Martin Aronstein

Last updated • 2 min readFrom Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

Martin Aronstein (November 2, 1936 – May 3, 2002) was an American lighting designer whose Broadway career spanned thirty-six years.

Born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, Aronstein attended Queens College in Flushing, New York. [1] In 1957, following a performance sponsored by the New York Shakespeare Festival, he approached a backstage worker and asked if he could help break down the set. He apprenticed with the festival and worked there for five years before being named its principal lighting designer, a position he held until 1976. He also served as the resident lighting supervisor at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. [2]

Aronstein made his Broadway debut as the lighting assistant for Arturo Ui in 1963. Additional Broadway credits include The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore , Tiny Alice , The Impossible Years , Cactus Flower , The Royal Hunt of the Sun , How Now, Dow Jones , George M! , Promises, Promises , Play It Again, Sam , The Gingerbread Lady , Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death , The Incomparable Max , And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little , My Fat Friend , The Ritz , The Grand Tour , Noises Off , Benefactors , and The Twilight of the Golds .

Aronstein was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Lighting Design five times and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lighting Design once but failed to win either prize.

In 1977 Aronstein relocated to Southern California, where he designed for the Mark Taper Forum, the Ahmanson Theater, and the Pasadena Playhouse on a regular basis. In 1978, he also created the lighting design for the musical Barbary Coast at the Orpheum Theatre.

He won the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for A Month in the Country in 1983 and Passion in 1984, and in 1996 he was awarded the Circle's Angstrom Award for career achievement in theatrical lighting. He was also an adjunct professor at the theater school of the University of Southern California, and designed for the San Francisco Ballet, the St. Louis Municipal Opera, and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. [2] [3]

Aronstein died of heart failure at Valley Presbyterian Hospital in Van Nuys, California. [3] He was survived by life partner Lawrence Metzler. [2]

Related Research Articles

Julie Taymor American film and theatre director and writer

Julie Taymor is an American director and writer of theater, opera and film. Since her stage adaptation of The Lion King debuted in 1997, 24 global productions have been seen by more than 100 million people in over 100 cities in 20 countries, on every continent except Antarctica, and its worldwide gross exceeds that of any entertainment title in box office history. The Lion King also received 11 Tony Award nominations, earning Taymor Tony Awards for Best Director and Costume Designer, and was honored with more than 70 major arts awards worldwide.

Drama Desk Award New York theater awards

The Drama Desk Award is an annual prize recognizing excellence in New York theatre. First bestowed in 1955 as the Vernon Rice Award, the prize initially honored Off-Broadway productions, as well as Off-off-Broadway, and those in the vicinity. Following the 1964 renaming as the Drama Desk Awards, Broadway productions were included beginning with the 1968–69 award season. The awards are considered a significant American theater distinction.

<i>The Royal Hunt of the Sun</i> 1964 theatre piece by Peter Shaffer

The Royal Hunt of the Sun is a 1964 play by Peter Shaffer that dramatizes the relation of two worlds entering in a conflict by portraying two characters: Atahuallpa Inca and Francisco Pizarro.

John Rubinstein American actor, composer, director (b. 1946)

John Rubinstein is an American actor, composer and director.

Lynn Nottage American playwright

Lynn Nottage is an American playwright whose work often focuses on the experience of working-class people, particularly working-class people who are Black. She has received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice: in 2009 for her play Ruined, and in 2017 for her play Sweat. She was the first woman to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama two times.

Bill Rauch American theatre director (born 1962)

Bill Rauch is an American theatre director. He was named the inaugural artistic director of the Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center in 2016. Currently in development, the Perelman is the final piece of the plan to revitalize the World Trade Center site and will create work which inspires hope.

Donald Holder is an American lighting designer in theatre, opera, and dance based in New York. He was born in 1962. He has been nominated for thirteen Tony Awards, winning the 1998 Tony Award for Best Lighting Design as well as the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lighting Design for The Lion King. He won a second Tony in 2008 for the revival of South Pacific. His lighting design for Ragtime has been nominated for a 2010 Tony Award for Best Lighting Design of a Musical. Additional Broadway credits include: Big Fish,Annie , Golden Boy, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, Arcadia, The Motherfucker With The Hat, Promises, Promises, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Radio Golf, The Little Dog Laughed, Movin' Out, The Times They Are a-Changin', A Streetcar Named Desire, Holiday, Cyrano de Bergerac, and Prelude to a Kiss. Off-Broadway credits include Jeffrey and The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told. He was the theatrical lighting designer for seasons one and two of the NBC-Universal television series Smash.

George Clarke Jenkins was an American production designer.

Laurence Crawford "Larry" O'Keefe is an American composer and lyricist for Broadway musicals, film and television. He won the 2001 Lucille Lortel Award, Outstanding Musical as composer for Bat Boy: The Musical.

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

Christopher Akerlind is an American lighting designer for theatre, opera, and dance. He won the Tony Award for Best Lighting Design for Indecent. He also won the Tony Award for Best Lighting Design and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lighting Design for Light in the Piazza and an Obie Award for sustained excellence for his work Off-Broadway.

In the Boom Boom Room is a play by David Rabe. The play follows a young go-go dancer who has a difficult relationship with her parents.

Brian Sidney Bembridge Musical artist

Brian Sidney Bembridge is an American scenic, lighting, and costume designer for theater and film. His work has been seen on stages and screens throughout the country and Internationally in Australia, Germany, Prague, Ireland, and Great Britain. Mr. Bembridge has also taught and lectured at many universities across the country. He holds a BFA from University of North Carolina School of the Arts.

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.

John Wulp was an American scenic designer, producer, director, and artist.

John Lee Beatty American scenic designer

John Lee Beatty is an American scenic designer who has created set designs for more than 115 Broadway shows and has designed for other productions. He won two Tony Awards, for Talley's Folly (1980) and The Nance (2013), was nominated for 13 more, and he won five Drama Desk Awards and was nominated for 10 others.

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.

Richard Nelson was an American theatrical lighting designer.

Gilles Chiasson is an American producer, director, composer, writer and actor. While he first came to prominence as an actor, particularly in the original cast of the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winning RENT, Chiasson went on to work in film and television development and now focuses on theater administration and operations. He currently lives in Los Angeles, California, with his wife Sherri Parker Lee and their two sons.

Dane Laffrey is an American scenic designer best known for Broadway shows Once on This Island (2017), Spring Awakening (2015), and Fool for Love (2015), and Off-Broadway shows The Christians (2015), Cloud Nine (2015), and Rancho Viejo (2016).

References

  1. Ian Herbert, ed. (1981). "ARONSTEIN, Martin". Who's Who in the Theatre. Vol. 1. Gale Research Company. p. 24. ISSN   0083-9833.
  2. 1 2 3 New York Times obituary, June 15, 2002
  3. 1 2 Los Angeles Times obituary, June 8, 2002