By Delbert Unruh

Foreword by John Lahr

$35.00
index, illustrations
128 pages
ISBN: 978-1-933348-15-5

Published by
USITT
in cooperation with
Broadway Press
March 2009

Jules Fisher, the Tony-Award winning lighting designer and 2008 recipient of the Distinguished Achievement in Lighting Award from the United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT), is the subject of the latest USITT monograph, The Designs of Jules Fisher by Delbert Unruh.

Mr. Fisher has been celebrated by his colleagues for his innovative and technologically inventive solutions – some of which involved creating the technologies he needed to achieve the artistic effects he wanted. He has lit Broadway, off-Broadway, film, television and concert events, and has been honored with eight Tony Awards (and 12 more nominations), seven Drama Desk Awards, and an Emmy Award nomination for lighting the celebration of President Clinton’s inauguration in 1993. He was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame in 2006, received the USITT Award in 1995, the Illuminating Engineering Society’s Lighting Design Award in 1978 for Dancin’, and the Henry Hewes Design Award in 1996 for Bring in ‘Da Noise Bring in ‘Da Funk.

Beginning with a fascination with magic when he was eight years old, Mr. Fisher delves into how the magical qualities of light can transform stage and screen. Unruh’s book chronicles Mr. Fisher’s early career, initial breaks, mentors, as well as his sometimes challenging collaborations with a wide range of theatre and rock legends. These have included Bob Fosse, Stephen Sondheim, Jerome Robbins, Tommy Tune, David Bowie, The Rolling Stones, Barbra Streisand and Elaine Stritch, among others. He recently contributed to the televised broadcast of the 2008 Academy Awards. He remains an active amateur magician.

Reflecting on the relationship between magic and theatre, he commented:

“The magician sets out to entertain and awe by essentially fooling you with an effect, a trick or an illusion that belies common sense, reason, logic or the dynamics of the physical world. But there is a different kind of magic in the theatre. The theatrical lighting designer has a different intention: to penetrate the mind, heart and soul of the audience, to make them feel joy, love, danger, fear, conflict, excitement, dawn to dusk, heat to cold.’ If the magician wants you to witness the impossible, the theatre magician wants you to believe the possible. This is the magic of theatrical lighting.”

A graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, Mr. Fisher is the founder of three related design practices, Fisher Marantz Stone Partners, who specialize in architectural lighting, Fisher Dachs Associates, theatre planning and design, and Third Eye Ltd., entertainment lighting with Peggy Eisenhauer, all based in New York, NY. The three firms work internationally. Mr. Fisher is married to director and choreographer Graciela Daniele.

About the author: Delbert Unruh is Professor of Theatre & Film at the University of Kansas and also designs professionally in several Kansas City area theatres. His writing talent has been recognized by USITT with three Herbert Greggs Awards for excellence in writing for the quarterly journal, Theatre Design & Technology. Professor Unruh wrote two previous USITT monographs, The Designs of Ming Cho Lee (2006) and The Designs of Tharon Musser (2007). His first book, Towards A New Theatre, the Lectures of Robert Edmond Jones, was published in 1992 and a Chinese-language version of his monograph about Ming Cho Lee was published in 2008.