Curtain Up: Broadway Behind the Scenes / Biographies of artists

Curtain Up: Broadway Behind the Scenes

April 14 - September 1, 2012

Biographies of artists

Marina Draghici

Marina Draghici is a costume designer and set designer for Broadway, film, and television. Draghici , born in Bucharest, Romania, has been designing for theater, opera, film, and television since graduating from the Yale School of Drama in 1988.

She received both a Tony Award (2010) and Lucille Lortel Award (2009) for the costume design for the Broadway musical FELA! Draghici served not only as costume designer for FELA but she also was the show's set designer. Draghici is the only designer represented in this exhibition to play both roles in a Broadway show.

Prior to FELA!, Draghici collaborated with Bill T. Jones on Dream on a Monkey Mountain and 24 Images Secondes. Marina Draghici 's designs, both costume designs and set designs, have been seen at the Paris Opera, Lyon Opera, Bordeaux Opera, Zurich Opera, New York City Opera, and in theaters in the US and abroad.

Her feature film credits include Academy Award nominated Precious; Rage (with Judi Dench, Jude Law), The Night Listener (with Robin Williams); The Cake Eaters (with Kristen Stewart), Heights (with Glenn Close, James Marsden, Isabella Rossellini Elisabeth Banks); and The Gray Zone (with David Arquette, Harvey Keitel, Steve Buscemi).

For television she worked on Homeland (Showtime), Blue Bloods (CBS), Dexter (Showtime) and on many commercials. Draghici also serves as a fashion stylist and designer in New York and Hollywood for celebrities and on award shows.

David Gallo

David Gallo (born 1966) is an American scenic designer and projection designer for Broadway, off-Broadway, regional, and international theater venues. He received the 2006 Tony Award for Best Scenic Design for The Drowsy Chaperone. A longtime collaborator of playwright August Wilson, Gallo's designs for Wilson's Gem of the Ocean and Radio Golf garnered him two additional Tony nominations. He designed the sets for the Tony Award winning musical Memphis.

Currently, Gallo's designs are seen on Broadway in Memphis, Blue Man Group, Hurt Village and SpongeBob SquarePants (international tour). In fall of 2012 Gallo's set designs will be featured on Broadway in the Tupac Shakur musical Holler If You Hear Me. His most recent Broadway credits include: Stick Fly; The Mountaintop; Colin Quinn: Long Story Short; High; reasons to be pretty; A Catered Affair; Xanadu; Thoroughly Modern Millie; Ma Rainey's Black Bottom; The Smell of the Kill; King Hedley II; Dance of the Vampires; A View from the Bridge; Little Me; You're a Good Man Charlie Brown; Jackie; and Hughie.

Often credited with a whimsical style, many of Gallo's projects have been centered on children and family entertainment. Gallo designed the 135th Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus and served as the Production Designer for many youth oriented Live productions including Yo Gabba Gabba; Madagascar; Blue's Clues; Dora the Explorer; Go, Diego, Go!; Clifford the Big Red Dog; SpongeBob SquarePants; and various projects for Nickelodeon. He designed the popular Christmas television special Elmo's Christmas Countdown for Sesame Street and was honored by the Jim Henson Company with a Muppet crafted in his likeness.

In 2000, Gallo's work was chosen for the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum's National Design Triennial. His designs were featured in the 2003 Prague Quadrennial and can be found in public and private collections. Gallo is the recipient of the 2000 Obie for Sustained Excellence in Set Design; multiple Drama Desk awards, Lucille Lortel, American Theatre Wing, Hewes Design, Ovation, and LA Critics Circle awards.

David Gallo will give a talk, "Broadway Design: Past, Present, and Future," here at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum on May 5th at 3pm. Please make reservations at the Museum's Front Desk, space is limited.

William Ivey Long

William Ivey Long (born 1947) is a costume designer for film and stage. He is a native North Carolinian with deep theatrical roots. Both of his parents were theatre educators, and he spent his childhood summers in Manteo, North Carolina, where his family worked at Paul Green's outdoor drama, The Lost Colony. William made his first costume at the age of 5: an Elizabethan ruff for his dog. Each summer he returns to Manteo, where he has served as Production Designer since 1988. Summer 2012 will mark his 42nd season with the production.

He received a BA in history from The College of William and Mary, was a Kress Fellow in Art History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and then received an MFA in stage design from Yale University School of Drama.

Possibly the most recognized name in Broadway costume design, William Ivey Long's career spans over three decades and over 60 shows. He has received eleven Tony Award nominations for his work, and has won the Tony five times. His designs for Hairspray won a Tony, a Drama Desk, and an Outer Critics Circle Award. His costume designs for The Producers (497 costumes) won a Tony, a Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Award. (He also designed for the film version of The Producers with 7,000 costumes.)

