Jürgen Kolb has been involved in lighting and design for theatre, opera, and site-specific theatre since 1992. He began working on a stage at Ballett Frankfurt and later at Volksbühne Berlin, where he had the opportunity to collaborate on productions by renowned artists such as William Forsythe, Michael Simon, Christoph Marthaler, Anna Viebrock, Frank Castorf, Christoph Schlingensief and Ulrich Schneider.
His tenure at the Dutch National Opera provided him with the chance to collaborate with esteemed lighting designers including Jean Kalman, Wolfgang Göbbel, Peter van Praat and David Finn. He supervised 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 lighting for various theatre productions by Armin Petras, Thomas Schmauser, Susanne Kennedy, Martin Kušej, Meg Stuart, Johan Simons and others.
Initially starting as a freelance lighting designer, Jürgen has collaborated on theatre and site-specific productions with director Karen Breece. Notably, he created the lighting for her production "Dachau // Prozesse" in the historical building of the Bavarian riot police in Dachau.
He designed lighting for Susanne Kennedy's Ruhrtriennale productions "Orfeo", "Medea.Matrix" and "Until our hearts stop" by Meg Stuart. He also collaborated with Orchester Kaleidoskop in Berlin.
In Taiwan, he created lighting designs for Chien-Hao Chang's dance performance "Hide and Seek" and for the Tainaner Ensemble's "The Book of Fate". Additionally, he worked 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 work includes Milo Rau's "La Reprise" at the Kunstenfestival in Brussels, and Festival Avignon as well "La Clemenza di Tito" and "Justice" at the Grand Théâtre de Genève. He also designed 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" by Armin Petras, Roger Vontobel's "Fight Club" and Christian Brey's "The Producers" at Staatstheater Mainz.
He has collaborated with director Tomo Sugao on music theatre productions for children at the Philharmonie of Luxembourg.
In 2021, Jürgen assumed the role of lighting manager at Staatstheater Kassel, where he designed lighting for music theatre productions including "Tosca", "Weihnachtsoratorium", "Dreigroschenoper", "Abendsonne", "Emil und die Detektive", "Einbruch mehrerer Dunkelheiten", "Zauberflöte", "Nussknacker", "Don Giovanni" and "Hamletmaschine".