Paul Pyant

Last updated

Paul Pyant (born 22 July 1953) is a British lighting designer, whose designs have been featured in the West End, on Broadway and in opera houses around the world. He has been nominated for several Olivier Awards and Tony Awards, winning the Olivier in 2014 for his design for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory .

Contents

Life and career

Pyant's parents are Leonard Vincent Pyant, a business executive, and Jean Phoebe née Frampton, a medical secretary. He graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London in 1973 and is an associate of the Academy. [1]

Musical theatre

His credits in Britain include numerous West End productions and many productions with Royal National Theatre (RNT) in London. He was nominated for Olivier Awards for his designs for The Wind in the Willows (RNT 1991), [2] Hamlet (2001), [3] A Streetcar Named Desire (2003), [4] All's Well that Ends Well (2005) [5] and the musicals The Lord of the Rings (2008) [6] and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2014). He won the Olivier for the last of these. [7] The RNT production of Othello played an engagement in Brooklyn, New York in 1998. Ben Brantley, in The New York Times, wrote that Pyant's lighting for this production was "exquisite". [8] Pyant's lighting design for the 2010 West End production of Waiting for Godot was called "lyrical". [9]

He has also designed lighting for productions of the Donmar Warehouse in London since its opening. For the Royal Shakespeare Company, he has lit productions of Richard III , The Tempest , The Painter of Dishonour and Julius Caesar . As one of the creative members of the Sam Mendes "Bridge Project", he designed the lighting for As You Like It and The Tempest, which played in repertory at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) and The Old Vic in 2010. Pyant commented on working on the two productions: "You know going into the project that these are two very different productions to light." [10] For the Chichester Festival Theatre, he designed the lighting for productions in 2005, 2007 and 2008, including The Scarlet Letter and King Lear. [11]

His designs have been seen on Broadway in Orpheus Descending (1989), Arcadia (1993), Carousel (1994), Electra (1998), Primo (2005) and The Woman in White (2005). He was nominated for the Tony Award, Best Lighting Design, for Orpheus Descending [12] and Arcadia, [13] and received nominations for Drama Desk Awards for lighting for Carousel [14] and the Sam Mendes "Bridge Project" production of The Winter's Tale (2009). [15]

Opera and ballet

Pyant's extensive opera credits include lighting designs for the premiere of The Minotaur (1990). From 1974 to 1987 he worked with Glyndebourne Opera, where he later designed lighting for Sir Peter Hall's productions of Le Nozze di Figaro , Falstaff and New Year , as well as Stephen Lawless's production of Death in Venice , among others. Since 1985, he has designed productions for the English National Opera (ENO). Early designs for ENO included Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk in 1987, Handel's Xerxes and Carmen in 1988, Lear, Falstaff and Street Scene the next year. Later, he designed for them Orfeo ed Euridice (2001) and others. His designs have also been seen at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, at the Vienna Staatsoper, the Vienna Volksoper, the Royal Opera House in London, La Scala, Milan; Opera de Monte Carlo, the Kirov Opera in St. Petersburg and elsewhere. He has designed ten productions for the Houston Grand Opera, including Rigoletto and most recently Handel's Xerxes in 2010. [16]

His designs for ballet include productions by the English National Ballet, Northern Ballet, The Norwegian National Ballet, The Royal New Zealand Ballet, Boston Ballet and Atlanta Ballet. He designed the lighting for The Snow Queen for the English National Ballet in 2010, with The Stage reviewer Gavin Roebuck noting "Paul Pyant magically lights these and the dazzling ice scape." [17]

Related Research Articles

Jennifer Tipton is an American lighting designer. She has designed for dance, theater, and opera. She is known for working on many productions of American Ballet Theatre.

Swing! is a musical conceived by Paul Kelly with music by various artists. It celebrates the music of the Swing era of jazz (1930s–1946), including many well-known tunes by artists like Duke Ellington, William "Count" Basie, Benny Goodman and others. It received a nomination for the 2000 Tony Award for Best Musical and other Tony awards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jenna Russell</span> British actress

Jenna Russell is an English actress and singer. She has appeared on the stage in London in both musicals and dramas, as well as appearing with the Royal Shakespeare Company. She performed the role of Dot in Sunday in the Park with George in the West End and on Broadway, receiving the Tony Award nomination and the 2006 Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her role. She has also appeared in several television series, including Born and Bred and EastEnders.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jasper Conran</span> English fashion designer

Jasper Alexander Thirlby Conran is an English designer. He has worked on collections of womenswear and for the home, as well as productions for the stage in ballet, opera and theatre.

Susan Margaret Blane, is an English costume designer. She is best known for her costume designs for both The Rocky Horror Show and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. With her designs for Rocky Horror, Blane is credited for creating the look that became the template for punk rock fashion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Caird (director)</span> English theatre director and writer

John Newport Caird is an English stage director and writer of plays, musicals and operas. He is an honorary associate director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, was for many years a regular director with the Royal National Theatre of Great Britain and is the principal guest director of the Royal Dramatic Theatre, Stockholm (Dramaten).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Natasha Katz</span> American lighting designer

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

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarah Connolly</span> English mezzo-soprano

Dame Sarah Patricia Connolly is an English mezzo-soprano. Although best known for her baroque and classical roles, Connolly has a wide-ranging repertoire which has included works by Wagner as well as various 20th-century composers. She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2010 New Year Honours and a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2017 Birthday Honours for services to music.

