"Natalie Robin’s gorgeous, shadowy lighting design almost qualifies as a 27th performer."

The New York Times on The Bad and the Better, 2012

“The set design initially seemed heavy-handed, dominated by a blue and white color palette and a mosaic-like pattern that’s both extremely evocative of Jewish stars. However, the appearance of the set changes with Natalie Robin’s light design, slowly illuminating the set’s connection to one of the piece’s key motifs, the snowflake.” (Jordana Rosenfeld, Pittsburgh City Paper on The Wanderers, 2022)

“The director Motl Didner has edited the script to a brisk 85 minutes and given it a storybook staging, popped into Dara Wishingrad’s pretty proscenium and ornamented with Izzy Fields’s frilled costumes and Natalie Robin’s numinous lighting.” (Alexis Soloski, The New York Times on The Sorceress (A Critic’s Pick), 2019)

“Espinoza knows how to create stunning stage pictures. We are given impressionistic moments at the start of the play and at the end of each act. Marie Laster’s set and Carmel Brown’s costumes effectively root the play in its time period. Both Daniel Ison’s sound design and Natalie Robin’s lights work in both naturalistic and theatrical moments.” (Joshua Herren, Phindie on Rachel, 2020)

“The lights shift dramatically highlighting the texture of the walls, and then complete darkness. ‘The room disappears. The air turns to stars.’ I feel as if I am suspended in air, the dust of stars a part of my lungs, along with the saturation of all memory. The undergird encourages coexisting with what reality is: a mish-mash of collisions and collapsing of time.” (Janna Mearing, Thinking Dance on The undergird, 2018)

“Each work had a kind of overseer or wizard behind the curtain. For “Caen Amour,” Tatarsky; for “Undergird,” lighting designer Natalie Robin, who brought much-needed life and warmth to the polar feel of the performance space.” (Merilyn Jackson, Fjord Review on The undergird, 2018)

“The Wilma production is marvelous – and that’s a bit of an understatement. The set design by Kristen Robinson is impressive, especially as illuminated by Natalie Robin’s lighting design.” (Richard Lord, University City Review on Dionysus Was Such A Nice Man, 2019)

“Despite its dramaturgical mishegas (a.k.a. craziness), The Sorceress is charming, with spirited, melodic music in the vein of traditional 19th-century operetta, brazen sentimentality and melodrama, and bold acting in the grand old manner. The production captures the artless feeling of the original, with a set by Dara Wishingrad mainly composed of series of elaborate false prosceniums, backed by a cyclorama lit in striking colors by Natalie Robin. Izzy Fields’s lovely period costumes add just the right visually appealing touch.” (Samuel L. Leiter, Theaterlife.com on The Sorceress, 2020)

“The colorful set—two chambers connected by a horizontal room—designed with relish by Dara Wishingrad, evokes the colors and patterns of Lower East Side synagogues and provide discrete spaces for each scene. The lighting of Natalie Robin enhances the mood of each scene and energized Wishingrad’s color scheme.” (Joel Benjamin, Theaterscene.net on The Sorceress, 2020)

"The direction throughout by Natalya Baldyga is fast-paced and seamless, Chelsea Kerl’s costumes are simply perfect, as is Ted Simpson’s set, and Natalie Robin’s lighting is spot-on. One has to believe that Ruth Moore, who disliked the movie that was made from her novel “Spoonhandle,” would have been thrilled with this wonderful play." (Nan Lincoln, Ellsworth American on I Have Seen Horizons, 2018)

"The Monomyth was told in several scenes, each of them boxed or framed in light, by Natalie Robin ... As the light shone on her, it caught the gleam of gilding that covered one ear lobe, another subtle sculptural and mythic image ... Finally, in the simple downstage light that had framed the opening, Boulé quietly reprised her early dance of knees and fingertips, and offered a quiet coda to this brief encyclopedia of heroic mythic images, a woman of marvelous power and complexity." (Martha Sherman, danceviewtimes on The Monomyth, 2017) 

"Uchizono and collaborators David Shively (music) and Natalie Robin (lighting) have tossed practicality aside in favor of something that not only challenges your visual perspective but lights up your nervous system." (Eva Yaa Asantewaa/Infinite Body on Sticky Majesty, 2016)

"Natalie Robin’s lighting, clear and clean for the first half of the piece, turns dramatic for the second—changing colors, casting shadows, making beams slide across the floor" (Deborah Jowitt, ArtsJournal on Sticky Majesty, 2016)

"And the strangely courtlike atmosphere is mainly marked by separation. The courtiers, as if waiting in antechambers, occupy whichever half of the space the monarchs aren’t occupying. Natalie Robin’s lighting makes dramatic changes between the different zones of stage space." (Alistair Macaulay, The New York Times on Sticky Majesty, 2016)

"The design team has done fine work executing Richard’s vision of Rome. Robin Vest’s white-and-gold set glistens like marble under the florescent lights directly above it. The lighting design by Natalie Robin makes the white set gleam, yet starkly illuminates the actors at times. The visual contrast between the brightly lit porcelain-colored set and the dark deeds performed onstage helps give the production a rare visual vibrancy that only happens when the director and the designers share the same vision ... The result of the designers’ work is that theatergoers feel as though they are peeking around pillars, eavesdropping on the local political intrigue similar to what might be discussed in any town square before an annual town meeting." (Judy Harrison, Bangor Daily News on Julius Caesar, 2016)

"It begins without warning.

