Like many other disciplines in the theater, lighting design has undergone a big shift in recent years as technological innovations have increased and as the demand for more eye-popping shows has grown. At times it feels like Broadway has gone Hollywood, but seasoned LDs know how to strike the right balance between the artistic and the technical. Not every big show has to be over-the-top to be effective; it all comes down to what the show and its story require. Both Don Holder and Ken Billington have tackled their share of smaller productions, big extravaganzas and other projects. Their latest credits include Annie and Chaplin: The Musical, respectively. Their combined experience came to the fore when they sat down with PLSN in Billington’s office to discuss their craft, their careers and their philosophies.
PLSN: Lighting has changed a lot, especially over the last 10 years with LED technology. Having worked in the industry for so long, I’m curious as to what you think about the advantages and disadvantages to having the technology change so rapidly.
Ken Billington: I find that LEDs are terrific for scenery. They’re not so good at making people look pretty because color rendering on them is bad, although everyone is trying to improve it. If you take a Source Four LED up with an incandescent LED and put your hand in each one and put them in the same color, the hand in the incandescent just looks better. It’s a little bit green in LED. It’s the nature of the source, it’s not the manufacturer. That’s my big thing with LEDs. They’re great on scenery. The curve can be terrible. Depending upon who makes it, they drop out at 1, 2, 3 or 5 percent. They snap out. So if you’re trying to do a 25 count fade to black, you get down to a point and the LEDs snap out. It’s the nature of the beast, and even when you get to the much higher end fixtures, they all do it. I keep it on scenery when I can really control it.
Don Holder: To answer the question globally, technology is a means to an end. What’s important to me, to Ken and all lighting designers is what is the context you’re creating visually, the frame you’re rendering, what is the story being told. It is very easy to be seduced by all this new stuff, including LEDs. The bottom line is, is it the right tool for the job? We have unlimited flexibility. I’m sure Ken and I have both seen examples of how people get so seduced by the unlimited flexibility that they avoid making choices, and you wind up having mud. If you can’t really narrow your options and think about what you’re using and why, then there’s no overarching idea. The technology is fantastic. There are so many innovations that are making our lives better and have the potential to make the work better, but you have to use it carefully and think about it. You can’t just use it because it’s new and different. In terms of LEDs, I agree with everything Ken has said. I think the nature of the diode — and this is what I’ve said because I’ve spent a lot of time working with LEDs and talking about them — my feeling is, from the beginning of time, light was generated by heat. Up until the tungsten halogen lamp, every form of light from the caveman forward has been generated by heat. We have a very subliminal, primal relationship with light. LEDs produce light by passing electrical energy through a carefully mixed chemical compound. The wavelength produced is very narrow and not full spectrum like tungsten. And yes, visually there are differences — color rendering is not good, they don’t make skin tones look good — but also I think we need to consider the subliminal response to this artificial light. The way we feel about what we are seeing is influenced by the source, and LEDs are digital light versus analog light, if you want to put it that way.
However, I have to say that we are in a “green” environment where we are being encouraged, and at times we have no choice, to move forward. I’ll give you one example: I just got back from The Lion King in Bristol, England. We’ve done a brand-new tour, and the facilities that the tour is going to cannot provide the power we need for the current touring production, so we changed the entire package. Not the Lekos, but the strip lights. Everything lighting the light boxes — the cyc, the borders, all the vertical surfaces — are lit with LED strip lights now. We used what I would say is the best product out there. We auditioned a bunch of things. I approached it with a great deal of trepidation for a lot of the reasons that Ken has cited — they flicker, their fades are not fluid — and I have to say, after doing a lot of work, we found that the Selador Vivid R has a smooth fade. The advantage of that fixture is that, unlike many of the others, you actually have seven LEDs as opposed to three or four, so you have more of the visible spectrum provided in one package.
Actually, the results are much better than I anticipated. It wound up working out. Without getting long-winded here, the one big problem with LEDs is that the technology is still in its infancy, and there’s a consistency issue from fixture-to-fixture and lot-to-lot. There is very little consistency in quality control. For example, if we’re doing a national tour or a new production of a show in 2012, and we have to replace the LED fixtures we’re using in 2013 or one or two of them in 2014, there’s no guarantee that those fixtures will produce the same color. In fact, they won’t.
