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[0:00] David Armstrong: Hi, this is David Armstrong, and it's my pleasure to welcome you to a special encore episode of my 2022 interview with Tony Award-winning lighting designer Ken Billington. This past week, Ken received rave reviews for his lighting design of the new Broadway musical Smash, which amazingly is his 108th Broadway production. So I thought this was an ideal time to revisit this fascinating conversation with Ken about the history of Broadway lighting design and Ken's own tremendous contribution to it. This is a two-part conversation, and I'll be re-releasing both parts this week. As always, Broadway Nation is made possible in part through the generous contributions of our patrons, with a special shout-out this week to longtime patron Larry Spinelli. If you would like to help support the work of this podcast, you can find information in the show notes to this episode about how you, too, can become a patron. Here we go!

[0:59] David Armstrong: Welcome to another episode of Broadway Nation, the podcast that tells the remarkable story of how immigrants, Jews, queers, African Americans, and other outcasts invented the Broadway musical and how they changed America in the process. I'm David Armstrong, and I call this episode Color and Light, a Brief History of Lighting Design on Broadway.

[1:39] David Armstrong: My guest today is Tony Award-winning lighting designer Ken Billington, who created the lighting for an incredible 105 Broadway plays and musicals, including 21 productions that were directed by Harold Prince. Ken's amazing career spans from his first Broadway credit in 1967, when he was the assistant to legendary lighting designer Theron Musser, all the way to his most recent Broadway show, the hit musical Waitress. Along the way, he designed the original productions of Sweeney Todd, On the 20th Century, The Drowsy Chaperone, The Scottsboro Boys, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, starring Lily Tomlin, as well as three revivals of Fiddler on the Roof, two revivals of Sunday in the Park with George, and the still-running 1996 revival of Chicago, for which he received the Tony Award. I've had the great pleasure of knowing and working with Ken for more than 40 years, and it is always fascinating and always a delight to speak with him.

[2:40] David Armstrong: Theatrical lighting design is relatively a very young art form. Its history begins primarily in the early 20th century, just as the Broadway musical was being invented. Lighting design's earliest innovators include the American actress Maude Adams, most famous today for her performances as Peter Pan, as well as producer, director, playwright, and theater owner David Belasco. One of the recurring themes of this podcast, and one of my obsessions, is how the art and craft of the Broadway musical has been handed down directly, firsthand, from artist to artist, from craftsperson to craftsperson. Ken Billington's long career, and especially his early experiences as the assistant to the pioneering designers Peggy Clark, Pat Collins, Tom Skelton, William Rittman, and Theron Musser, make him the ideal guest for this episode. Here we go. So welcome, Ken Billington. So great to have you today as my guest on Broadway Nation.

[3:40] Ken Billington: So good to be here with you, David.

[3:42] David Armstrong: Everything about the history of the Broadway musical is what this podcast is about. And one of the subjects I've dealt with a little bit in the past is the history of lighting design. I thought, who better to talk about the history of lighting design with than somebody who I think has worked with most of the lighting designers of the 20th century, 21st century. Is that a fair thing to say?

[4:02] Ken Billington: Well, you know, yeah, I worked with most of them, I knew most of them. It was interesting. I'm not 150 years old, but...

[4:07] David Armstrong: You started very, very young.

[4:12] Ken Billington: Yeah, I did. You know, I didn't go to college, mainly because I couldn't get in. And back in the 60s, the only place you could go to college for lighting, well, there were a couple, but Carnegie Tech or Carnegie Mellon was about it. And I didn't get in, so I just started working on Broadway. I mean, it sounds pretty silly, but I took a lighting course in New York at the Lester Polikoff Studio and Forum of Stage Design. It was Saturday mornings, three hours, there were about five or six of us in class. And my teachers in that class were Peggy Clark, Tom Skelton, and Chuck Levy. And that was my introduction. And from there, I met everybody. And by the time I was 19, I was assisting on Broadway. This was the late 60s and everybody was still alive and doing it because, you know, we're a very young profession. You can't go further back than electricity.

[5:04] Ken Billington: Right. The way design started in the theater is David Belasco had his chief electrician, Lewis Hartman, create lighting effects, lighting and effects, it was called in those days. And Hartman had a workroom in the basement of the Belasco Theater where he invented things, including the spotlight. I know that sounds very silly, but somebody had to invent it. And he went to GE and had to make light bulbs for it. And Belasco, because this was before communication, if you wanted to talk to the guys, you yelled at them, you know, from the fifth row. And Belasco would do technical rehearsals for days because it was mostly arc lights. A one set play would have a bridge right down at the edge of the stage with probably seven to ten operators on it running the arc lights.

