TOURING 2026/27
BOOKING NOW
This is our new, living, breathing installation designed for galleries, festivals, and offsite contexts.
Come visit an apartment building humming with life, stories, and quiet revolutions. Watch, listen and explore, as the residents’ lives weave together into a community that’s more than the sum of its parts.
It’s an animated microcosm. A digital world in miniature.
Action and inaction, apathy and energy – individual decisions, collective consequences – rage, despair, hope… the inhabitants of the flats have a lot to consider, as do we.
We’ve worked together too, using writing, devising, hand-animated images, 3D printing, bespoke audio, and performance to create this special installation / experience.
We invite you to meet our new friends, to share a few days of their lives, and to encounter their multiple narratives, perspectives, and possibilities.
The Lightbulb Moment is a quiet but powerful metaphor about systems in motion, power and agency, and how small actions might spark transformative change.
The lightbulb flickers, what do you see?
Rachel, Gillian, Wes, and Adam
April 2026
Proto-type have been making work and supporting young artists in the UK, US, the Netherlands, Russia, China, Armenia, France, and Zimbabwe since 1997. Critics have called our work “an intriguing brush with altered reality” (New York Times), “intelligent and coolly reasoned” (The Guardian), and “enthralling” (Zambezi News).
“Proto-type’s team have such imagination and clarity of vision… a great antidote to a tangled political landscape”
– Exeunt
Get up, eat, wash, work, eat, work, home, eat, rest, bed, repeat. Nash is about to wake up. A little early perhaps, but the birds are noisy.
It’s just a normal morning, in a normal building, on what looks to be a pretty normal day.
Can you see? Get closer. You might need to shift your position. He’s going to turn on the light. Watch…
The Lightbulb Moment is an animation and audio experience that invites you to a digital world in miniature. Acclaimed artists Proto-type and Adam York Gregory tell a story about systems in motion, chains of cause and effect, and about who has the power to make change.
Put on your headphones and come visit an apartment building humming with life, stories, and quiet revolutions.
Watch, listen and explore, as the residents’ lives pull apart and weave together through choice and accident, apathy and energy, their rage, despair and hope.
Join Nash and his friends as they navigate the chaos of a normal world and all its narratives, possibilities, and perspectives.
The lightbulb flickers, what do you see?
proto-type.org | @proto_typetheatre
#TheLightbulbMoment
Premieres at Departure Lounge Festival 2026
IN GOOD COMPANY / DERBY THEATRE
TICKETS AND INFO:
SAT 4 JULY | DEPARTURE LOUNGE 2026 | DERBYTHEATRE.CO.UK
The Lightbulb Moment
by Proto-type and Adam York Gregory
Written & Directed by Rachel Baynton and Andrew Westerside
Performed by Gillian Lees
Animation by Adam York Gregory
Concept and Design: Proto-type and Adam York Gregory
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Executive Producer: Gillian Lees
Marketing & Comms: Rachel Baynton
Publicity and PR: Lincoln Arts Centre
Sound Engineer: Craig Bratley (Lincoln School of Creative Arts)
Construction and Modelling: Alex Kent (Lincoln Arts Centre)
Commissioned by Lincoln Arts Centre with the support of Arts Council England
Development supported by Lancaster Arts at Lancaster University, University of Lincoln School of Creative Arts, and the UnLimited – UnAward.
Resources
The following materials to support the show will be available:
- Show trailer
- Additional stills
- Full Venue & Marketing Pack
- Sample Media release
For further information please contact Gillian Lees via gillian@proto-type.org
Gillian in the audio booth recording for The Lightbulb Moment