Ken Billington: When you call PRG and order LED strips, they have a lot number on them. If it’s whatever type of strip it is, it’s lot one or whatever the number is. They’ll say they have four of lot one and 20 of lot two, and lot two will not match lot one. The shops are careful not to mix and match and know exactly where they go. Don’s right [about] three years down the road when you want to put a new one in.
Don Holder: We had a problem when we did a bunch of testing at Hudson Scenic Studios for The Lion King. We basically set up the Lion King box and used half tungsten and half LED and tried to match the original production to the new fixtures. We got as close as we could, then we got to England and discovered that we were using UL-listed fixtures in the US, but switched to CE-listed fixtures in the UK. For some reason, the colors didn’t match, even though they were all from the same bin. This is an example of an industry still in its infancy.
Ken Billington: Everything is expensive. That’s a good reason because of a lack of electricity. We don’t have lack of electricity in midtown Manhattan in Broadway theaters. You can buy a Leko for $400. You can buy an LED Leko for over $2,000. In a show, you hang hundreds of lights, and if they are on for 15 minutes at full for an entire evening, it’s probably a lot. Certain things are on all the time, but you have that special that comes up once, does whatever it’s supposed to do at 30 percent, and goes out. And does that for years. Having a light bulb that is going to last for 67,000 hours is not worth the expense. A good example is on the musical Chicago — I have a [Vari*Lite] VL5 in the middle of the first electric, and when we left the Shubert after eight years, I asked, “How many times have you replaced it?” They had never replaced the lamp or the fixture. They cleaned it, they went and dusted it, but for eight years that light just worked because it isn’t used very much.
Don Holder: Plus it fades up and out, so the lamp isn’t on all the time.
Ken Billington: Right. So the nature of theater is, we put in a lot, and you could conceivably turn it all on for curtain calls or the end of a big production number, and so you need those thousands of amps. But it doesn’t work all the time. It’s a fallacy that we suck electricity all the time. We don’t.
Don Holder: It really goes back to what I’m saying, that LEDs are great. There are a lot of great reasons to use them, but it shouldn’t be because we’re try to do a greener, more energy-efficient show because that’s not the role of a theatrical lighting designer. Our role is to reveal the world of the play and stay faithful to the vision of the director, the writers and the rest of the creative team and tell the story. If the LEDs make sense for the show, then use them. If they don’t, then don’t. That’s my feeling.
Ken Billington: And that goes into moving lights. Because you have them, do you need them?
Don Holder: Or does it need to look like a moving light? We also use moving lights because we have limited hanging space onstage. The real estate is so limited that it’s hard to commit one light for only one purpose.
PLSN: Obviously you have to work with a scenic designer whenever you do a show, but now I imagine it’s more so because of all the moving scenery.
Ken Billington: We’ve always had moving scenery.
PLSN: But it seems like there’s even more nowadays. I remember the cast of Promises, Promises spoke to the audience after one performance, and they noted that in the original 1968 production, Jerry Orbach stood next to his desk and sang “She Likes Basketball” without moving around or having moving scenery. Nowadays, it’s a very different situation, because people expect a lot more razzle-dazzle.
Ken Billington: I’ve been doing musicals longer than Don. I go back to manual piano boards, no color changers, no haze machines, no anything. When you designed a show, you had to design the play and had to think about everything. If you had somebody standing in a doorway and needed a special on them, you had to think of this early so you could get it drawn on your light plot, get it hooked up and get it in the right color. The director might call you and say, “He stands here in Act II, that’s the night scene.” Now you have to hang two, one in pink and one in blue so you do day and night. You had to think about operation — how are the guys going to move all of this? Consequently, I thought everything through very clearly — and Don comes from that era too.
Don Holder: When I started, we were still using two-scene presets. Computer boards were there, but on the shows I was doing, you couldn’t afford them.
Ken Billington: Your design was what you needed to do the project. I lit many shows on Broadway with no technology. As technology came along, we started adapting it. I think I was one of the first people to use color scrollers — when they worked — which most of the time they didn’t. “Oh my God, now I can have 12 colors! And my back light can be 12 colors.”
Don Holder: And now 12 colors isn’t enough for a lot of people.
Ken Billington: Then, moving lights showed up, and we only had the color wheel in them, then you could mix the color and all that. I still go back to what the show needs to be, not “these are the toys I can have.” I think a lot of young designers see that they have a moving light that can mix the colors and mix whatever they want as opposed to thinking what color would it be in. There is a thought process for me that goes all the way through, and if I need the technology, I put the technology in. But if I don’t, I don’t bother.