And there would be some out front also. But you couldn't cue them. They just had to learn the show. So these technical rehearsals would go on forever and they would do buzzers or something they could hear to know, oh, change the color. But they would have to work all night and around the clock. And Belasco was very concerned about lighting. There's a great quote where he said lighting is the lifeblood of the theater. He was first. But, you know, people like Ziegfeld just made sure the girls look good and you bring the pink footlights up or whatever you would do. But it took Abe Fader in the mid 20s, came up with the term lighting designer. He used it to light a Broadway show, that term. Abe Fader, so people know such shows as My Fair Lady and Camelot and all the WPA shows for Orson Welles. He sort of invented our world. But before that and continuing even after he came up with that, it was done by the electrician.

[7:02] Ken Billington: Producers had their chief electrician. They were the electrician for that theater or did they bounce around? They worked for the producer. Now, the producer may have owned a theater, but they would do the producer's shows. They knew what the producer wanted. And the set designers would get involved also because the set designers wanted their sets to look good. So it would be the producer and the set designer talking to the electrician and saying, well, you know, we should have some more blue. And the electrician would bring up more blue. And by the way, it's not saying these weren't sophisticated, well-lit shows. It just wasn't a designated designer doing it. Then the scenic designers, I think, to save themselves, started doing it.

The great scene designers like Joe Melziner and Howard Bay and all that, they did their own lighting, but they usually had somebody do it for them. They didn't actually draw a light plot. They would have an assistant do it or the electrician. I remember that Joe Melziner would tell the, I heard this story that he would tell the electrician, well, we need two colors of backlights and two colors of sidelights. I need a blue and a lavender in the backlights and we'll use the pink for the sidelight. And the electrician would go off and create a light plot. And then they'd sit with the electrician and say, okay, bring the blue backs up full. So they knew the blue backs were plunked into dimmer 12 or something.

They were inventing a form of design which hadn't existed. But then Abe Fader started doing it and he became very successful doing all those Orson Welles things. And he was also the production manager. And his assistant was a lady by the name of Jean Rosenthal, who became one of the foremost lighting designers in theater. Her last show was Dear World, which I think was late 60s. Jean Rosenthal started lighting shows and she became Martha Graham's lighting designer. And Martha Graham was very interested in what light would do. So Jean was doing that. She was also production managing. She was lighting shows. It was basically Abe and Jean and set designers. And then a lady by the name of Peggy Clark came along, who I assisted actually.

And Peggy was the first person to ever get her name on a poster. And that was for Madea, I think, in 1944-45. But she lit such shows as Brigadoon. She did everything in the 50s and early 60s. How she started is she worked with Oliver Smith as his scenic draftsman. And Oliver didn't want to know anything about light. So he said to Peggy, you light them. And she became the lighting designer and did 85 Broadway shows from things like Bye Bye Birdie, Brigadoon. She did all the early Jerome Robbins shows, High Button Shoes, On the Town, Wonderful Town. She was a major force. But it was basically Abe, Jean, and Peggy as the lighting designers. In the 40s, that was about it.

[10:05] David Armstrong: And going back just a bit, a name that's come up for me is Hazard Short. What do you know about Hazard Short?

[10:12] Ken Billington: Hazard Short was a producer, director, and I think the byline said, entire production directed, designed, and lighted by Hazard Short. He was an impresario who oversaw his complete production. It would be like you when you were at the Fifth Avenue, you produced the shows and you directed a number of them. And oh, yeah, you sat down to the lighting too, you know. How you go about that, I don't know. But I'm like myself. He's credited with putting lighting on the balcony rail for the first time with inventing that. At least I've read that several places.

[10:47] Ken Billington: Well, you know, there used to be arc lights out front. And if you look at old pictures of theaters, even the New Amsterdam still in the front of the balcony, not the mezzanine, but the balcony, you'll see it's like a little upper box stuck on the front of the balcony. And that's where the spotlights went. Because everything was lit with arc lights from the front. And I remember working with Peggy. Peggy would use, you'd do a big musical and you would have three follow spots to follow the actors who were talking. And then there'd be a fourth follow spot there that was just framed to the front of the stage. You would put different gels on it. So that would be your blue wash, your pink wash, your amber wash, whatever the show needed, run by a follow spot operator.

[11:33] Ken Billington: You've opened that spot to encompass the whole stage, basically.

