BROADWAY'S ILLUMINATION SENSATION

In a world that vacillates between unrelenting brightness and gloom and doom, Brian MacDevitt controls the light switches.

By Kimberly Marselas, TERP

As lighting designer for the Broadway musical “The Book of Mormon,” MacDevitt illuminates the cast, spotlights their follies and bathes the audience in emotion. In June, the associate professor of theater won his fifth Tony for his work.

A collaboration between the creators of “South Park” and the composer behind the raunchy “Avenue Q,” “The Book of Mormon” follows two naïve missionaries from pristine Salt Lake City to tribal Uganda.

MacDevitt, who last won a Tony for 2009’s “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” says musicals call for “four times the amount of energy and four times the amount of anxiety.” But he couldn’t pass up the chance to work with “South Park’s” Trey Stone and Matt Parker.

“The material is breaking boundaries,” says MacDevitt. “It’s exciting, new and original, but it still respects the … format of a traditional musical.”

When MacDevitt sat down with “The Book of Mormon’s” creative team, he envisioned bright lighting with rosy overtones—“a little bit pink and a little bit fake.” For the Ugandan scenes, MacDevitt favored overcast lighting.

“The set looked like you could get tetanus from it,” he says.

But with two decades of Broadway experience, he understands if those who fall in love with what’s been called “the best musical of this century” don’t recognize his contributions.

“It’s a lot like scoring a film,” says MacDevitt, now attached to “The Mountain Top,” starring Samuel L. Jackson as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. “We always say, ‘If you don’t notice the lighting, it’s
good lighting.’”