Rick Fisher is an American lighting designer, known for his work with Stephen Daldry on Billy Elliot the Musical and An Inspector Calls. He is from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and attended Dickinson College, but has been based in the UK for the last 30 years.

Ann Hould-Ward is an American costume designer, primarily for the theatre and dance. She has designed the costumes for 24 Broadway productions. She won the 1994 Tony Award for Beauty and the Beast.

Peter Mumford is an international lighting designer who trained at the Central School of Art in London. He won Laurence Olivier Awards for his work, in 1995 and 2003.

The 2010 Olivier Awards were held on 21 March 2010 at the Grosvenor House Hotel, London.

Tony Straiges is a scenic designer for the stage and ballet. He has designed the sets for 17 Broadway musicals, plays and specials. His sets "often have a sparse elegance or sense of fantasy about them." Robert Brustein said of Straiges: "Today, he is considered one of the visual poets of the stage." Straiges attended the Yale School of Drama at Yale University.

The 1985 Laurence Olivier Awards were presented by the Society of London Theatre in 1985 at the Dominion Theatre in London, celebrating excellence in West End theatre. It was broadcast by BBC Television, though the broadcast date and specific BBC station is not available – the 2003 Oliviers, for example, aired on BBC Two the evening after the live event.

The 1991 Laurence Olivier Awards were held in 1991 in London celebrating excellence in West End theatre by the Society of London Theatre.

Jonathan Richard Driscoll is an English Olivier Award-winning and Tony-nominated theatre projection designer and lighting designer working in the West End and on Broadway. He is a Technical Associate of the National Theatre in London.

The 1994 Laurence Olivier Awards were held in 1994 in London celebrating excellence in West End theatre by the Society of London Theatre.

The 1995 Laurence Olivier Awards were held in 1995 in London celebrating excellence in West End theatre by the Society of London Theatre.

The 2001 Laurence Olivier Awards were presented by the Society of London Theatre in 2001 at the Lyceum Theatre, London, celebrating excellence in West End theatre.

The 2008 Laurence Olivier Awards were held in 2008 in London celebrating excellence in West End theatre by the Society of London Theatre.

References

  1. ↑ "Paul Pyant: Lighting Designer" Archived 13 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine . The Lord of the Rings – On Stage. Retrieved 5 January 2010
  2. ↑ "Olivier Winners 1991". Officiallondontheatre.co.uk. Retrieved 7 January 2011
  3. ↑ "Olivier Winners 2001" Archived 11 June 2010 at the Wayback Machine . Officiallondontheatre.co.uk. Retrieved 7 January 2011
  4. ↑ "Olivier Winners 2003" Archived 11 June 2010 at the Wayback Machine . Officiallondontheatre.co.uk. Retrieved 7 January 2011
  5. ↑ "Olivier Winners 2005" Archived 24 May 2010 at the Wayback Machine . Officiallondontheatre.co.uk. Retrieved 7 January 2011
  6. ↑ "Olivier Winners 2008" Archived 24 May 2010 at the Wayback Machine , Officiallondontheatre.co.uk. Retrieved 7 January 2011
  7. ↑ "Olivier Winners 2014", Olivierawards.com. Retrieved 3 April 2015
  8. ↑ Brantley, Ben. "Review: 'Othello'". The New York Times Theater Reviews 1997–1998, Psychology Press, 2001, ISBN   0-8153-3341-2, p. 268
  9. ↑ "'Waiting for Godot' Review" Archived 24 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine . Time Out, 28 January 2010
  10. ↑ Lampert-Gréaux, Ellen. "Love, Valour, And Passion: The Bridge Project" Live Design, 12 July 2010
  11. ↑ "Pyant work at Chichester" Archived 18 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine . Chichester Festival Theatre. Retrieved 7 January 2011
  12. ↑ "'Orpheus Descending' Tony Awards, 1990 (Search Past Winners)". tonyawards.com. Retrieved 7 January 2011
  13. ↑ "'Arcadia' Tony Awards, 1995" (Search Past Winners), tonyawards.com. Retrieved 7 January 2011
  14. ↑ "1993–1994 40th Drama Desk Awards" Archived 4 July 2008 at archive.today , dramadesk.com. Retrieved 7 January 2011
  15. ↑ "2008–2009 54th Drama Desk Awards" Archived 15 December 2010 at the Wayback Machine . dramadesk.com. Retrieved 7 January 2011
  16. ↑ "Press Release, Handel’s 'Xerxes'" Archived 6 July 2010 at the Wayback Machine Houston Grand Opera, 8 April 2010
  17. ↑ Roebuck, Gavin. "Review: The Snow Queen". The Stage, 11 January 2010
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.