Jürgen Kolb has been involved in lighting and design for theatre, opera and site-specific theatre since 1995.

Starting at Volksbühne Berlin, he had the chance to work on productions by directors like Christoph Marthaler, Anna Viebrock, Frank Castorf and Christoph Schlingensief with lighting designer Ulrich Schneider.

His work at the Dutch National Opera has given him the opportunity to work with lighting designers Jean Kalman, Wolfgang Göbbel, Peter van Praat and David Finn. He oversaw the lighting for the revival of Willy Decker's “Die Tote Stadt” at opera houses in Barcelona, London, Paris, Madrid and Bilbao, as well as Robert Carsen’s “Dialogue des Carmelites” in Oviedo, Nice, and Toronto. 

As lighting manager at the Munich Kammerspiele, he designed the lighting for several theatre productions by Armin Petras, Thomas Schmauser, Susanne Kennedy, Martin Kušej, Meg Stuart and Johan Simons, among others.

Having started out as a freelance lighting designer, Jürgen has worked on theatre and site-specific productions with director Karen Breece. He created the lighting for her production “Dachau // Prozesse” in the historical building of the Bavarian riot police in Dachau.

He designed the lighting for Susanne Kennedy's Ruhrtriennale productions “Orfeo”, “Medea.Matrix” and “Until our hearts stop” from Meg Stuart. He worked with Orchester Kaleidoskop in Berlin.

In Taiwan, he realized the lighting design for Chien-Hao Chang's dance performance “Hide and Seek” and for the Tainaner Ensemble “The Book of Fate”. He collaborates with Cloud Gate 2 on their double bill “Spring Riot” and with John Maloney on “Kreutzer Serenade” at the BenFeng Art Festival in Tainan.

His freelance activity includes “La Reprise” at the Kunstenfestival in Brussels, Festival Avignon and “La Clemenza di Tito” at the Grand Théâtre de Genève. He designed the lighting for Guy Joostens productions “Cardillac” at the Opera Antwerp and “Arabella” at the Aalto Theatre in Essen. At Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf he created the lighting for “Ein Blick von der Brücke” from Armin Petras and Roger Vontobel's “Fight Club” as well as Christian Brey's “The Producers” at Staatstheater Mainz.

He has worked with director Tomo Sugao on some music theatre productions for children for the Philharmonie of Luxembourg.

Jürgen became lighting manager at Staatstheater Kassel in 2011, where he designed the lighting for music theatre productions such as “Tosca”, “Weihnachtsoratorium”, “Die Dreigroschenoper”, “Einbruch mehrerer Dunkelheiten” and “Die Zauberflöte”.

Upcoming productions are with Christian Thausing at the Philharmonie of Luxembourg and Milo Rau at the Grand Theatre of Geneva.