[11:36] David Armstrong: Right. Or you closed it down just to the clump in the center. I actually did not know that Hazard Short did a balcony rail, but that would make sense because spotlights were not very bright. They were 150, 250 watts of incandescent light bulbs. You know, 100 watt light bulb in your living room was brighter than a spotlight was, but shows were darker. If you look at the original light plots from shows in the forties, like Guys and Dolls, you'll see 24 lights on the balcony rail, 500 watt, 36 degree. If you did that now for Guys and Dolls, I don't know if you would ever get to turning them on because you'd be fired before that. But you know, the audience in those days wasn't so used to having it blindingly bright. They were also used to listening. They didn't have sound equipment. You know, now if the sound goes out, nobody can hear anything. And I think it's because people don't know how to listen.

[12:34] Ken Billington: Out of sea, but they're used to seeing things in the theater at a brighter level than they once were. And in their homes, everywhere is brighter than it would have been back in those days.

[12:45] Absolutely. And, you know, when we look at our TV monitors and we make them as bright as we want or just look at a theater before the curtain goes up with everyone on their iPhone and it looks like footlights through the entire auditorium, they probably are about as bright as the ones on stage.

[13:03] Let's go back to Peggy Clark. What was she like? You got to assist her, not in the 1940s, of course, in the 1960s.

[13:10] Well, she actually was a groundbreaker. And I remember certain stories that she told me. She did tell me that when they went out of town with Brigid Dune, they were in New Haven. And when she went to focus the lights, the stagehands would not allow her on stage because they said that was a man's job and stagehands were all men. That was a man's job. And she was not to come on stage and tell them what to do. She had her head electrician with the show. So she stood in the front of the mezzanine and yelled to the head electrician, her head electrician, of how to focus the show because she wasn't allowed on stage.

[13:53] Don't go away. Broadway Nation will be right back with more on the history of lighting design on Broadway, including the experience that inspired Ken Billington to become a lighting designer.

[14:10] So that brings up a whole subject. This starts with Jean Rosenthal and becomes very strangely a technical profession that is largely dominated by women for a certain period. How did that happen? Is it just because Jean Rosenthal started it and everybody decided, oh, well, she can do it. That's something we could try to do. Or how do you think about that?

[14:30] Yeah, well, you know, the union I belong to, the United Scenic Artists, which covers all the designers in the theater, television, motion pictures, motion pictures on the East Coast. To join, there was no category for lighting design until the 60s. Before that, you had to be a full designer. That meant you had to design scenery, costumes, lighting, and be able to paint the sets to be a scene painter. So people like Peggy were also a scenic designer. Tharon Musser, who started in the mid-50s, 56 was a long day's journey into night, never wanted to be anything except a lighting designer. And she always told me she had a hell of a time passing that union exam because she didn't know how to design a costume, nor did she want to.

But you had to do that at the time. You know, there were women doing costumes. There were women doing scenery. Women were not unknown in the world of design. And there were choreographers. I mean, Agnes de Mille was doing pretty good stuff. And, you know, Eva Le Gallien was directing. So there were women directing. I think it was just there was an opportunity there. Again, you must remember, it wasn't taught in every university in America. It was taught at very few universities. And lighting specifically, I think it was probably taught at Northwestern, Carnegie Tech, and Yale. Other than that, you took design and there was a little bit of lighting in it.

[16:02] Or you just jumped into the profession like you did.

[16:04] Yeah. By the way, I can't draw a picture. I can't sketch. I can do none of that. So clearly, I think of myself as an artist. I paint with light. But is that a God-given talent? I have no idea. I did learn the technical part of it. But when to turn the light on and off and make it pretty, I just think that's me. I don't know how you teach all that part.

[16:26] Let's follow up on that. So how did you get to being a lighting designer? You were interested in the theater, I'm assuming, and that led you down this path. How do you get there to 19 and decide I want to be a lighting designer in New York?

[16:38] Well, it goes back to the fourth grade. And I don't know how old you are in the fourth grade, nine, maybe, ten. We did a play in school. And it's a much longer story. But ultimately, I ran the lights for the play. There were light switches in the elementary school auditorium, which was in the suburbs of New York. It had a balcony. It was a proper auditorium. It wasn't the cafeteria. There was no colored lights. There were just some light bulbs, some battens overhead and footlights. And I ran the lights. And I remember doing a blackout, radical, in the fourth grade. And it was the knife switches, big old period knife switches. And I remember we needed this blackout. And Gingerbread Men turned into little boys, so it wasn't Hansel and Gretel.

