Ken Billington

Last updated
Ken Billington
Born (1946-10-29) October 29, 1946 (age 75)
OccupationLighting designer
Awards Tony Award for Best Lighting Design (1997)

Ken Billington (born October 29, 1946) is an American lighting designer. He began his career in New York City working as an assistant to Tharon Musser. [1]

Contents

He was born in White Plains, New York, the son of Kenneth Arthur (an automobile dealer) and Ruth (Roane) Billington.

Billington has 96 Broadway productions to his credit including Copperfield , Checking Out , Moon Over Buffalo , Grind , Hello, Dolly! , Meet Me in St. Louis , On the Twentieth Century , Side by Side by Sondheim , Lettice and Lovage , Tru , The Scottsboro Boys , and Sweeney Todd .

Off-Broadway productions include Sylvia , London Suite , Annie Warbucks , Lips Together, Teeth Apart , The Lisbon Traviata , What the Butler Saw , and Fortune and Men's Eyes .

Billington was the principal lighting designer for Radio City Music Hall from 1979 to 2004, where he created the lighting for the world-famous Christmas and Easter Spectaculars. [1] While there, he also created the lighting for the stage adaptation of the 1937 animated musical film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs . Other projects include lighting the 1975/76 season for the American Shakespeare Festival at Stratford, Connecticut as well as projects such as Turandot at the Vienna State Opera, to nightclub acts for headliners Ann-Margret, Shirley MacLaine, and Liberace.

At Disneyland, Billington's lighting is featured in the extravaganza Fantasmic. His architectural designs can be seen in restaurants and clubs from Manhattan to Asia. Ken also designed the lighting plot and original design for all four current Dolly Parton Dixie Stampede locations.

Billington has been nominated for the Tony Award for Best Lighting Design nine times and in 1997 won for the revival of Chicago , which also garnered him the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lighting Design.

In November 2015, Billington was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame. [2]

Awards and nominations

YearTitleAwardCategoryResult
1974 The Visit Tony Award Best Lighting Design Nominated
1978 Working Tony Award Best Lighting Design Nominated
1979 Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street Tony Award Best Lighting Design Nominated
Drama Desk Award Outstanding Lighting Design Nominated
1983 Foxfire Tony Award Best Lighting Design Nominated
Drama Desk Award Outstanding Lighting Design Nominated
1984 End of the World Tony Award Best Lighting Design Nominated
1985 Grind Drama Desk Award Outstanding Lighting Design Nominated
1997 Chicago Tony Award Best Lighting Design Won
Drama Desk Award Outstanding Lighting Design Won
Outer Critics Circle Award Best Lighting DesignNominated
2006 The Drowsy Chaperone Tony Award Best Lighting Design Nominated
2008 Sunday in the Park with George Tony Award Best Lighting Design Nominated
Drama Desk Award Outstanding Lighting Design Nominated
Outer Critics Circle Award Outstanding Lighting DesignWon
2010 Sondheim on Sondheim Outer Critics Circle Award Outstanding Lighting DesignNominated
2011 The Scottsboro Boys Tony Award Best Lighting Design Nominated
2013 Chaplin Drama Desk Award Outstanding Lighting Design Nominated
Outer Critics Circle Award Outstanding Lighting DesignNominated

Related Research Articles

Paula Vogel American playwright

Paula Vogel is an American playwright who received the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play How I Learned to Drive. A longtime teacher, Vogel spent the bulk of her academic career – from 1984 to 2008 – at Brown University, where she served as Adele Kellenberg Seaver Professor in Creative Writing, oversaw its playwriting program, and helped found the Brown/Trinity Rep Consortium. From 2008 to 2012, Vogel was Eugene O'Neill Professor of Playwriting and department chair at the Yale School of Drama, as well as playwright in residence at the Yale Repertory Theatre.

