Wind the clock back to 1993. Lighting designer Bob Dickinson found himself in New York City, prepping the theatre for what would be his first Tony Awards. Fast forward to 2025 and the 78th Tony Awards, which were broadcast live from Radio City Music Hall on Sunday, June 8. Dickinson is still lighting this celebration of Broadway’s best and brightest, but the venue has changed many times over the past three decades. And Dickinson now shares the lighting design credit with Ed McCarthy.
“Radio City allows for a better level of production, and there are more seats to sell,” explains Dickinson, nothing that this iconic 1932 venue with its 6,000 seats is his favorite location for the Tony Awards. “In 1993, they had the fantasy of retrofitting an actual Broadway theatre for the Tony Awards, but it was The Majestic Theatre, where Phantom Of The Opera was on the stage, and there wasn’t room for anything specific to the awards show as they had so much scenery. We only had 16 hours in the theatre from load in to curtain.”
It was quite a challenge for Dickinson: “Morpheus had a nesting truss with motorized fixtures, so we used that. We set up three trusses in the dark theatre next door. Then the Thursday and Friday before the broadcast, we’d roll the lights down the street into The Majestic, and use six motors for the rehearsals, then take the out for the evening production of Phantom. There was no custom scenery for the Tonys and we shot the production numbers in advance, which was not satisfying for the audience in the seats.”
In 1994, the Tonys moved to Radio City Music Hall; then it closed for renovations. The awards were in the Wicked theatre one year, then back to Radio City. “It was great,” says Dickinson. “We were able to hang some painted scenery and do a little bit of lighting for each nominated show.” By the 2000’s the paradigm shifted with the advent of projection screens and virtual scenery, which in the beginning was not bright enough. “That was the old-school way, now it’s all LED screens.”
For a few years, the show moved to The Beacon Theatre, which provided its own set of challenges: “Not a good venue for the Tonys admits Dickinson. “The stage is on a diagonal in the corner so it gets narrower and narrower as you move upstage. Production designer Steve Bass introduced an upstage LED screen at The Beacon, and we no longer had to mimic the actual scenery: it was now virtual. We only had to light the people and interpretive cueing for the musical numbers. The hard scenery included the proscenium, and left and right “home bases” with some drapes,” points out the LD. “The final destination visually was the LED screen.”
After several additional years at Radio City, the Tonys moved once again, for one year at the United Palace in Washington Heights and then for a year at the Koch Theatre at Lincoln Center (which did not have enough seats). Then this year, back to Radio City. “Steve Bass now has fully virtual scenery for the broadcast, including a projected LED proscenium, LED borders, and a large LED screen upstage. This releases my lighting rig to really interpret the performances, which give me a different perspective as an LD. In lighting a hard piece of scenery there are a lot of decisions to make. All of a sudden those lighting cues are being done virtually and there is more interface between the lighting and the virtual screens. They are a huge tool embraced by many Broadway producers,” notes Dickinson. “We like for the viewers to think the proscenium is real.”
The lighting is now influenced by the content of the shows themselves and their actual scenery. “The production team goes into each theatre and shoots the scenery or the screens used for the show, then shapes it for the Tony productions, whose content is now dictated by the actual shots of the show,” explains Dickinson. “This varies from the Oscars where we create it from scratch. For the Tonys we are trying to replicate the same experience the audience has in the theatre, it’s not as creatively challenging. It also differs from the Grammys, for example, where they have 60 to 90 minutes to set up and rehearse. At the Tonys, they already know what they are going to do and just work with the choreographer for the size of the Radio City stage.”
Each musical number has 90 minutes of rehearsal on that stage for the camera angles and lighting cues. In addition to the virtual scenery there might be a few wagons and specific solid set pieces. This leaves more time for a meaningful lighting rehearsal. “In the past, we didn’t get the scenery until the day they rehearsed,” notes the LD.
In terms of the lighting rig, Dickinson says he “brought in a full rig with a significant amount of instrumentation,” for maximum flexibility. “I had some old-school fixtures, like the VL5, I like the big moon face on those,” he says. “I used them on the choral steps to light the entire ceiling at Radio City.”
The Hamilton mash-up, more of a revue or concert version, rather than one number from the show, was referred to as “Hamilten” for the show’s tenth anniversary. “In this case, the virtual scenery did not replicate their actual scenery. We saw the scratch tape and could have gone several ways. It could have been difficult as we couldn’t light the entire cast, so we lit the principals and the rest of the cast was lit with a moody backlight feeling. This was more interesting and intriguing, even though you couldn’t always see their faces. “We sat with the show’s director, Tommy Kail, and worked with my cue ideas and the lighting in the screens,” notes Dickinson. “All the lights upstage are virtual, but we didn’t want it to look like a rock concert, so the virtual fixtures look like old PAR 38s with reflectors around them. The lights had a background behind them that was lit separately, but we wanted the lights to look like they were attached, not floating, so we suggested they attach a virtual pipe to support the virtual lights.”
The most challenging and most intriguing moment for Dickinson was the number from Sunset Boulevard. “There was no scenery and no props and the wardrobe was mostly black,” he explains. “The lighting uses high-power GLP Impression X4 Bars, for concentrated beams, but there is no color in the show except when the screen turns to a block of red for a moment. It has a very specific super-smoky environment that was difficult to replicate and to cue. It was not close to the genius approach for the production, which has no overhead lighting, as big screen becomes a ceiling piece as they store it, so the only light comes from booms and floor lights. Like a very courageous high-concept, contemporary dance piece. When the screen is in, the cameramen perform, with the cameras like steering wheels to shoot close ups for the screen, could be just a nose or an eye.”
For Dead Outlaw, there was more of an attempt to “replicate the scenes, and I think we did a good job with our interpretation of the show,” says Dickinson. “Many of the producers and directors on Broadway are younger now and more savvy about the technology. The irony is they never get used to us modulating the lighting for television. In the theatre, we light the principal actors at 300 footcandles – very bright, so we can see them. They don’t need to worry about close ups; the angles aren’t good for flattering close ups. And for television we have to light at about 40 footcandles to be sympathetic to tv lighting. It’s a little tougher for the live audience and the director and the producer who are used to seeing the principals in much brighter light.”
Dickinson adds: “We set a benchmark for the background levels and maintain that throughout the entire show. We have to balance it from the very beginning. The audience gets used to it and they also get a lot of light on them during the show. We used a color wash in a pool of light for the Jonathan Groff jumped into the audience.”
During the rehearsals, Dickinson is in the theatre with director Glenn Weiss at a mini control area. “I can relate to the designers of the different shows and get information directly from them,” he states. “By the Sunday morning, day-of-show rehearsal, we are in the broadcast truck outside of the theatre; we talk a lot, which we can’t do in the theatre.”
With a 50-year career, including 32 years of Tonys and 42 years of Oscars to his credit, Dickinson is mostly retired, except for these and a few other shows. “The pandemic made me realize I really hadn’t lived for the past 40 years. I never had that kind of time off in my entire career. I was always crazy busy. And for the music awards shows, the amount of time got smaller and smaller, and the artists have their own creative teams.” But the Tonys keep luring him back: “It was a very good year on Broadway,” he says. “The shows were extremely well lit.” And clearly he enjoys the challenge of lighting them in a creative way for the live broadcast.