The show escapes me. Anyway, I did this blackout. And a girl next to me, Sherry Zimmerman, slammed some cymbals together. After I pulled the main out, I pulled all the other switches out so I could fade the lights up, which meant turn them on one at a time, put the main back in, brought the lights up one at a time. And the grammar school cheered. They applauded and cheered. And honestly, that's all I've ever wanted to do. And I've been doing it ever since.

[17:51] That is amazing. I love that story. And it's true. That's all I want to do. I didn't know about lighting design. I knew it was lighting. My parents weren't in the theater or the arts, but that's all I wanted to do. And then I got into the junior high school, which was in the high school and had a proper theater. And I joined the community players and I did lighting. I did a lot of lighting and got out of high school wanting to be a lighting designer, knowing exactly what I wanted to do and couldn't get into college. So I just started assisting on Broadway.

[18:24] And who did you assist first?

[18:29] The first person I assisted was Tharon Musser. And after working with Tharon, then I worked with Peggy at the Jones Beach Marine Theater. Following that, I worked for William Rittman, a set designer who did his own lighting in a lot of shows. Tom Skelton, a lighting designer who started in dance and moved to theater. Who else in that period? Leo B. Meyer, Pat Collins. I worked with her. I started working for everybody because in New York, I was like the go-to guy as assistants because assistants weren't as prevalent as they are now. Many designers didn't have them or producers wouldn't pay for them. And I know when I started, I was paid by Tharon Musser. The union didn't represent assistants in lighting.

So my education was being an assistant and working with these great lighting designers and working with great directors. You know, I did a George Abbott show. I mean, I did John Houseman shows. I worked with all these stars and set designers. I mean, I worked with everybody as a kid. I was the assistant and I was there watching these famous people and really famous creating shows. And that was how I learned how it all came together and how they did it. And it was a fabulous way to learn.

[19:44] That experience of being in the room to watch those people work is irreplaceable and obviously contributed to what you've been able to do in your career.

[19:50] Oh, yeah. And, you know, I remember with George Abbott, the show was The Fig Leaves Are Falling, a big famous flop starring Dorothy Loudon and Barry Nelson. We were out of town in Philadelphia and it was not going well. But George Abbott, you know, he had started doing musicals in the 20s, directing musicals. So he was a bit of the talking to the electrician guy. And we were in tech and the follow spot operator, the head follow spot operator was George Abbott's head follow spot operator. It wasn't somebody Tharon Musser wanted. It was somebody George Abbott wanted. I can't remember the guy's name. And he was older like George Abbott was in those days. And George Abbott would stand in the front row and turn around and scream, pick her up left, get the girl up left on her entrance.

And you'd hear from the booth, yelled back to him. I got three lights. You have four people talking. Put two people together. All right. And he put two actors together. And this had nothing to do with the lighting designer. This was George Abbott working with his spot operator to make sure that people were lit. And we got to the first preview of the show standing in the back. I was standing next to Tharon and George Abbott was next to Tharon. And he came up to her and he said, Tharon, it looks great. You're a real artist. Looks great. She said, thank you, George. And he said, no, I just have one note. Turn the lights on so I can see them. And, you know, to him, it was about seeing everything.

[21:25] Yeah. Clarity. And the ground plan is about where the doors were. We've come a long way since then, but that's where it was. I watched that happen. So I got it. I understand about seeing people. And you said the word clarity, because if you can't see him, you can't hear him basically. Or you have to strain to listen to him. And of course, we threw that out with The Drowsy Chaperone that we did the first eight minutes of pitch black. But anyway, he still got the last go a little further into describing technically what shows looked like. What year is this that you're doing this system? What sort of decade is this?

[22:02] We're like 67, 67. Shows look good, though. I must say shows did not look bad. They were not as sophisticated. We didn't have a computer operating them. So we had men, usually on a musical, three men, and they were all men in those days, operating the six manual lighting boards run by three men. You'd set the look and then you'd set the next look. And then they would figure how to get all these handles to go from one to another because it was just manual and there would be strings involved. They were choreographed. The lighting operators were choreographed. I remember the famous story on I Do, I Do at the opening of the show. Gene Rosenthal was lighting the show and they were having a hard time going from the first scene. And Gower Champion went backstage, watched what the guys were doing and choreographed the three lighting operators how to do it.

[23:04] I can remember being in college and running the lights, probably using the equipment you were using in the 60s on Broadway and having you have one hand on this lever and another hand on this one and using my knee on the other one to get all three levers to go at the same time. The only person running the lights on this production. Right. And the other thing is we did not have technology. There were no automated fixtures that hadn't been invented yet. There were no color changers. If you wanted to change the color, you took the light and took the red out and put the blue in, you know, piece of gel. Shows had to be carefully thought out in those days, because if you wanted to blink from red to blue, you couldn't do that on the same board.