Len Cariou Canadian actor and stage director

Leonard Joseph Cariou is a Canadian actor and stage director, best known for his portrayal of Sweeney Todd in the original cast of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, for which he won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical, and for playing the patriarch Henry Reagan, NYPD Police Commissioner (retired), in the multi-generational television series Blue Bloods on CBS.

George Hearn is an American actor and singer, primarily in Broadway musical theatre.

<i>Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street</i> 1979 musical by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by Hugh Wheeler. It is based on the 1973 play of the same name by Christopher Bond.

Michael Cerveris American actor

Michael Cerveris is an American actor, singer, and guitarist. He has performed in many stage musicals and plays, including several Stephen Sondheim musicals: Assassins, Sweeney Todd, Road Show, and Passion. In 2004, Cerveris won the Tony Award as Best Featured Actor in a Musical for Assassins as John Wilkes Booth. In 2015, he won his second Tony Award as Best Actor in a Musical for Fun Home as Bruce Bechdel.

Joseph Mielziner was an American theatrical scenic, and lighting designer born in Paris, France. He was described as "the most successful set designer of the Golden era of Broadway", and worked on both stage plays and musicals.

Boris Aronson American scenic designer

Boris Aronson was an American scenic designer for Broadway and Yiddish theatre. He won the Tony Award for Scenic Design six times in his career.

Judy Kaye is an American singer and actress. She has appeared in stage musicals, plays, and operas. Kaye has been in long runs on Broadway in the musicals The Phantom of the Opera, Ragtime, Mamma Mia!, and Nice Work If You Can Get It.

Oliver Smith was an American scenic designer and interior designer.

Natasha Katz is a lighting designer for the theatre, dance, and opera.

Eugene Lee is an American set designer who has worked as the production designer for Saturday Night Live since the show's premiere in 1975. Lee has been resident designer at Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, Rhode Island, since 1967.

Kevin Adams is an American theatrical lighting designer. He has earned four Tony Awards for lighting design.

Santo Richard Loquasto is an American production designer, scenic designer, and costume designer for stage, film, and dance.

Robin Samuel Anton Wagner is an American scenic designer.

Roger Morgan is a pioneer in the world of theatre design consulting. He became interested in theatre architecture while a student at Carnegie Mellon University, and worked as an assistant to the scenic designer Jo Mielziner who became the primary influence on his career. He is the Tony Award-winning lighting designer of over 200 plays on and off-Broadway and in regional theater. He founded Sachs Morgan Studio in 1976 to provide comprehensive theatre planning and design services to the performing arts community.

Paul Gemignani is an American musical director with a career on Broadway and West End theatre spanning over forty years.

Richard Pilbrow is a stage lighting designer, author, theatre design consultant, and theatrical producer, film producer and television producer. He was the first British lighting designer to light a Broadway musical on the Broadway stage with the musical Zorba.

Imero Fiorentino

Imero (Immie) Fiorentino was an American lighting designer, considered one of the most respected pioneers and leaders in the American entertainment industry. Beginning his career as a lighting designer in the Golden Age of Television, he designed productions for such celebrated series as Omnibus, U.S. Steel Hour, Pulitzer Prize Playhouse and Kraft Television Theatre. Fiorentino's expertise was often called upon by industry professionals throughout the world to consult on the planning and development of major productions, exhibits, museums and architectural projects; from the Republican National Convention and Democratic National Convention and numerous United States presidential election debates, major concert tours and television specials to the environmental lighting for Epcot’s World Showcase at Walt Disney World. His consulting work on major corporate events with clients included: Anheuser-Busch, Michelin, Electrolux, American Express and Xerox.

<i>Enron</i> (play)

Enron is a 2009 play by the British playwright Lucy Prebble, based on the Enron scandal.

Marc Routh is a theatrical producer, entrepreneur and professor.

References

  1. 1 2 Rothstein, Mervyn (December 25, 2008). "A Life in the Theatre: Ken Billington". Playbill. Retrieved January 12, 2022.
  2. "Members". Theater Hall of Fame.