The current Broadway productions of Leap of Faith and Don't Dress for Dinner mark William's 62nd and 63rd Broadway costume design. In addition, he has designed the costumes for Young Frankenstein (on view in this exhibition); Chicago; Hugh Jackman: Back on Broadway; Catch Me If You Can; 9 To 5; Pal Joey; Grey Gardens; (Tony Award); Sweet Charity; La Cage aux Folles; Hewes Award); The Boy from Oz; The Music Man; Swing (Hewes Award); Contact (Hewes Award); Cabaret; Smokey Joe's Cafe; Guys and Dolls; (Drama Desk Award); Crazy for You (Tony, Outer Critics Circle Awards); Six Degrees of Separation; Lend Me a Tenor (Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle Awards); and Nine (Tony, Drama Desk, Maharam Awards).

William Ivey Long serves on the board of the American Theatre Wing and was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame in 2005.

Paul Tazewell

Paul Tazewell (born 1964) is a costume designer for the theater, dance, and opera. He is the costume designer for Memphis.

Born in Akron, Ohio, Tazewell graduated from the North Carolina School of the Arts and NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. Tazewell is resident artist and Associate Professor of Costume Design at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Tazewell has designed costumes for over a dozen Broadway productions: Jesus Christ Superstar; In the Heights; Guys and Dolls; The Color Purple; Magic/Bird; Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk; Lombardi; The Miracle Worker; Caroline or Change; A Raisin in the Sun; Drowning Crow; Elaine Stritch: At Liberty; On the Town; Fascinating Rhythm; and Def Poetry Jam.

He has also designed costumes for dance: Alvin Ailey Dance Company; Pacific Northwest Ballet Company; and the Bolshoi Ballet, as well as for opera: Faust (Metropolitan Opera); Porgy and Bess (Chicago Lyric, San Francisco Opera, L.A. Opera, Washington Opera); and Little Women (New York City Opera).

Tazewell received Tony nominations for his costume designs for Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk in 1996; for Guys and Dolls in 2009, In the Heights, The Color Purple, and for Memphis. He is the recipient of four Helen Hayes Awards and the Lucille Lortel Award.

Robin Wagner

Robin Wagner (born 1933) is an American scenic designer. He was born in San Francisco, attended art school and started his career in theaters in that city. In 1953 he moved to New York where he worked on numerous off-Broadway productions before making his Broadway debut as an assistant designer for the Hugh Wheeler play Big Fish, Little Fish in 1961. He became an assistant to the designer Ben Edwards, and then assistant to the legendary Oliver Smith. With Smith, he worked on 110 in the Shade and Hello, Dolly! before setting out on his own. His first solo project was a 1966 production of The Condemned of Altona by Jean-Paul Sartre. Wagner's first big hit, in 1967, was Hair.

Robin Wagner's many Broadway credits include Hair; Promises, Promises; Jesus Christ Superstar;, A Chorus Line; Ballroom; On the Twentieth Century; 42nd Street; The Boy from Oz; Dreamgirls; Song and Dance; City of Angels; The Producers; and Young Frankenstein. Wagner's other theatrical work ranges from off-Broadway and regional theatre productions to ballet and opera, including sets for the Metropolitan Opera, the Vienna State Opera, the Hamburg State Opera, the Royal Swedish Opera, the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, and the New York City Ballet.

Wagner is a veteran Broadway set designer, whose early use of large-scale automated scenery in musicals like On the Twentieth Century and Dreamgirls has now become standard in American theater. He has won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Set Design six times out of eleven nominations. He received the industry's Robert L.B. Tobin Award for sustained excellence in theatrical design. Wagner won the Tony Award for Best Scenic Design three times out of ten nominations. His set designs for The Producers won him a Tony award and his designs for Young Frankenstein garnered him another Tony nomination.

Wagner has served on the Theatre Advisory Committee for the New York International Festival of the Arts, is a trustee of the New York Shakespeare Festival, and has taught in the graduate Theater Arts program at Columbia University. He lives in New York City.

Robert Wierzel

Robert Wierzel (born 1956) is an American lighting designer. He is well known for his work in the American regional theater, with national and international opera companies, museum installations, and dance. For twenty-three years he has been a collaborator with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and Bill T. Jones Dance Company.

Wierzel's lighting design work has been seen in theater companies nationally, including: New York City Opera; Boston Lyric Opera; Chicago Opera Theater; Lincoln Center Great Performances; San Francisco Opera; Trisha Brown Dance Company; Boston Ballet; American Repertory Theatre; Chicago Shakespeare Theatre; as well as internationally, from the Vancouver Opera to Tokyo Opera. Wierzel has also created lighting designs locally for the Connecticut Ballet; Hartford Stage Company; Long Wharf Theatre; Westport Country Playhouse; and Yale Repertory Theater.

Wierzel's work has won him a Primetime Emmy Award, Obie Award, and Bessie Award. He has been nominated for several Audelco Awards, Joseph Jefferson Award , Barrymore Award, Helen Hayes Design Award , and LA Theatre Ovation Award. In 1991 he was the recipient of the American Theatre Wing Lighting Design Award for his work with Philip Glass on Hydrogen Jukebox.

His work on FELA! earned him a Tony nomination for Best Lighting Design in a Musical in 2010.

Wierzel teaches in the graduate lighting design program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts Department of Design for Stage and Film. He lives in Connecticut.

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