The USITT Distinguished Achievement Awards honor individuals who have established meritorious career records in specific fields of expertise in any area of design or technology in the performing arts or entertainment industry. This year’s honorees will be celebrated at the USITT24 conference in Seattle, on March 21, 2024. PLSN congratulates all the honorees.
Distinguished Achievement in Lighting Design and Technology: Dawn Chiang
Chiang was the lighting designer for Zoot Suit and the co-designer for Tango Pasión on Broadway. She also co-designed five productions with Richard Pilbrow for City Center’s Encores! Series, and she was the associate lighting designer a number of Broadway productions, including Show Boat, The Life, Four Baboons Adoring the Sun, and the original La Cage Aux Folles. As resident lighting designer for the New York City Opera, Chiang designed and supervised the lighting for the second largest repertory opera company in the U.S, with 14 to 20 productions in rotating repertory. She has designed Off Broadway and at many regional theaters. Chiang earned two Drama-Logue Critics’ Awards, a TEA THEA Award and nominations for a Maharam design award, Los Angeles Drama Critics’, and San Francisco Bay Area award. She is a mentor for Theater Development Fund’s “Wendy Wasserstein Project” theater outreach program for New York City high school students, a board member for Behind The Scenes charity, and has served as a board member for Theatre Communications Group. As a project manager, Chiang helped to plan, design, and supervise the construction of one of the world’s largest water-based, acrobatic spectaculars, The House of Dancing Water in Macau.
“I am honored to receive the USITT Distinguished Achievement Award. I want to acknowledge and thank the many mentors, colleagues, and teachers that I have worked with along the way – the piano teachers, ballet teachers, college theater faculty, the set and lighting designers that I assisted, the innovative, world-class directors, and many more. Everything that I learned from each of them has informed how I see, how I respond to the work, and how I create today. I love that our love of and insight into the performing arts is often passed along from person to person. It is not at all just learned from a book. At the same time, one of my favorite quotes is from a book – The Art Spirit by painter and teacher Robert Henri. He writes, ‘Where those who are not artists are trying to close the book, the artist opens it, shows that there are still more pages possible.’ That is the credo of my life and work.”
Distinguished Achievement in Engineering: Karl G. Ruling
Ruling holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California at Santa Barbara and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Illinois. For a decade he pursued a career as a faculty technical director and designer in educational theatre before joining the staff of Theatre Crafts and Lighting Dimensions magazines as technical editor. In 1996 he joined the staff of the Entertainment Services and Technology Association (ESTA) as Technical Standards Manager and Technical Editor for the association’s journal Protocol. Ruling has stepped back from full-time standards program management, but he continues to help support ESTA’s Technical Standards Program and continues as the technical editor for Protocol. Ruling is a regular contributor to The New England Theatre Journal, reviewing of the Long Wharf Theatre’s productions for its “New England Theatre in Review” section. He occasionally designs scenery, lighting, sound, and special effects for theater.
“I’m pleased to receive this award, not for what it suggests I have done, but for what it suggests that ESTA and its community have done,” Ruling said. “Most of my work has been in developing standards. These are consensus documents; they go nowhere if they do not have support and help from a large body of concerned and knowledgeable people. I am grateful for the opportunities I’ve had to work with others to create documents that help make staging shows and events simpler, safer, and more profitable.”
Distinguished Achievement in Scene Design & Technology: Karen L. Maness
Maness is an Assistant Professor of Practice at The University of Texas at Austin, Associate Director of the Fabrication Studios at Texas Performing Arts, and Director of the Texas Performing Arts Hollywood Backdrop Collection. Her research centers on motion picture scenic art, artists, and the language of painting across digital and analog platforms. She is the co-author of The Art of the Hollywood Backdrop and co-curator of the 2022 world premiere Boca Raton Museum of Art exhibition Art of the Hollywood Backdrop: Cinema’s Creative Legacy. She has served as Commissioner of Scenic Design and Technology for USITT, U.S. Delegate to OISTAT, a partner in The Art Directors Guild Archives – Backdrop Recovery Project, and as a consultant for The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences Museum.
“I am honored and humbled to be a recipient of USITT’s Distinguished Achievement Award. USITT is an organization through which I have grown through service, leadership, and connections to artists, organizations, and scholars worldwide. The opportunity to program a USITT session celebrating the West Coast Scenic Artist ignited my creative research and aligned me with partners dedicated to documenting the history of the art form. USITT provided fertile ground to cultivate and explore ideas connecting the strengths of multiple organizations and collaborators to elevate an art form and its unseen artists beyond our collective imagination.”
Distinguished Achievement in Costume Design & Technology: Susan Tsu
Tsu is an award-winning costume designer whose work has graced the stages of 45 LORT theaters in the U.S. as well as international venues the world over. She designs costumes for theatre, opera, and television. She headed the costume programs at Boston University and the University of Texas at Austin before joining the School of Drama at Carnegie Mellon, her alma mater, in 2003, as a professor. Her awards include the 2017 Carol R. Brown Creative Achievement Established Artist, 2016 Irene Sharaff Lifetime Achievement, NY Drama Desk, NY Drama Critics, NY Young Film Critics, LA Distinguished Designer Awards and a KCTF-Kennedy Center Medal of Achievement.
“I am deeply honored and moved by having received the USITT Distinguished Achievement Award in Costume Design and Technology,” Tsu said. “In many ways, I am surprised by the DAA as I actually still feel like I am just getting started. My father taught me as a youngster to always look forward, and that is what I have to pass on to young designers today as well. We have been through some tough times, but the world has seen pandemics and strikes and financial downturns before, while creativity, invention, sharing your view of the human condition, and telling the stories of humanity shall always prevail. To everyone who is bursting at the seams to express themselves, bravo! Show us your truth! Keep on keeping on! Be the flower that struggles through the rocks and surprises the world!”
Distinguished Achievement in Education: Nancy Uffner
Uffner is a teacher, mentor, and stage manager. She was introduced to stage management at 19 at Cherry County Playhouse in Traverse City, Michigan. Uffner taught at Eastern Michigan University and then at Northwestern University in Evanston and found her calling. She is finishing her 29th year at the University of Michigan this spring. In 2021, Uffner received the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance’s Teaching Excellence Award. Uffner is a 42-year member of the Actors’ Equity Association and she is a member of the Stage Manager’s Association. “I am incredibly honored by and grateful for this award. Honestly, my eyes well up every time I think about it.”