You'd have to put that on separate boards. So this guy with his left hand was turning off the reds while his right hand was turning on the blues. So you had to think about operation. You had to think about all the colors. You couldn't in the middle of the show say, you know what, there should be a red number. Oh, no. Because you had to think about how are we going to operate this? By the way, the directors knew that also. So the director and I did 21 Hal Prince shows. So working with somebody who came from that 40s era.

[24:10] From the George Abbott era.

[24:10] Yeah, totally got it. And you'd be doing a show, a play or whatever. And you'd get a phone call from the stage manager, usually some point during the first week of rehearsal, a phone call. We didn't have email. And they would say, hey, they have Mary entering through the up center doorway, but she stands in the doorway and does the first few lines. You'll probably need a special. So that to me was, oh, I better put a special that lights the doorway for the actress who's sitting there. And then a week later, you'd get another phone call from the stage manager. Then this was all coming from the director. In act two, they have Mary standing in the doorway again, but it's nighttime. So you probably need the same light and blue.

I got that from the director and the stage manager so we could save time. We got the theater because they're thinking ahead. What's going to slow us down? What is Ken going to need to have time? Right. And so if I didn't have a light that I could put there to make blue, I would adjust my light.

[25:08] David Armstrong: Welcome back to Broadway Nation. Today, we’re diving into the fascinating world of Broadway lighting design with my guest, Tony Award-winning lighting designer Ken Billington.

[25:38] David Armstrong: Ken, your career has spanned decades and you've worked on an incredible number of productions. Can you tell us a bit about how you first got into lighting design?

[26:08] Ken Billington: Sure! I started my career in 1967 as an assistant to Tharon Musser, who was a pioneering lighting designer. It was an incredible opportunity to learn from someone so talented and innovative.

[26:38] David Armstrong: Tharon Musser is such a significant figure in lighting design. What were some of the key lessons you learned from her?

[27:08] Ken Billington: Tharon taught me the importance of storytelling through light. She had a unique ability to enhance the emotional impact of a scene with her lighting choices.

[27:38] David Armstrong: That’s fascinating. Lighting really does play a crucial role in setting the mood and tone of a production. Can you share a specific moment from your early career that stands out to you?

[28:08] Ken Billington: One moment that stands out was working on the original production of "Sweeney Todd." The way we used shadows and light to create tension was groundbreaking at the time.

[29:08] David Armstrong: "Sweeney Todd" is such a classic. How did that experience shape your approach to lighting design in subsequent productions?

[29:38] Ken Billington: It taught me to be bold and to take risks with lighting. I realized that lighting could be just as expressive as the performances on stage.

[30:08] David Armstrong: You’ve worked on so many iconic shows. Is there a particular production that you feel was a turning point in your career?

[30:16] Ken Billington: I would say "Chicago" was a turning point for me. Winning the Tony Award for that production really solidified my place in the industry.

[30:46] David Armstrong: Winning a Tony is a huge achievement! What do you think made your lighting design for "Chicago" resonate so well with audiences?

[31:06] Ken Billington: The combination of the minimalist set and the dynamic choreography allowed the lighting to really shine. It was all about creating a sense of energy and excitement.

[31:26] David Armstrong: It certainly did that! As lighting design continues to evolve, what trends are you noticing in the industry today?

[31:46] Ken Billington: I see a lot more integration of technology, like LED lighting and digital projections. It opens up new possibilities for storytelling and creativity.

[32:06] David Armstrong: Technology has certainly changed the landscape. How do you balance traditional techniques with these new advancements?

[32:26] Ken Billington: I think it’s important to honor the craft while also embracing innovation. The best designs often come from a blend of both worlds.

[32:46] David Armstrong: That’s a great perspective. As we wrap up this part of our conversation, what advice would you give to aspiring lighting designers?

[33:06] Ken Billington: My advice would be to learn as much as you can from those who came before you, but also to find your own voice. Experiment and don’t be afraid to push boundaries.

[33:26] David Armstrong: Thank you, Ken. It’s been a pleasure discussing your incredible journey and the art of lighting design on Broadway.

[33:46] Ken Billington: Thank you for having me, David. It’s always a joy to talk about this craft that I love so much.

[34:06] David Armstrong: Stay tuned for more insights from Ken in the next part of our conversation, where we’ll delve deeper into his experiences and the future of lighting design on Broadway.

[34:26] Ken Billington: Looking forward to it!

[34:46] David Armstrong: Thanks for listening to Broadway Nation.