyptic bursts that startlingly interrupt the domestic quietude at crucial moments.

– Richard Beck, Broadway Baby

TOGETHER, NOT THE SAME

This caging of the dancers is viscerally presented as the lighting rigs begin to drop from above the stage, pressing down on the writhing bodies below. It is a powerful piece, and the combination of the dance, lighting and soundscape is perfection.

– Esme Mahoney, Upper Circle

CARDIFF BOY

..once Ryan Joseph Stafford’s lighting comes into full force, it all makes sense. As Hammett reminisces on times gone by, the lights flicker over the images, creating a beautiful and ethereal atmosphere.

- Jafar Iqbal, Wales Arts Review

..while Ryan Joseph Stafford’s lighting hints at an ethereal outside world brimming with opportunity.

- Nicholas Davies, The Stage

[Ryan Joseph Stafford’s] lighting design is also excellent, with the use of colour, projection and silhouette creating visually stunning moments.

- Whiplash Review

THE ISLAND

Ryan Joseph Stafford’s lighting achieves the same effect – when characters John and Winston dream of the outside world the stage takes on a hauntingly bright, almost ethereal, quality. Reality is far dimmer, enhancing the claustrophobia..

Jafar Iqbal, Wales Arts Review