Case Study: Donald Holder Lighting Design, Inc. achieves build-ready Broadway lighting and seamless cross-discipline integration with VectorWorks

Tony Award Winner Don Holder Lights Broadway's The Bridges of Madison County

Donald Holder Lighting Design, Inc., led by two-time Tony winner Don Holder, was tasked with lighting the Broadway musical The Bridges of Madison County. With a sparse, elemental set meant to let light tell much of the story, the team had to convey shifts in time, weather, season and multiple simultaneous locations while creating the illusion of an expansive Iowa horizon inside the shallow confines of the Schoenfeld Theatre.

Holder combined practical lighting techniques — backlighting reflected off a white bounce rigged upstage, a tight upstage position fitted with PARs and color-changers, and shifts between back- and deep-indigo front-light for fantasy passages — with Vectorworks Spotlight and Lightwright-based workflows to produce build-ready plots and coordinate seamlessly with scenic and sound designers. The solution delivered convincing depth and atmosphere onstage, streamlined interdisciplinary production work, and earned Holder a 2014 Tony nomination for Best Lighting Design.