Case Study: Donald Holder Lighting Design, Inc. TONY AWARD WINNER DON HOLDER LIGHTS THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY Case Study: Donald Holder Lighting Design, Inc.Te Papa Tongarewa Holder lit the cornfield and horizon detail on a translucent sky using backlight reflected fof a bounce drop. For Donald Holder, a two-time Tony Award® winner with As he neared college, Holder was equally passionate about theatre, music, and the outdoors, so he attended The University of Maine, 10 nominations under his belt, there’s nothing more where he majored in forestry while pursuing theatre and music in a exciting than being in the theatre. After all, it’s where vibrant performing arts program. After graduating, he spent three years he gets to reveal the world of a great play or musical as a technical director and lighting designer at Muhlenberg College before earning a master in fine arts from the Yale School of Drama. and help create something special that transports “It was at Yale, under the extraordinary mentorship of Jennifer Tipton, audience members to a magical place, allowing them where I developed a clear understanding of technique and process that would serve as the foundation for my career,” he recalls. to forget their cares for a few hours each night. Today, Holder has one full-time employee at Donald Holder Lighting Design, Inc., and he hires freelancers when needed. About 75% of his It’s a love born from spending his youth seeing Broadway shows, opera, work is in theatre, opera, and dance, and 25% is in other disciplines, ballet, and symphony orchestra performances, and studying violin, tuba, including architecture. In the last 18 months, he’s designed the lighting and string bass. “The first musical I remember seeing was A Fiddler On for seven musicals, five plays, three operas, a season of episodic The Roof,” Holder says. “I was profoundly affected by it, even at the television (“Smash” on NBC), one episode of “Law and Order,” tender age of five or six, so I’m incredibly excited to light the upcoming and two restaurants. revival in the fall of 2015.” Another positive influence was Lighting Designer Tharon Musser. “I’ll never forget seeing her incredible work Holder’s Tony Award-winning projects include The Lion King directed by on A Chorus Line when I was a teenager,” recalls Holder. “It was her Julie Taymor and the 2008 Broadway revival of South Pacific, produced work that really allowed me to see the power, beauty, and poetry of in the Vivien Beaumont Theatre, Holder’s favorite place to work. When stage lighting for the first time.” reflecting on these projects, he says, “they were memorable for different reasons, and each had its own particular challenges. These shows represent moments in my career where all the elements were in place for me to do my best work with an extraordinary group of collaborators.” Case Study: Donald Holder Lighting Design, Inc.Te Papa Tongarewa Creating Iowa’s Plains Holder’s success with past collaborators led him to one of his more production the following summer at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, recent projects as the lighting designer for Broadway’s The Bridges so design work began in earnest in late spring of 2013. The Broadway of Madison County. Based on a novel written by Robert James Waller, production period began on January 2, 2014. Opening night at the Bridges is a romantic musical that gives two strangers, a photographer Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre was six weeks later. and an Iowa farm wife, a second chance at love. Holder’s work on the production earned him a 2014 Tony Award nomination for Best Lighting “The scenic design was sparse and elemental, conceived to allow Design in a Musical. light to do a large part of the storytelling,” Holder says. “The lighting was responsible for creating shifts in time, weather, season, location, “We see the world of Bridges through a photographer’s eye, so light and interior versus exterior, and there were often multiple locations plays a key metaphorical and storytelling role,” says Holder, who was revealed simultaneously. So the biggest challenge for me was to find hired for the project in late 2012, based on his long, collaborative the large ‘brushstrokes’ of light via variations in angle and color that relationship with the production’s director, Bartlett Sher, as well as could reveal this single space in a multitude of ways.” other designers on the team. The musical had a developmental The scene and Holder’s communicative lighting design capably suggest the vast Iowa landscape. Case Study: Donald Holder Lighting Design, Inc.Te Papa Tongarewa To meet the play’s fluid staging needs, Holder’s cueing was nonstop. Scenes shifted quickly among minimalist sets like the kitchen shown here, the bridge, the Iowa