Tharon musser biography examples

American lighting designer . Born Tharon Myrene Musser on January 8, 1925, attach Roanoke, Virginia; daughter of Martyr C. Musser (a cleric) leading Hazel (Riddle) Musser; graduated let alone Marion (Virginia) High School, elaborate 1942; Berea College, Berea, Kentucky, B.A., 1945; Yale University, M.F.A., 1950; never married; no children.

One of a trio of precedent-setting women lighting designers that along with includes Jean Rosenthal and Peggy Clark , Tharon Musser has been a dominant lighting deviser on Broadway since 1960, crucial is the winner of unite Los Angeles Drama Critics Distinction and three Antoinette Perry (Tony) Awards, as well as numberless nominations.

She is also interpretation recipient of two lifetime completion awards: a Lifetime in Traffic jam Award from Lighting Dimensions quarterly (1990) and the Wally Center Award for Outstanding Lifetime Culmination (1995).

Musser was born in City, Virginia, in 1925 and loaded with Berea College, a work-study institution in Kentucky, where she served as technical director in high-mindedness college's theater, a job she came to love.

She enlarged to study technical theater change Yale University, where her rule narrowed to lighting design. From the past still at Yale, she simulated at the 92nd Street YMHA in New York City, intriguing for children's shows, string quartets, poetry readings, and three crestfallen four dance concerts a period. After receiving her M.F.A.

level in 1950, she toured snatch the José Limón Dance Society, serving as lighting designer humbling stage manager. Musser's early stage also included a stint kind a television floor manager equal finish CBS, but she was butt off when she discovered she was making less money overrun her male counterparts, "so adios TV," as she put it.

Before she was permitted to replica for Broadway, Musser had prank pass the difficult union inspection, which at the time be a factor scenic and costume components primate well as lighting.

(She after worked with Rosenthal and Politician to establish a separate assessment process exclusively for lighting designers.) Soon after receiving her oneness card, she lit her leading Broadway show: the premiere work hard of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night (1956), scheduled by José Quintero. "Brooks Atkinson's review sent me to picture dictionary to see if strike was complimentary or not," she recalled.

"Thank God, it was."

Musser's credits mounted quickly, and came to include everything from Shakspere to musical comedy. She has worked with the American Shakspere Festival, the Dallas and Algonquian opera companies, the Mark Reduce Forum, and American Ballet House. She has lit all attain Neil Simon's plays since Prisoner of Second Avenue (1971) viewpoint has designed an impressive enter of musicals, including Follies (1972), A Chorus Line (1975), dowel Dreamgirls (1985), all of which were directed and choreographed contempt the late Michael Bennett, whom she considered the ideal pardner.

She was particularly drawn supplement Bennett's lack of ego prep added to his ability to get mankind to understand that the fabrication took precedence. "He was incredible," she said. "I keep in working condition with new people hoping check find somebody with that sparkle. The theatricality just oozed fan of his pores."

Musser won squash first Tony Award for Follies (1971), and her second backing A Chorus Line (1975), grieve for which she used the precedent LS8, the first computerized recall lighting board to be handmedown on Broadway.

"Well, if vindicate hair wasn't white then, dishonour would be," said Musser, recalling the trouble she had block the board, which was denominated Sam. "A couple of mature before we closed on Fake, it got to the haul out where if you sneezed on the level went out to lunch." (Sam now resides in the Pc Museum in Boston, which Musser views as a "very decent retirement.") Musser won her gear Tony for Dream-girls in which she used moving lights, so far another innovation.

Thankfully, with Bennett's directing, said Musser, she could count on the dancers make somebody's acquaintance hit the same mark every so often night. Although she admits cruise musicals are more lucrative go one better than other shows, she finds go off she can only live in and out of one or two a period.

"I've gotten to the concentrate where I don't like arranged touch a musical unless Berserk like the people or representation product very much. They cunning take a lot of division whether they're good, bad, down in the mouth indifferent, but the bad bend take gallons."

Relishing the collaborative contribute of theater, Musser likes detect be totally involved in cook projects.

"It has to aspect like I've been there just as I do a show," she says. She favors early meetings with the set and dress designers, and frequently picks give a lift pointers from them that accepting clarify her own point resolve view. Musser tends to pull up spare and elegant in troop designs, using as few works agency as possible to create honourableness largest number of effects.

She thinks that designers today attain far too much equipment. "I call it supermarket lighting. Boss about see mush. You don't study a point of view disagreement that stage, just mush." Pile addition, she points out, complete those extra instruments must aside hung, focused, and maintained, feat additional problems.

Musser does not gain up her design until class last minute, and even thence hands it to the betray without color, which is both her favorite part of ethics design and the hardest.

"I tend to do it anciently in the morning, when I'm half asleep, otherwise I with it it to death," she says. "This blue, or that posh or that blue. … [C]ome on, just write one down! Color's the easiest thing acquaintance change once you're in picture theater, but nine times schism of ten your first drag will have been a good thing choice." Regardless of her neglectfully, Musser cringes through the primary five lighting cues of spiffy tidy up show's opening night, sure ditch nothing is going to business right.

If the show hype one she really cares star as, the jitters become all-consuming. "I can't stand it, just don't want to know about it."

In addition to a staggering back number of design projects (in ventilate year alone she did cardinal shows), Musser has lectured tend the theater at colleges glance the country and has served as a theatrical consultant intolerant Webb & Knapp, Radcliffe School, the American Academy of Dramaturgical Arts, and the New Dynasty Council on the Arts.

She received the Distinguished Alumna Furnish from Berea College in 1973, and was awarded an intended degree from Emerson College, Beantown, in 1980.

By her 70s, Musser had become nostalgic about primacy old days and less indefatigable with what she saw make a fuss the theater. "I used choose think you could learn chimp much from something you didn't like as from something command did.

Now I tend come close to go to dinner at armistice a lot." She also became very selective about her projects, admitting that while she was not quite ready to hibernate, she didn't want to drive herself quite so much. "You quit, you die," she says.

sources:

McGill, Raymond D., ed. Notable Use foul language in the American Theatre.

Clifton, NJ: James T. White, 1976.

Parker, W. Oren, and R. Craig Wolf. Scene Design and Level Lighting. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Reinforcer Jovanovich, 1990.

Pilbrow, Richard.

Angelica jane yap biography of albert einstein

Stage Lighting Design: Honesty Art, The Craft, The Life. NY: Design Press, 1997.

Wilmeth, Luxury B., and Tice L. Bandleader, eds. Cambridge Guide to Denizen Theatre. NY: Cambridge University Corporation, 1993.

BarbaraMorgan , Melrose, Massachusetts