PLSN: Spider-Man is a show that is all about technology.
Don Holder: But the technology didn’t drive the design, the design drove the technology. There were certain storytelling requirements for that show, and it also had to have a very specific visual approach to make it work. It was like a three-dimensional comic book, so therefore there was a specific palette, a specific way of lighting things that was important. A lot of times it came down to the scope of the design. I knew it needed more than three or four colors everywhere. Everything lit up. All the surfaces needed to be red, green, gold and several different shades of blue, yellow… When you start thinking it through, like Ken was saying, I have this much space and need 10 can colors — what am I going to do? I have a 60 foot wide by 50-foot-tall vertical surface that has to look absolutely even like a comic book background and not a sky. How do you do that? I had to use LED technology, because there was nothing else that will deliver that. It’s a comic book, it’s not realism, so it felt like LEDs made sense because of the physical limitations and because of the story. Yes, there’s a lot of technology there, but it was used out of necessity. I also felt in a lot of cases LEDs were appropriate. If you look at the design, there are also a lot of very traditional choices that have nothing to do with fancy stuff, like the high sidelight systems that you might find in the American Ballet Theatre repertory or in an off-Broadway show.
Ken Billington: We’re lucky working on Broadway — we can have anything we want. It has to be able to fit the space, and the producer has to pay for it, but there’s nothing in the space so if we want whatever type of light, we can order that type of light. We are not limited by the house inventory. We make our own inventory. That’s 35 shows a year in midtown done by probably 10 of us, so we’re very lucky that way. I remember I used to do an off-off-Broadway workshop when I was younger, and I had 12 dimmers and about 40 lights. I did huge musicals with 12 dimmers and 40 lights and a lot of replugs, but it was a good way to learn how to solve your problems. I can have 1,200 lights now. If I plug them in and turn them on, I have to worry about them. Sometimes 12 dimmers is great. [laughs]. If I can light a show with no equipment, I’m all for it because it’s just less work. You don’t need all that, you just do it. We have to cover ourselves with some spares and what they’re going to do.
PLSN: Video has become part of lighting now as well, and I assume that there are advantages and disadvantages to that. Ghost has video in every scene, even if subtle in its use. The video designer for the show, Jon Driscoll, told me that they wanted to keep it consistent, especially as having video in all the key scenes and not in others might stand out. Does video ever get in the way for you?
Ken Billington: I’ve had a lot of shows were I’ve used video, including LED, and everybody has to get on the same page. There isn’t a video designer, set designer and lighting designer all sitting in different rooms. They’re all sitting close by at a table, and it has to be an open dialogue. If it is an LED video screen, you need to pull it down because they can get a lot brighter than I can get with lights. So you have to say, “let’s look at your intensities.” If they can’t take it less than full, then I need to order four more trucks of equipment to plow in there and hurt the audience’s eyes. Everybody has to talk — it’s not one thing or another. Then if you have projection video, that’s another thing. Is the projector bright enough? And how do I light it? You can’t stand next to a white screen and expect a black void around you because you have the video. It’s very much a discussion that has to be held.
Don Holder: Then there are issues of color-matching. The challenge that I find with video and projections is that it can tend to be very literal when it’s used as a principal design element and can tend to be very flat and two-dimensional. I feel like the best projection design that I’ve seen is when it’s integrated fully into a three-dimensional environment where the image is broken up and you’re not just relying exclusively on video to create the stage picture.
Ken Billington: Where you’re not going to the movies.
PLSN: It feels like that sometimes now.
Don Holder: Yes, it does. Spider-Man isn’t a perfect production, but I feel like Julie [Taymor] conceived the video really carefully. You were talking about how it might be weird if video wasn’t present in Ghost, but if you look at Spider-Man, despite its flaws, in Act I there’s no video. The video landscape appears in Act II because, in version 1 of the production, it was all about illusion. The city was paralyzed by fear, and nothing real or tangible. That was the big statement. Video became a metaphor for the idea of illusion, and it was used very selectively. If you look at the show, there’s never a flat, unbroken video surface. There are always moving panels, layers of video and lighting, which were very carefully balanced, not only in intensity, but in color, so that everything felt integrated. Yes, we have to have a continuing dialogue with the video people because we have to make sure that the light and the video exist the same world. Without close collaboration, you run the risk of revealing actors performing separately in the foreground, in front of flat video surfaces in the background, and the two worlds have no relationship to each other. So it is, and must be, a total collaboration.
