Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 2009 - 72

book

reviews
arnold wengrow

editor

The Designs of Jules Fisher
by delbert Unruh; Syracuse, NY, United States Institute of Theatre
Technology, 2009. 127 p. Paper, $35.00 (USITT members
$30.00).
Reviewed by Michael lincoln
To lighting designers working in the last
thirty to forty years Jules Fisher has been
the most dominant name in the business.
There was a time when it seemed like
Jules Fisher was the default name on the
Tony Awards ballot. delbert Unruh's new
monograph, The Designs of Jules Fisher,
published by USITT, reveals the brilliant,
diminutive man behind the giant reputation. It's a little like discovering the man
behind the great Oz, except this man really is a wizard. Unruh doesn't wait for
the final reel but gradually pulls back the
curtain with each chapter in Fisher's extraordinary career.
As a small boy, Jules was introduced to the mysterious process of candling eggs in his father's delicatessen in Norristown,
Penn. He was also encouraged to study magic, which led him to
realize that magic depended on lighting. Two major revelations:
light revealing life and light concealing mechanics. Of course
he would become a lighting designer.

Inventor, problem solver
Fisher is not just a designer, he is an inventor of solutions. In
high school he developed an interest in how things worked and
how things were made. In the early '60s he needed a moving
light, so he invented and patented one. When he needed shin
busters in a broadway musical with no way to rig them because
the wings had to be clear for scenery movement, he invented
a rig for the units to pop up out of the deck when needed and
recede back into their burrows when they weren't. Maybe he
didn't invent them, but Fisher was the first designer I saw use
beam benders (mirrors attached to a unit's gel frame) when
there wasn't enough room for a conventional hang. Younger
designers probably don't know that Fisher developed the lowvoltage mini-strip. At the time (early '80s), it was revolutionary
because of its efficiency and space saving. Ever the problem
solver, Fisher has said, "I've always been fascinated how some
people can, in words, describe something that to me is Fresnels
and lekos and wire and a light bulb and a plug... That is one
of the mysteries of creativity for me. I am just trying to solve a
problem or trying to contribute something."

theatre

design

technology

2009

by 1960 Fisher was already so busy designing shows in
New York that he almost didn't make time to graduate from
Carnegie Tech. Cindy limauro, head of lighting at Carnegie Mellon University, is certainly glad he did. In their newish Purnell
Center, the light lab has two stations, named Jules and Peggy,
(as in Eisenhauer, CMU's other esteemed graduate in lighting
design. More about her later.) In the three years after graduation, Fisher designed twenty-three Off-broadway shows, running from theatre to theatre and occasionally sleeping in them.
United Scenic Artists membership was only "All Categories" at the time, and Fisher was a lighting designer only. He
was not allowed to design on broadway, but he was "ghost
lighting" for scenic designers and being forced to turn down
credited design jobs. After taking-and failing!-the first lighting design exam in 1963, he was asked to design Spoon River
Anthology on broadway. He threatened the union with a lawsuit
under the Taft Hartley Act for the right to work if they didn't
allow him to take the job. United Scenic Artists finally relented
but resented the pressure, and ill feelings lingered for a while.
Also in 1963 Fisher was asked by Marvin Krauss, a broadway general manager for more than four decades, to give advice on building a theatre. Fisher remembered, "I said I would
work with them as a consultant. I didn't quite know what the
word meant, but I said I would help." The collaboration led
him to form a theatre consulting firm, Jules Fisher Associates.
He was twenty-six years old. That business eventually morphed
into Fisher dachs Associates, when Josh dachs assumed leadership of the firm in the early '80s.
Commissions from colleague Stephen Sondheim to light
his apartment, Sybil burton to light her discotheque, Arthur, in
1965, and Ian Schrager to light Studio 54 in 1971 eventually
led Fisher to form his architectural lighting design business,
now called Fisher, Marantz, Stone. To date, that business alone
has generated 2,500 commissions. Fisher's third business arrangement was formed in 1995 with Peggy Eisenhauer, who
became a permanent design collaborator after a ten-year assistant/associate relationship. The story of why their collaboration
is named Third Eye Studio is worth the price of the book alone.
"Jules and Peggy" as they are known in the business, continue
their highly successful design relationship to this day.

Hair and after
Fisher's first life-altering broadway show was Hair in
1968. The reproduced preliminary plot, dinky by current
standards, is one of the many illustrations of a designer leading a field in an enormous technological transition. (For more
information about this seminal production, visit another wonderful new resource: http://lightingdb.nypl.org/. beverly Emmons, a powerhouse designer in her own right and one-time

http://lightingdb.nypl.org/

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