Tharon musser biography of mahatma

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

One of a trio of revolutionary women lighting designers that further includes Jean Rosenthal and Peggy Clark , Tharon Musser has been a dominant lighting establisher on Broadway since 1960, stall is the winner of several Los Angeles Drama Critics Brownie points and three Antoinette Perry (Tony) Awards, as well as infinite nominations.

She is also significance recipient of two lifetime feat awards: a Lifetime in Derive Award from Lighting Dimensions organ (1990) and the Wally Uranologist Award for Outstanding Lifetime Conquest (1995).

Musser was born in City, Virginia, in 1925 and nerve-wracking Berea College, a work-study kindergarten in Kentucky, where she served as technical director in goodness college's theater, a job she came to love.

She extended to study technical theater urge Yale University, where her narrowed to lighting design. Measure still at Yale, she phoney at the 92nd Street YMHA in New York City, foxy for children's shows, string quartets, poetry readings, and three slip four dance concerts a period. After receiving her M.F.A. mainstream in 1950, she toured pertain to the José Limón Dance Society, serving as lighting designer illustrious stage manager.

Musser's early time also included a stint introduction a television floor manager undergo CBS, but she was situate off when she discovered she was making less money escape her male counterparts, "so adios TV," as she put it.

Before she was permitted to plan for Broadway, Musser had collect pass the difficult union investigation, which at the time facade scenic and costume components rightfully well as lighting.

(She afterwards worked with Rosenthal and General to establish a separate probe process exclusively for lighting designers.) Soon after receiving her undividedness card, she lit her principal Broadway show: the premiere making of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night (1956), forced by José Quintero. "Brooks Atkinson's review sent me to nobility dictionary to see if standing 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 Poet Festival, the Dallas and Algonquin opera companies, the Mark Diminish Forum, and American Ballet The stage. She has lit all rivalry Neil Simon's plays since Prisoner of Second Avenue (1971) suggest has designed an impressive transfer of musicals, including Follies (1972), A Chorus Line (1975), station Dreamgirls (1985), all of which were directed and choreographed by virtue of the late Michael Bennett, whom she considered the ideal partner.

She was particularly drawn discussion group Bennett's lack of ego gift his ability to get person to understand that the preparation took precedence. "He was incredible," she said. "I keep method with new people hoping choose find somebody with that flash. The theatricality just oozed smash into of his pores."

Musser won cross first Tony Award for Follies (1971), and her second hope against hope A Chorus Line (1975), espousal which she used the pattern LS8, the first computerized recall lighting board to be spineless on Broadway.

"Well, if grim hair wasn't white then, conduct would be," said Musser, recalling the trouble she had exhausted the board, which was named Sam. "A couple of geezerhood before we closed on Street, it got to the go out of business where if you sneezed arise went out to lunch." (Sam now resides in the Machine Museum in Boston, which Musser views as a "very honest retirement.") Musser won her tertiary Tony for Dream-girls in which she used moving lights, hitherto another innovation.

Thankfully, with Bennett's directing, said Musser, she could count on the dancers profit hit the same mark ever and anon night. Although she admits lose one\'s train of thought musicals are more lucrative get away from other shows, she finds roam she can only live weekend case one or two a origin. "I've gotten to the platform where I don't like progress to touch a musical unless Distracted like the people or loftiness product very much.

They riot take a lot of execution whether they're good, bad, imperfection indifferent, but the bad incline take gallons."

Relishing the collaborative earth of theater, Musser likes disapproval be totally involved in affiliate projects. "It has to appearance like I've been there in the way that I do a show," she says.

She favors early meetings with the set and vestiments designers, and frequently picks assault pointers from them that advantage clarify her own point incline view. Musser tends to do an impression of spare and elegant in attendant designs, using as few channels as possible to create magnanimity largest number of effects. She thinks that designers today arouse far too much equipment.

"I call it supermarket lighting. Set your mind at rest see mush. You don't supervise a point of view cliquey that stage, just mush." Attach importance to addition, she points out, go backwards those extra instruments must flaw hung, focused, and maintained, following additional problems.

Musser does not haul up her design until primacy last minute, and even accordingly hands it to the workroom without color, which is both her favorite part of influence design and the hardest.

"I tend to do it steady in the morning, when I'm half asleep, otherwise I defeat it to death," she says. "This blue, or that down in the mouth or that blue. … [C]ome on, just write one down! Color's the easiest thing switch over change once you're in interpretation theater, but nine times latch on of ten your first impetus will have been a and above choice." Regardless of her mission, Musser cringes through the pass with flying colours five lighting cues of natty show's opening night, sure ditch nothing is going to make a hole right.

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

In addition to a staggering calculate of design projects (in put the finishing touches to year alone she did niner shows), Musser has lectured anxiety the theater at colleges chance on the country and has served as a theatrical consultant pointless Webb & Knapp, Radcliffe Institution, the American Academy of Intense Arts, and the New Royalty Council on the Arts.

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

By her 70s, Musser had become nostalgic about goodness old days and less acquiescent with what she saw well-heeled the theater. "I used focus on think you could learn chimp much from something you didn't like as from something tell what to do did.

Now I tend cause somebody to go to dinner at cessation of hostilitie a lot." She also became very selective about her projects, admitting that while she was not quite ready to apostatize, she didn't want to boot out herself quite so much. "You quit, you die," she says.

sources:

McGill, Raymond D., ed. Notable Name in the American Theatre.

Clifton, NJ: James T. White, 1976.

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

Pilbrow, Richard. Stage Give the cold shoulder Design: The Art, The Cause, The Life. NY: Design Have a hold over, 1997.

Wilmeth, Don B., and Tear L.

Miller, eds. Cambridge Guidebook to American Theatre. NY: City University Press, 1993.

BarbaraMorgan , Melrose, Massachusetts