Ken Billington: When we did the latest revival of Sunday In The Park with George, once the show was lit and we were getting down to the last week of previews, I sat down with the video designer and the programmers and went through every light cue in the show. When I would pull down for a song and the color temperature of the lights would change, they matched the video. When I was doing a 10-count cue of isolating someplace or somebody singing, they would match all the video to the surround. We went through every cue in the show and balanced color temperature with the video for every light cue. It paid off, it looked great. But you’ve got to do it.
PLSN: Which new technologies do you think are going to come up and take the industry by storm?
Don Holder: I think LEDs are what’s driving everything now. We’ve talked about LEDs and the quality of light, but what I think people aren’t talking about a lot is whether we will we need these huge dimming and control systems for much longer. The idea of power distribution and control in the theater, all of that’s going to change in the next 20 years. The more LEDs we use, the need for traditional dimmer racks as our principal control element will diminish. We won’t need multi-cables the way we do now. Shows are going to be laid out differently. Electricians on Broadway will have to be IT specialists because it’s all about data. They are now, actually. The whole industry is changing. It’s not just the sources, it’s the way everything is controlled, networked and conceived in that way. I think we’re going to see a time, if we’re both working, that the tungsten halogen source is going to be a boutique specialty idea, and everything is going to be lit with LEDs. I hope that doesn’t happen, but you can see it on the landscape if when you make a choice to use tungsten halogen fixtures 20 years from now, it’s probably because it’s needed to tell a particular story.
Ken Billington: I worked in a brand-new theater where they put in half the number of dimmers that they would have put in five or 10 years ago, and they said they have all moving lights now. Moving lights are wonderful, but they also make noise. They have fans, and 90 percent of them make a lot of noise. So we were going in with the show, and we had to rent dimmers to go into this venue because somebody was being very creative in saying they don’t need dimmers anymore, they just need distribution for moving lights. It would’ve been good if they had worked that into the install. People have been asking me what’s the next, newest thing. I think LEDs will get better, and as they get better they will get cheaper. They are expensive now.
Don Holder: They will also get brighter and match the color of natural light better.
PLSN: For Ghost, they had the LED screen at the lowest brightness possible, which was still very bright.
Ken Billington: It depends upon the control system and the screens because I’ve been through that, where you have the screens up there and do tests to see what you can do. Video designers are going through the same thing we are. They need to have the right tool to do the job.
PLSN: Changing the subject, what is your favorite gobo and why?
Ken Billington: With gobos, what I find happens is, because you can, people do; as opposed to looking at the gobo and saying, “Does this scene or play require a breakup?” Because we have 18 of them in a moving light doesn’t mean that every cue has to have a gobo in it. Sometimes I see too many gobos in things. Do I have a favorite? I don’t like gobos that are round, because then it looks like you turned on a spotlight and stuck something in it. When I do leaves, I use Rosco Blossoms, which is a David Hersey one, 77774, because when you project it, it doesn’t look like a spotlight with a gobo in it. You don’t really know. So when I design gobos, it’s not round and has a broken edge.
Don Holder: Because the feel of light is typically round, if the gobo is too open, then you’re always aware of a circular edge. The denser gobos tend to be much more truthful. I agree with Ken, it goes back to the same thing — gobos are great if you need them, but you don’t automatically. It’s like you don’t automatically assume that a light needs a color filter. Maybe white light is the color. The same thing with gobos — if you need a gobo, you should be able to answer the question why. Because we rarely use gobos that are in sharp focus, except for very specific moments, all soft breakups start looking the same after awhile. I often use a foliage pattern that is dense enough so you’re not aware of the circle. You can easily choose one or two breakups that can be used for an entire show, unless you need something really specific like a Venetian blind that has be really bright and huge. There’s always a reason to pick something else, but a breakup could be almost anything.
Ken Billington: When you start putting them into moving lights, now we’re getting into glass gobos. Fifty or 60 bucks for a stock glass gobo, and let’s say you fill up the whole thing. So you have 20 of them in the light times $50 times 40 lights. You’re talking a fortune. And the ones that come in moving lights are usually not very good.
Don Holder: Like I said, you don’t really need that many. You need ones for specific reasons. It’s just like anything else — think about why you need them and what it’s good for, and that will answer the question.
