When the curtain rises at the 2011 Tony Awards next month, university theater professor Brian MacDevitt will be waiting with bated breath to hear the presenters call one winning name in particular — his.
MacDevitt arranged the lights for the Broadway musical The Book of Mormon — a religious satire written by the creators of South Park and nominated for 14 Tonys, including best musical — and teaches his students at this university the art of lighting design.
But this is not the first time MacDevitt’s name has made the list of Tony nominees. And if he wins, it wouldn’t be the first time either.
With a resumé that includes 59 Broadway productions, MacDevitt has been nominated 11 times for best lighting design and has taken home four of those awards. He said being a part of such a high-caliber musical makes this year’s nomination his proudest yet.
“It’s an extraordinary show,” MacDevitt said. “It’s a … joy to be a part of, and for the show to be successful and to be recognized along with others who were involved is special.”
As a kid who began as a jack-of-all-trades in a high school “hippie community theater,” MacDevitt said he never dreamed he might win a Tony or that this would be his life’s work.
“I didn’t know that there was such a thing as a career in theater,” MacDevitt said. “I thought if I got an education, theater could be my day job. I just never thought it would be my day job and my night job and my through-the-night job.”
But even as he began to dabble in Broadway productions, MacDevitt said he wasn’t always gunning for a Tony.
“When the nominations go up, people like me don’t want to see our name because we’re not used to being on stage, so I’m staring at the screen thinking, ‘Don’t pick me, don’t pick me, don’t pick me,'” he said. “And then they don’t pick me and then I’m relieved for about half a second and then I get disappointed like, ‘Why didn’t they pick me?'”
In 2002, MacDevitt found himself striding to the stage to receive his first Tony for his work on Into the Woods.
“It was just an out-of-body experience because you’re just on a stage in a theater with 5,000 people,” he said.
MacDevitt acknowledged that lighting design is not the most glamorous category in the lineup but noted his behind-the-scenes work is a major component in bringing a story to life.
“A good parallel of it is the scoring of a film. If a film is scored well, you probably don’t notice, but if it’s over-scored, it starts to tell you how to feel,” MacDevitt said. “What we try to do is visually score a play and just subtly point things out, and the emotion can take place without hammering the audience with it.”
Lighting graduate assistant Ariel Benjamin said even though MacDevitt is at the height of his career, he still shows unwavering commitment in shaping his students into better artists.
“He’s really supportive of us taking our own path and learning our style,” she said. “He doesn’t want us to be just carbon copies of him. He wants to impart his knowledge and impart his passion for what he does, but he doesn’t want us to leave here to design like him. But if I ever did design like him, I’d be quite lucky.”
And while each Tony is a welcome addition to his trophy case, MacDevitt, who joined the university faculty in 2009, said guiding his students on the path to success is just as rewarding.
“At this point, I would be happier to see a student of mine win a Tony Award,” he said.
villanueva at umdbk dot com
