11th June 2012
Congratulations to lighting designers Jeff Croiter and Natasha Katz, winners of the lighting categories at this year's Tony Awards presented this Sunday, June 10th, in New York. Congratulations, too, to the other winners and nominees.
Jeff Croiter took the Best Lighting Design of a Play Tony for Peter and the Starcatcher, which also won Tonys for its set designer, Donyale Werle, its costume designer, Paloma Young, and its sound designer, Darron L. West. Croiter's co-nominees in the category were Peter Kaczorowski for The Road To Mecca, Brian MacDevitt for Death of a Salesman and Kenneth Posner for Other Desert Cities.
Natasha Katz collected the Best Lighting Design of a Musical Tony for Once, one of the eight wins from eleven nominations the show received. Set designer Bob Crowley, sound designer Clive Goodwin, book author Enda Walsh, orchestrator Martin Lowe, director John Tiffany and leading man Steve Kazee were the show's other Tony winners, with Once itself selected as Best New Musical.
Once was just one of the two nominations Katz received this year, the other for the acclaimed new production of Stephen Sondheim's Follies. Her co-nominees were Christopher Akerlind for The Gershwin's Porgy and Bess and Hugh Vanstone for Ghost The Musical.
Of the musical lighting nominees, three of the four made use of the FocusTrack show lighting documentation system to ensure that the show lighting remains at Tony-standard throughout the run of the show: Once, Follies and Porgy and Bess are all using FocusTrack. With tours and international productions of the shows already being mooted, FocusTrack will also prove invaluable in accurately re-creating the lighting around the world.
The shows join the many other productions using FocusTrack on Broadway, these including this season's Evita and Nice Work If You Can Get It and the long-running Anything Goes, Mary Poppins and Sister Act. FocusTrack is also in use on shows in the UK and touring and performing world-wide.
FocusTrack simplifies the process of documenting show lighting - including automated lighting, conventional lighting and the overall look of each cue - by importing the show data from the lighting console, analysing that to figure out what's used where in the show, then automating the task of photographing the focus of each moving light position or conventional fixture. On recent shows the focus photo session has averaged one picture every twelve seconds - even including coffee breaks - allowing the detail of how the lighting was created to be recorded quickly and efficiently.
You can download a trial version of FocusTrack here.
Full list of 2012 Tony Award winners and nominees >
Jeff Croiter's Acceptance Speech >
Natasha Katz's Acceptance Speech >
Highlights from Peter and the Starcatcher >
Highlights from Once >