PLSN: You have both worked on non-theatrical projects. Beyond being refreshing to tackle, how does working on those projects inform your theatrical sensibilities and vice versa?
Don Holder: It always makes me grateful that I’m a designer in the theater when I work in other disciplines. I think that we’re very privileged to be working as artists in this country and at this level. I enjoy collaborating with architects and other people in related disciplines because I find that, as lighting designers in the theater, we are interested in what is the context. We’re always focused on what is the story being told, what is the visual frame or lens through which we’re seeing this event or this building. I’ve found that when I enter a conversation with an architect or an owner or whatever, I am interested in how they are going to use the space and how do they envision the space looking or feeling like. This mindset comes from our training in the theater, and architects appreciate that because they are equally concerned about context. They are not interested in talking technology. But rather, how is the shape or the space of the mass going to be revealed, and what is the light saying about the overall environment? I think our work in the theater has really helped us in architecture, for example.
Ken Billington: It’s all about telling a story. Maybe I do go to a theme park and design shows, and it may be only 20 minutes seven times a day, but there’s a beginning, a middle and an end. A concept from everybody, from the set designer to the music choices to the audience they’re appealing to. It’s the same as doing a Broadway show, it just doesn’t run as long and runs for years.
PLSN: Do you bring back lessons from those projects to Broadway?
Don Holder: You can learn something in everything you do. I think anything you do feeds your work as a designer.
Ken Billington: I’m always learning stuff. Why not? I’m totally open. I go see shows all the time and look at my colleagues’ work and say, “God, that’s really good. I would never have thought of that.” Whatever it might be. Sometimes it’s just a color. And you park it someplace and say, “When I saw that show, there was this color and it worked.” Then I go home and think about it. You don’t do it, but it’s stored someplace.
PLSN: You two have worked on many productions over the years. Is it ever okay to turn down a project?
Ken Billington: Sure, I turn things down all the time. Sometimes it’s scheduling. Sometimes it’s people you don’t want to work with. Sometimes you don’t like the project.
Don Holder: Earlier on in my career, I had a harder time saying no. I wanted to do everything that was offered to me because that’s just the way you’re thinking when you’re a young designer starting out. You want to take advantage of all those opportunities. You tend to learn over the years that ultimately your work is going to be better and you’re going to have a healthier way of life. The bottom line is, it’s quality not quantity. You have to be careful about over-committing yourself and doing too much because then ultimately something is going to suffer — your personal life, your professional life or work on a specific project. That’s a hard lesson to learn. It was for me, and I’ve learned it over the years. We all go through that. But you have to. I think the more you mature, you realize it’s fine. Just really consider what you’re doing before you do it. How much time is it really going to take? How much of your life are you going to be devoting to this? And what are the repercussions on the other things that you committed to?
Ken Billington: Sometimes they don’t want to pay you. It’s as simple as looking at a big time commitment, and they don’t have the money to pay you however it’s doled out in fees and royalties. You look at it and say you’re not going for work for that, and you can sit at home and make more money by not working. The phone might ring [for another gig].
PLSN: Broadway seems big to a lot of people, but it’s a tightly knit. What advice can you give to up-and-coming lighting designers — not only in terms of balancing your personal and professional life — but in navigating the politics of Broadway?
Don Holder: What I learned a long time ago is that the only thing you can control in terms of where your career goes or doesn’t go is the work itself. This is what I tell my students — all you can do is do the best work that you can possibly do. You focus completely on the project you’re working on, you make your best effort to be a good collaborator, a person who people want to be in the room with. A person who brings something unique and surprising and refreshing to every project that you work on. You try to reinvent yourself as much as you can from project to project, but in terms of being successful on Broadway or not or anywhere in our profession, it’s hard to control. Early in my career, I saw people in my position getting shows and moving up the food chain, and I kept asking myself, “How come that person got that show and I didn’t?” You have to understand, if you’re going to have a happy and healthy life, is that it comes down to the work. The only thing you can control is what you do, the work that you’re focused on. You can’t change people’s minds about why should they hire you versus somebody else. You can’t track your career or make your career happen. I think the best that you can do is be somebody who is a good collaborator and brings everything they can to every project. Become someone who has something special and unique to say as an artist. I think if you can do that, things will take care of themselves.