plains, Italy, the state fair, and more. The set featured a large painted cyclorama evoking the endless horizon For example, the painted detail on the translucent sky drop is revealed and cornfields of Iowa. This horizon drop needed a substantial amount using backlight reflected off a white bounce, or reflector, rigged about of depth in order to be properly illuminated. “Unfortunately, the shallow 20” upstage of the sky. “By evoking the hazy glow of the sun behind a confines of the Schoenfeld Theatre did not allow for this, so I had to lone tree that was featured prominently in the scenic design, we were develop some rather unusual solutions to create the illusion of a vast, able to achieve an even greater illusion of depth,” Holder explains. He unending horizon with about half the space typically available,” says created this second layer of light using a position (fitted with ARSP and Holder. “I’ve been developing techniques for lighting the cyclorama color-changers) squeezed between the bounce and the back wall of that stretch back over 15 years with my work on The Lion King [for the theatre, painted white for the production. “The white brick surface which he won the 1998 Tony Award for Best Lighting Design and the reacted just like a second bounce, and the reflected light created a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lighting Design]. “Some of those localized soft glow on the sky exactly as I had hoped,” he adds. techniques, with variations, of course, were quite useful in tackling As another example, a fantasy sequence at the top of Act Two required similar challenges I faced with Bridges.” that the image of Iowa magically fade away to reveal a more abstract and distant landscape. “We accomplished this by simply shifting from backlight to deep indigo front-light on the drop, which created a sky of a very different quality,” Holder says. Case Study: Donald Holder Lighting Design, Inc.Te Papa Tongarewa K E Y 35'-0" 30'-0" 25'-0" 20'-0" 15'-0" 10'-0" 5'-0" CL 5'-0" 10'-0" 15'-0" 20'-0" 25'-0" 30'-0" 35'-0" ETC SOURCE 4 10° 750w #2 BOOM SL 27'-9" BACK WALL ETC SOURCE 4 14° 750w L119 R68 R27 L119 R68 R27 L119 R68 R27 L119 R68 R27 L119 R68 R27 #1 BOOM SL #1 BOOM SR #2 BOOM SR 300 301 302 300 301 302 300 301 302 300 301 302 300 301 302 BOUNCE BOUNCE 26'-3" BOUNCE ETC SOURCE 4 19° 750w 3LT 500w T-3 STRIPLT H1 G1 F1 E1 D1 C1 7'-6" 9LT 500w T-3 STRIPLIGHT B1 ELECTRIC 25'-7" #6 ELECTRIC to Venue Deck +33'-1" 6 A1 6 #6 Electric TRIM: 33'-1" TO VENUE FLOOR TRANSLUCENCY DAY SKY DROP 300 301 302 300 301 302 300 301 302 TRANSLUCENCY DAY SKY DROP 24'-9" DAY SKY DROP ETC SOURCE 4 26° 750w 3" (TYP SPACING) L119 R68 R27 L119 R68 R27 L119 R68 R27 STAR DROP STAR DROP 23'-5" STARDROP BLACK SCRIM BLACK SCRIM ETC SOURCE 4 36° 750w SCENIC G'ROW SCENIC G'ROW 23'-0" BLACK SCRIM L202+R119 951 US BENCH 952 851 953 954 326 213 253 236 227 R119 145 254 228 229 R119 144 W A S H WTREE A S H 78 W A S H W A S H ETC SOURCE 4 50° 750w R119 R132 R132 R119 L202+R132 R119 7A R132 9 4 13 12 10 to Venue Deck 22 21 20 19 18 18 17 16 15 14 11 8 7 6 5 3 2 1 ELECTRIC 21'-0" #5 ELECTRIC +27'-4" 5 WK WK 5 #4 LADDER SR TRIM: 27'-4" TO #4 LADDER SL VENUE FLOOR 20'-3" TELEPHONE POLE 90 EDGE OF14 SHOW6 DECK 146 16A 91 168 EDGE OF SHOW DECK77 SP ETC SOURCE 4 PAR NSP 750w L161+R132 N/C L202+R119 R132 TELEPHONE POLE L161+R132 19'-11" #4 LEGS #4 LEG #4 LEG 13A R132 R132 2'-0" 4'-3" 2'-1" 2'-0" 1'-3" 1'-8" 2'-10" 1'-3" 3'-0" 1'-9" 1'-10" 3'-3" 2'-0" 1'-3" 2'-0" 1'-8" 2'-0" 1'-11" 4'-3" 2'-0" UNDER L202+R119 AC LIGHTING 164 CLEAR COLOR FORCE RGBA 18'-5" #4 HEADER #4 HEADER 18" TAIL-DOWN #4 HEADER WITH 60° 'BORDER' SPREAD LENS CHOPPER CHOPPER 26'-0" TAB TAB UNIT 18 48 CHANNEL MODE SR 1'-9" 3'-3" 2'-0" 1'-3" SL USR #3 2'-0" 2'-0" 1'-9" 2'-0" 2'-0" 1'-3" 1'-3" 1'-9" 3'-0" #3 USL SEE UNIT CALL-OUT FOR SIZE TYPE 841 842 843 USL HOUSE EAVE 17'-0" USL HOUSE EAVE 349 214 213 1'-9" 3'-6" 208 251 230 BOUNDRY 2'-0" SPACING (TYP) 2'-0" SPACING (TYP) 19A 5A 108 99 NC L161 R119 R119 L202+R119 L201+R119 R119 L202+R119 L202+R119 R119 R119 L202+R119 R119 R119 L161 NC CT AUTOYOKE GALLERY ETC SOURCE 4 10° 750w 4 23 22 21 20 19B 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 15'-8" #4 ELECTRIC +28'-5" WK WK w/AUTO IRIS, AUTOFOCUS 103 112 64 88 65 89 167 171 76 50 324 75 49 4 ELECTRIC #3 TOWER SL & 7.5" SCROLLER L161+R132 L161+R132 L161 R119 TRIM: 28'-5" TO ROVING TOWER INCLUDE R132 IN #3 TRACK US BRIDGE R119 SHOW DECK 13'-11" US BRIDGE FRAME HOLDER #3 TOWER SR #3 LADDER SR #3 LADDER SL ROVING TOWER #3 PORTAL #3 PORTAL 13'-1" #3 PORTAL 2'-0" 2'-0" 2'-0" 2'-0" 1'-3" 1'-9" 2'-0" 2'-0" 2'-9" 3'-0" 2'-0" 2'-0" 2'-0" 2'-3" 2'-0" 2'-0" SPACING (TYP) 2'-0" 1'-9" 1'-6" 1'-6" STATE FAIR SIGN 12'-5" STATE FAIR SIGN S 831 L202+R119 832 207 833 A 102 111 61 86 155 SP SP 62 87 154 172 153 74 47 152 73 46 323 107 98 18A 12A 11A