Warmest congratulations to Jennifer Tipton on her latest honor, being named a 2008 MacArthur Fellow from the The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Sometimes called the "genius" awards, each fellowship comes with a stipend of $500,000 to the recipient, paid out in equal quarterly installments over five years.. Ms. Tipton was on the 1987 PQ Steering Committee which won the Prague Quadrennial Golden Triga award. The 1987 PQ Steering Committee won the USITT Award in 1990. She was recognized individually with the USITT Award in 2002.

The MacArthur Foundation, in announcing the honor said “Jennifer Tipton is an internationally recognized lighting designer whose distinctive designs have redefined the relationship between lighting and performance.”

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USITT President Carl Lefko presented the Keynote for an enthusiastic audience at the Chesapeake Regional Section's recent meeting and Stage Expo at Towson Univeristy in Maryland. Membership & Ad Sales Manager Michelle Smith, from USITT's National Office, also participated, including making sure those in attendance had information about the benefits of belonging to the Institute.

A full report of the event is expected in the November issue of Sightlines.

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OPERA America, the national service organization for opera, announces a bi-annual Director-Designer Showcase under the auspices of The Opera Fund. The Showcase will offer direct benefits to promising stage directors and designers seeking to break into the world of opera. It is intended to bring new talent to the forefront, and connect promising directors and designers with those who are in a position to engage them.

For more information, click here.

The Showcase is open to emerging opera/theater artists regardless of their membership status with OPERA America.

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Tim Hunter Design recently announced that Bill Groener will join the firm as president and chief operating officer. Mr. Groener is former vice president/general manager of Production Resource Group.

Early in his career, he worked primarily in design and production in both regional and academic theatre. After working as an assistant professor at Williams College, he joined the Walt Disney Company as a lighting designer for theme park projects. After Disney, he moved away from design and production and toward the manufacturing side, primarily with Strand Lighting where he eventually worked as executive vice president/general manager. For the past 14 years, he worked with first Barbizon and later PRG.

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USITT Fellow Richard Pilbrow's new lighting design for A Tale Of Two Cities is the first Broadway production to integrate Strand Lighting's Light Palette VL (with Universal Attribute Control) with Cast Lighting's WYSIWYG and West Side Systems' Virtual Magic Sheet for what is being called a more dynamic, intuitive and designer-friendly graphic representation of the output and orientation of the lighting rig. The show premiered September 18 at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre.

Mr. Pilbrow configured a video display to indicate, graphically and in real time, levels and positions of lights. He cued the show (with over 1,300 control channels of moving and conventional fixtures, LED's, fiber-optics, special effects and over 80 radio-controlled battery-powered instruments) without any other display from the lighting console, working alongside the actors as they rehearsed onstage.

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Congratulations to Robert Shakespeare of Indiana University whose "Light Totem" is about to celebrate its own anniversary, lighting up the sky at the IU Art Museum building. The 70-foot freestanding tower on the museum lawn includes LEDs reflecting off the aluminum tower, capped by a 208 million candle-power searchlight. Mr. Shakespeare can program the totem to perform choreographed sequences of up to 25 minutes, and has been drawing people who stand in awe as the totem lights the night.

It uses about 3,000 watts of energy compared to the 30,000 to 40,000 which would be needed for more traditional light sources. Duke Energy is the exclusive corporate sponsor of the project.

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