Brian MacDevitt, Nominated for Fiddler On The Roof and Henry IV
“In Fiddler On The Roof, there is a box, and a ceiling, and a forest of trees, but I didn't jump up and down and say you have to cut holes in the ceiling so I can have backlight. It's a box, and in a musical that cuts out any opportunity to have low sidelight and kickers on a majority of the stage,” says MacDevitt.
"In early discussions about Henry IV, I said this is great, it's just like The Sopranos, but in another time,” MacDevitt continues. “It's about storytelling, and the idea is that the light on the characters is the same light that would be on Tony Soprano if he were talking about a war with another family. It doesn't have to look like old-fashioned light.”
Kenneth Posner, Nominated for Wicked:
“In the Emerald City scenes, there is green light from a high steep angle, and a lot of white ballet sidelight coming through it. It makes the costumes glow. I had 40 units of custom Emerald City glass gobos applied to both moving and conventional units for those scenes,” says Posner. “I also did something unusual for a Broadway musical — I used Source Four elliposoidals as followspots. I did it for the units' color temperature and to keep an organic quality to the lighting. I didn't want an HMI look. It was tricky — I have a pink girl and a green girl.”
Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer*, nominated for Assassins:
“It was wonderful working with director Joe Mantello. He is very articulate about what he wants, but didn't have to add his own comment to what we did,” says Fisher.
“We increased the glare and sparkle of the clear light bulb of the midway, distorted the color to yellow, and said ‘this is our white, our reality,’” says Eisenhauer. “The monochromatic-yellow color says ‘you are viewing this surreal musical world through a non-conventional, dilated lens.”