Robert Cohen - Theatre, Brief Version-McGraw-Hill Education (2016)

112 Chapter 5 Designers and Technicians
Photo Essay: Lighting Designer Don Holder*
1.
With his two Tony Awards (for the
Broadway production of the 1997
The Lion King and the 2008 Lincoln
Center revival of South Pacific), plus
11 Tony and Drama Desk nominations
for his 46 Broadway and more than a
hundred off-Broadway shows to date—
which include, on Broadway alone, the
2015 The King and I and On the
Twentieth Century, plus the recent
Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, Bullets
Over Broadway, The Bridges of
Madison County, Golden Boy, Annie,
Arcadia, and The Motherfucker and
the Hat—Don Holder is clearly at
the very top of the American lighting
design field. In addition, he has had the
opportunity to catch the new wave of
technological sophistication that has
propelled a truly revolutionary new era
of stage design.
Like many designers, Holder
became fascinated by lighting at
a very young age. A self-admitted
“music and drama addict” from the
days his parents drove him from their
Long Island home into Manhattan to
see symphonies, ballets, and Broadway
musicals, Holder began to light shows
while still in junior high. “I did band
concerts, high school plays, everything
I could. I was also the guy at scouting
camp who was always lighting the
campfires and putting smudge pots on
the trails,” he remembers. Adoring the
outdoors, Holder majored in forestry
at the University of Maine’s Orono
campus,but he also played in jazz
bands and the Bangor Symphony
during the school year and worked
summers as a technician and actor at
Maine’s Theatre at Monmouth. Inspired
by a designer there, he applied for
graduate training at Yale Drama
School, enrolling first as a stage
technician and eventually as a lighting
designer under the mentorship of
fabled Broadway designer Jennifer
Tipton. After Yale, Holder headed
directly into a New York career, working
first in small off-Broadway and
off-off-Broadway companies and then
making his Broadway debut with Richard
Greenberg’s Eastern Standard in 1989.
Holder describes his design
aesthetic as supportive: “My basic goal
is to bring out the play’s text, the
composer’s music, and the director’s
vision. I strongly feel our job as
designers is to adapt our own style
and design aesthetic to the specific
production; to help tell the story,
of course, but also to augment the
story’s context and style.” The path to
excellence, however, is in the details.
“I suppose I am characterized as
2.
1. In a workroom above the Mark Taper
Forum stage in Los Angeles, where he
is designing a production of the musical
Pippin, lighting designer Donald Holder
makes final marks on his light plot. Soon
he will turn it over to the theatre’s
electricians to hang and focus the hundreds
of lighting instruments that will be used
in the show. © Robert Cohen
2. In the light booth, Holder looks up at
stage left (the right side of the stage,
as seen from the audience) to see how
the lighting will work with the scene as
described in his script. © Robert Cohen
*Courtey of Don Holder