Lighting designer for theatre, comedy, and live events
Director Alex Timbers brings his theatrical maximalism to the relatively small scale of Cohen’s show. McLane’s set is more elaborate than one would expect at a comedy show and Jake DeGroot’s lighting pops with blasts of color to emphasize Cohen’s punchlines. It all serves to bring out the heightened nature of Cohen’s storytelling.
Lane Williamson
Cat Cohen: Broad Strokes
[the] production includes gusts of smoke, dance breaks and glittering atmospherics (Jake DeGroot’s lighting is its own cartoonish fun) and a multitude of sound effects to accent Cohen’s jokes.
Jason Zinoman
Cat Cohen: Broad Strokes
Jake DeGroot’s lighting design is so interactive — single lights here and there flashing on and off on hair-trigger cues as if in conversation with Cohen — that it feels as they’re part of an ensemble.
Jonathan Mandell
Cat Cohen: Broad Strokes
Visually, Indigo is stunning. From the outset, the audience is completely captivated by the visuals and scenery
Hollie N
Indigo
With excellent use of lighting and projection, we are introduced to the fact she has synesthesia and perceives colours associated with the world around her, including the personality of people she meets…. The use of lighting effects and projection onto the scenery are highly effective, especially in showcasing Emma’s perception of the world.
Chris Willmott
Indigo
There is some beautiful projection and video design (again by Goulding), which coupled with Jake DeGroot’s lighting make for some really beautiful moments, capturing the rich and colourful inner world that Emma inhabits and shares with us.
Rob Bartley
Indigo
But what elevates this show is its visual identity. The lighting and colour palette are nothing short of art. A muted, greige world, the drained reality of daily life, erupts into a kaleidoscope of synaesthetic colour, a literal explosion of emotion and sensory experience that is as breathtaking as it is meaningful. Lighting and costume design are not only beautiful. They are symbolic, intentional, and striking. Sound rumbles through the chairs and the auditorium. It really is a full sensory experience.
Lauren
Indigo
The marriage between Goulding’s set and the lights, sound and costumes… is sublime. The canvas flats are used as projection screens to show us the colours of Emma’s mind; the way she sees people as colours splashed onto those canvases as we see into her way of thinking – chaotic, bright, continually moving, changing, blurring – it was just so right somehow.
Georgie Budding
Indigo
A multi-layered set designed by Andrzej Goulding quickly transforms from the neutral shades of Beverly and Rick’s home by means of a complex of projection and lighting designed by Jake DeGroot. The coordination between actor movements and visual effects are seamless.
Paul Strickland
Indigo
… elegantly staged by Alex Timbers and designed by a theatrical A-team: David Korins (sets), Jake DeGroot (lights), Peter Hylenski (sound), and Jennifer Moeller (costumes), among them.
The lighting design was masterful – and what else can you expect from a show about electricity? A bank of lights on the ceiling was almost another character in the show and were used with precision.
Amy Durant
Nikola Tesla Drops the Beat
It’s hard to put into words, the way the choreography, spectacular lighting and contagious musical score and vocal arrangements blend in near perfection with the script, but one thing is certain, this is show not to be missed.
Kathleen Phalen-Tomaselli
Nikola Tesla Drops the Beat
The production in general — the set and lighting and sound design — were all top notch.
Andrew Alexander and Jim Farmer
The Temple Bombing
The lighting design by Jake DeGroot has shadows, shades and backdropped tones that soar.
Marcia Caller Jaffe
The Temple Bombing
As always, the Alliance assembles a top-notch design team. Meredith Ries’ sets, Sydney Roberts’ costumes, Jake DeGroot’s lighting, Kendall Simpson’s sound design and original music, and David Bengali’s projections evoke a time of segregated bathrooms, screaming headlines and epochal change. A visual knockout.
Wendell Brock
The Temple Bombing
Greatly assisting the visuals is Jake DeGroot’s versatile lighting, supposedly being controlled by an unseen intern named Ruvi. (He too has a program bio, which notes that after applying for several internships he was assigned this show “due to clerical error.”)
Samuel L. Leiter
Oh, Hello on Broadway
In mistily illuminated memory bites (the lighting is by Jake DeGroot), inspired by Billy Crystal’s “700 Sundays,” Gil and George take us through the decades of their existence there, mayor by mayor, from the 1970s onward.
Ben Brantley
Oh, Hello on Broadway
There’s also some confusion about the lighting credit. Gil and George keep shouting to their unpaid intern Ruvi about the lights but Jake DeGroot is listed in the program. Whoever it is does a fine job. These stars want, and you better believe they get, their spotlights.
Michael Bracken
Oh, Hello on Broadway
Lighting by Rui Rita and Jake DeGroot accentuates the mood and atmosphere in the Crossroads auditorium. Yellow-orange lights are seen at all angles simulating active gunfire. Meanwhile, the general scene begins to look dark and smoky. Everything on stage is in plain view, but it seems engulfed, to great and moving effect, in the murky fog and clashing color of war.
Neal Zoren
Fly
Lighting by Jake DeGroot is crucial to an ongoing spat the pair conducts with their off-stage tech-intern, Ruvi Nandan
Jordan Riefe
Oh, Hello on Broadway
Above our heads, rough wood support beams, diagonal cabin walls, a taxidermy deer head and an enormous wild turkey hang beside mason jars holding candles. (Jake DeGroot Jeff Croiter, who later give us an unorthodox starry sky.)
Alix Cohen
The Robber Bridegroom
Chandeliers and taxidermy compete for space on Jake DeGroot and Jeff Croiter’s maxed-out lighting plot, which creates a surprising number of looks for the limited playing space. In a particularly nice touch, flickering candles in jars hang from the rafters like a country version of the chandeliers at the Metropolitan Opera.
Zachary Stewart
The Robber Bridegroom
The real magic occurs, however, in the lighting, with co-designers Jake DeGroot and Jeff Croiter supplying twinkling stars and flickering lanterns in moonshine jars.
David Rooney
The Robber Bridegroom
For “The Robber Bridegroom” (a Roundabout Theater Company production), [Timbers] has brought in a designer from both productions, Donyale Werle, who has transformed the Laura Pels… Stuffed fowl and animal heads on the walls and ceiling observe the action, which is illuminated by what look like candles in Mason jars. (Jake DeGroot designed the crucial lighting.)
Ben Brantley
The Robber Bridegroom
The Pels has been decked out by Bloody Bloody designer Donyale Werle win a woodsy fantasia that sets the whimsical mood without shoving it down our throats; credit also the drenching light palette from designers Jake DeGroot and Jeff Crofter, and Emily Rebholz’s enchanting clothes.
Jeremy Gerard
The Robber Bridegroom
Oh, Hello, Live! has been given a charming full-dress production on which the nimble director Alex Timbers (“Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson”) served as creative consultant, with a “Sesame Street”-style set by Connor W. Munion and crucial witty lighting by Jake DeGroot.
Ben Brantley
Oh, Hello on Broadway
One member of the production team must be credited with superb work which helps facilitate the evening. Jake DeGroot’s lighting design always focuses attention on the action, while at times creating the needed moods with the sudden revelation of blue, green or red lights.
Victor Gluck
SeaWife
The director Liz Carlson, the set designer Jason Sherwood and the lighting designer Jake DeGroot have converted the Melville Gallery into various ports and boats and taverns with the aid of ropes and nets and lanterns set with flickering bulbs…It’s all wildly atmospheric.
ALEXIS SOLOSKI
SeaWife