The lights haven’t come down, and the curtain hasn’t come up. The audience is casually  chatting, children talking over the backs of their chairs with their parents in the next row, wondering if the stage can possibly go as far back as it looks. And suddenly the stage is filling with actors, running in from the wings, swinging chair legs, dropping wigs — and freezing as they notice, one by one, the room-full of people watching them.

They play with the audience. They play with the light and sound cues, circling a hand, cocking a hip, play it again, Sam. And in Richard Wilbur’s translation, they play with meter and rhyme." (Kate Abbot, BTW Berkshires on Tartuffe, 2018)

"Natalie Robin’s lighting design not only complements Vest’s set but also seems somehow to be coordinated with Leva’s score. The lighting plot is complementary but not invasive." (Judy Harrison, Bangor Daily News on An Iliad, 2016)

"Even Hawa’s final exit, a baby in her arms, leaves more questions than answers lingering on the slow fade of light that follows her. This is extraordinary work from the actress, the director and the designer. This is great theater (eat your heart out Francesca Zambello) with its direct simplicity and emotional stoppers." (The Berkshire Edge on In Darfur, 2014)

"Richards’ vision of The Seagull is beautifully executed by scenic designer Ray Neufeld, costumer Carol Farrell, lighting designer Natalie Robin and sound designer Mark Van Hare. The work of Robin and Van Hare is essential in creating the subtle changes in mood that take place in the play’s final act staged in the barn. It's a production not to be missed." (Bangor Daily News on The Seagull, 2015)

"The magic is furthered by Natalie Robin's lighting (finding all the colors of a night in the woods - some natural, some perhaps something else) and the strange yet joyous sound design that throws us deep into Lydia and Daniel's inside jokes and past." (Colin McConnell, NY Theater Indie on Chop Your Own Wood, 2015)

"It’s almost worth seeing for Alfred Schatz’s rambling set, which squeezes an East Village bar, an apartment and various locales onto a handkerchief-size stage, and Natalie Robin’s equally deft, moody lighting." (Bloomberg Press on The Bad and the Better, 2012) 

"Lighting shifts (designed by Natalie Robin) are critical to the successful establishment of multiple locations on the small stage, cleverly laid out by Albert Schatz to serve alternately as a bookstore, a bar, a cop's office, protester-filled New York City streets, a house on Long Island, and a penthouse." (Associated Press on The Bad and the Better, 2012)

"Natalie Robin's design went well beyond mere illumination and became an integral partner to the set design. Using eight gobos, seven custom glass gobos, she created these small blocks, almost pixels of light that elevated up the red and blue walls to represent the skyscrapers and one lone distant rooftop water tower that enveloped the hospital in the heart of Manhattan. With the use of oodles of gels and gel scrollers, the skyscrapers dimmed or faded in and out imperceptibly with each scene change. Adding a semi-circle of fluorescent tubes to the outer edge of the light grid lent the waiting room a sickly blue, clinically sterile aura." (Pegasus News on Next Fall, 2012) 

“Natalie does not make assumptions. She has an excellent understanding of traditional solutions to lighting problems, and yet she does not assume that the traditional way is the best way to solve any given situation. Her creative thinking is always specific to the play or the dance or the performance that she is designing. She listens to the play, to the director, to her fellow designers, and crafts her designs accordingly. Nothing is impossible to Natalie. It might be difficult, but she always believes that some sort of solution exists, and her passion for her craft drives her to work with her collaborators toward that end. Natalie is both a realist and a dreamer at once, and that balance helps her achieve great results.”
— Lenore Doxsee, Freelance Lighting Designer and Associate, Drama Department, NYU Tisch School of the Arts in "Designing Women" (Live Design Magazine, October 2008) 

"By the end, the theater itself is drained away and it only leaves the beauty of Kate Marvin and Diana Konopka's musico-auditory experience, and the simple and stunning visual lighting design of Natalie Robin ... Somewhere towards the end, when there was nothing but a beautiful sea of lights and the musico-auditory experience, I nearly burst into tears. I have no idea why or how. It was a beautiful dream of music, and I followed it and lived it wholly. It broke me on a level I don't understand." (Culture Future on the Magic Flute: A Sound-Op Era, 2010)

"Natalie Robin’s lighting design compliments the space, drawing attention to the interior when necessary and at other moments beautifully taking us underwater ... The visual mess juxtaposed with a lyrical script suggest the abyss that has been created between our idealized relationship to the sea and our actual indifference." (Off Off Online on A Thousand Thousand Slimy Things, 2010)

"Congratulations go to the director, Jessica Brater, and to the designers for constructing the atmospheric Ladino world of Granada ... Lighting by Natalie Robin, assisted by Marika Kent, effectively utilizes non-theatrical lighting techniques and lots of practicals to fashion an environment and mood out of floodlights, lanterns, candles, and a few simple electrical cables." (Theateronline.com on Granada, 2009)

"The design is stunning, with thrillingly evocative sets and video by Anna Kiraly, sound by Maddow, lights by Lenore Doxsee and Natalie Robin, and costumes by Kiki Smith, all working together to create a magical and theatrical world for a play that is mostly about the ground and our relationship to it." (Martin Denton, NY Theater Indie on Marcellus Shale, 2013)