Light, seeking light, doth light of light beguile.
-Love’s Labor’s Lost
Beguile- To amuse or charm; delight or fascinate, sometimes with deception
Beguile Lighting is a company devoted to using the power and beauty of light to create spectacular environments and events. Shakespeare was having a bit of fun with his audience in Love’s Labor’s Lost, but to beguile is the perfect verb to pair lighting. Light is the final layer in any project, charming the ordinary into the extraordinary. The gasp of a patron walking into a dramatically lit room reveals delight, and we use the “deceptive” power of light to emphasis some elements, while hiding others.
As ethereal and poetic as light can be, there is a science behind it. Picking the right source, the right optics, and the right color media is essential to creating the perfect lighting environment. It takes experience and skill, traits that Beguile brings to the design process.
Beguile Lighting was founded and is headed by Matthew Reifsteck. Matthew is a theatrically trained designer, who learned his craft through theater, dance, and opera. For the past 10 years he has been heavily involved in the corporate and special event industries, having served as a lighting designer, master electrician and crew chief across the country and internationally. He was most recently on staff at Indianapolis-based Dodd Technologies as a lighting director.
As an account executive for Tyler Truss Systems, Matthew helped to outfit some of the nation's top acts (Billboard Top 10) with truss and rigging for national tours. Additionally he was heavily involved with architectural integration of aluminum structures..
Matthew holds a BFA in Theater from the University of Illinois, and an MFA in Architectural Lighting Design from Parsons the New School for Design (of Project Runway fame). He is a member of the Illumination Engineering Society of North America.
After a 5-year stint living in New York, Matthew and his wife, Megan, moved back to the Midwest, where they now live in Indianapolis.
Career highlights include:
- Working on events that headlined the past three U.S. Presidents
- Being a finalist in the Professional Lighting Designers Association’s Vox Juventa competition, presenting his paper on “Light, Space, and Architecture” in Stockholm, Sweden
- Using Nelson Rockefeller’s bathroom
- Getting rigging equipment to fit on a 737
- Not being TOO bothered by the way things are wired in Thailand