Ken Billington: You’ve got to start small and work your way up. Broadway is expensive. Producers are going to spend untold millions of dollars on a show. They usually want to hire, especially on a musical, somebody who’s been there before because they know it’s going to be fine. It’s going to look fine, it’s going to come in on budget and it’s going to be a pleasant work environment. That takes you to a number of people that do these all the time. If you start young with a young director and you grow up together, it helps you move along. So the director gets a Broadway show and asks for a lighting designer, maybe he’ll get the lighting designer. It would be your first show. The one thing I learned a long time ago is, no matter how good I am and how brilliant and all of those wonderful things, I can’t light everything. I can only light a few shows a year on Broadway, and I’m lucky to do that. Some directors like me, some directors don’t. Some set designers do, some don’t. Some have never worked with me and don’t know. We’ve been around long enough that they know we’re not going to screw it up. And if I do, I’m smart enough to call Don and say, “Come look at this. I don’t know what the hell I just did.” Sometimes we’ll call each other and help each other. Why not help each other?
Don Holder: We’re lucky enough to be in a certain position. We’ve done enough and accomplished enough that you don’t worry about those things anymore. It’s not as competitive for us. I think it’s a good position to be in.
PLSN: What about the opportunities for younger people today?
Don Holder: There’s a new generation of lighting designers working on Broadway. They’re not doing the mega-musicals yet, but I think they will.
Ken Billington: They will. If they do work their way in and come with a director or from another show in regional theater.
Don Holder: It’s harder to be a lighting designer in the world now versus than when we we’re starting out because there were fewer regional theaters and more training programs turning out more people. The regional theater where I spent most of my career is where I got my training and practiced my craft. I think it was easier for me when I was getting out of graduate school because right now there are so many more young designers competing for what seems like a shrinking pool of available work.
Ken Billington: When I was starting, there were probably three places you could go study lighting. Now there are a lot. When they were turning out five a year, it was something else. Assisting also helps because it gets you into the environment to see what’s expected, what’s going to happen and where it’s going to come from. It has to do a little bit with talent and personality. I tell you, if you’re a slob sitting at the table, do people want to spend 12 hours a day for the next month with you if you don’t bathe? It’s all those things. You’ve got to look like you’re the designer — a clean shirt and a good attitude. There’s a lot that goes with it. Talent is part of it, but all those other things are part of it too. So just think if you’re going to be spending a month with this person, they want you to be there and be fun. You want to have dinner with them too.
Don Holder: I think that’s a good point, that talent is part of it, but you could be the most talented lighting designer on the planet but not necessarily be working on Broadway.
Ken Billington: That you have a temper and yell and scream.
Don Holder: It could be a lot of things. It also goes back to the idea of what does it mean to be a success as a designer or someone in the theater? Does it mean if you’re not working on Broadway that you’re not successful? And of course, that’s not the case. To me, if you’re making a living as a designer, working on interesting projects and have a great group of collaborators that you’re working with, and you’re supporting yourself as an artist in this country, you are successful. If you get the chance to work on Broadway, great, but to me being a success is surviving and thriving as an artist in the environment and in the nation we’re in. I think when you’re starting out as a lighting designer, if you want to succeed you have to set aside much of your personal life. You have to devote 150 percent of your life to the work, and eventually if you’re lucky, you’ll be able to find a balance. I think if you ask anybody who’s making a living in the business and who is doing okay — I’m not going to say successful on Broadway, but making a living — you ask all of them what they were doing earlier in their career, the answer will most likely be nothing but theater all the time, 24 hours a day seven days a week. That’s it, that’s what you have to do. Eventually, if you get established and are lucky enough, you might enjoy other things. It’s not like it’s servitude. I’ve always felt that I was living the dream.
Ken Billington: I was loving every minute of it when I was making no money and working for all these theaters and on all these shows.
Don Holder: It was great. I don’t want to sound negative, but you have to be of a certain mindset and have a complete, unquenchable thirst.
Ken Billington: It’s about passion. If you’re not passionate about it, I don’t care what you want to be when you grow up. If you’re not passionate about it, you’re just going to sort of do it.
Don Holder: If your intention is to become rich and famous, forget it, then do something else.
Ken Billington: Don’t become a lighting designer.
Don Holder: Exactly. You have to be there for other things. Because you’re passionate about light, passionate about storytelling, and you’re attracted to the community that you’re a part of. That was really important to me early on, the fact that there is this sense of community in the theatre. A group of people come together to collaborate and create something special. To me, that was really cool, and something about that I found really appealing.
