Young people often ask me how I achieved my position in the lighting profession and how I ended up in Chicago. I started thinking about the fact that the majority of successful U.S. lighting designers hail from New York or California. But Chicago is right up there with the rest of the world, and what better way to discuss how to advance in the industry than to invite three renowned Chicago lighting designers to dinner to discuss it. I’m sitting at a sushi restaurant with Bob Peterson, John Featherstone and Olivier Ilisca. We are all friends who run into each other on occasion, but have never sat down together at the same table for dinner. Why? We travel in somewhat different circles with different gigs and different clients. Bob is a well-known freelance lighting designer in the television business. John is an original partner in Lightswitch. Olivier and his business partner head up a production design team at CSP (Center Stage Productions). I am a one man corporation known as Nooklites Design and my forté is concert lighting.
Olivier: You know what’s funny, whenever lighting guys get together for dinner, what’s the first choice we all want? Sushi.
Nook: That’s true. You can’t go wrong with sushi.
John: It’s almost like the universal food of lighting guys isn’t it?
Bob: Yeah, but we need more beer right now. Where’s our guy?
Nook: I know that Bob was born here, Olivier, you’re from Paris, John is from the UK and I grew up in New York. Why here?
John: Sounds like a joke. A Frenchman, an Englishman and a New Yorker meet in a fish bar… [Laughs]
Chicago was the first place in the States I ever came to. It was 1984 and I was picked up at the airport by Sir John Huddleston and driven to the Upstaging shop to take a look at the lighting system for the Smith’s first U.S. tour. That’s where I met Busch, the lighting tech. He brought up the first channel on the lighting system whereupon it promptly caught fire. Remember those old connect boxes where we used to plug the lamps into?
Bob: I built those!
John: Good work. It was a spectacular explosion!
We promptly left for lunch and everything was working fine when we got back. Busch then drove me downtown Chicago and deposited me at the Ambassador Hotel. I knew this place from the movie The Blues Brothers. Being jetlagged I found myself staring to the west over the lighting grid of the city, and I had never seen anything like it in Europe. On my second trip here, I decided to get a work visa to stay. That’s when I met my wife and the rest is history.
Nook: Are you a citizen yet?
John: Nah, green card.
Olivier: My wife’s been bugging me about that.
John: I take a lot of bugging about that too.
Nook: Olivier, how did you get from Paris to Chicago?
Olivier: I had come to Chicago in the late ‘80s to meet up with a few people I had met in the area. I grew fond of the city and knew I wanted to come back.
Nook: Were you working in Paris up until that time?
Olivier: I worked a lot in Paris, but other places as well. In 1989 I was working in the Dominican Republic and various other locations. I was working for Club Med, doing resort stuff and traveling for them. I came here, got a green card and started drumming up work somehow. That was back in 1989. I am now married to a great girl and we live in the Chicago area.
Nook: Were you a lighting designer for Club Med?
Olivier: Not exactly. I was a lighting designer in Paris. My background was always in theatre. With Club Med I was more involved with installations, buying equipment, setting up stuff and moving to the next location.
Nook: Bob, I understand you got into the lighting business by playing hockey?
Bob: That’s true. Back during high school I played with a guy named Donnie Carone. His brother Robert had started a lighting company based in his dad’s garage. He owned two Genie towers, left over from a high school show that had bombed. They bought some lights for the towers. Robert Carone needed to pay off the lights. So he utilized his brother, myself and some other friends as cheap labor. This was 1971-72. Right at that time rock shows started using lights. So as tours came through Chicago, Robert became the local vendor. Donnie and I would help set up the Genie lifts when we weren’t in school, which was often. Styx and REO Speedwagon got a little bigger and started carrying their own lights with them. Then came a national tour with Lynyrd Skynyrd including Kiss as their opening act. Of course that led to using Ryder trucks to transport the gear and Upstaging became a trucking company as well, but that’s another story.
Now remember, I’m just graduating high school. I’m a National Merit Scholar all set to go get an engineering degree at some university when I tell my parents “I’m going to take the summer off and do Kiss’ Destroyer tour.” I’m the third man on the crew, under Rick Monroe and Donnie, and Jeff Ravitz was on the crew as well. Anyway, we’re out there and Bob Seger is the opening act, and nobody wants to do his lighting. So I’m like, “Let me at that Scrimmer board.” After three shows, Bob is bringing me fifty dollars every night. So the tour ends and I’m ready to go to college, except that Seger had written “Night Moves” at that time, and he wants me to design it all.
Nook: And 30 years later you are still lighting him.
Bob: If he goes out this year, I hope to be involved again.
John: That’s how it worked for me. I had a little lighting company lighting shows at colleges. The Smiths came through before their first single was out and they said “Hey, you’re actually changing lights with the beat. What a concept!”
Check in with Nook and the guys next month when their discussion turns to education, training and how to thrive in the lighting business. In the meantime, you can contact the author by e-mailing nschoenfeld@plsn.com.
