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Updated December 6, 2011 Things have been very busy. We've expanded our services beyond entertainment design. The event design side of our business has really taken off. We've lit several weddings and some other events. For some, we've also designed the whole look of the reception and acted as the wedding planner as well. You can see pictures of several of the weddings at our Facebook page, as well as on the events area of the web page. We've also consulted for more venues. Community Campus at Hailey High School in Hailey, ID is finishing up a $1.6 million renovation of their theater. We worked with the architects, contractors and school board to make sure the lighting equipment served all of the various needs of the venue. We've also consulted on smaller projects for other schools and venues in NJ. Last month, we presented "Creative and Efficient Lighting for School Plays and Musicals" at the NJ Teachers Convention. We presented tools and tricks for teachers in a wide range of venues and resources. The feedback was really good and it seems we've given a number of people some things to use when they got back to their schools. Of course, our entertainment designs are still going strong. We won our second Papermill Playhouse Rising Star Award for Sweeney Todd at Westfield High School. The show received 15 nominations, of which WHS won seven. We finished our third summer at Sun Valley Pavilion and look forward to returning next summer. Some of the acts we've designed for the last few years include Colbie Caillat, Leann Womack, Peter Ceterra, Bill Cosby, John Lithgow, among several others. Nothing is official yet, but it sounds like there's a good chance for some more exciting acts next summer. We designed our second NYMF show, Broadway Dolls – Tour de Fierce. That was a fun show with a great group of Broadway performers singing and dancing to some amazing orchestrations mixing showtunes with pop music. The show was very well done and fun to work on. We both are excited that our work has become so varied. We continue to go to new places, see new things, and have some really good experiences along the way. -------------- Updated April 19, 2009 A lot has happened since the last update. We are now officially not just business partners, but husband and wife. It may have taken seven and a half years, but we had an amazing wedding, and yes, of course, we lit the reception. . Even without the wedding, we’ve been pretty busy. We were honored to be part of Apollo’s panel discussion about color at USITT. We were back at Westfield for Kiss Me, Kate. Before that, we lit Beauty and the Beast at Harrison High School in New York. They rented an amazing set, which served as a wonderful canvas for us to light. Two shows, USITT, a wedding cruise, a wedding reception in Wisconsin, and that was just March. Before that, we lit a children’s show called How Can You Run With a Shell on Your Back at Spirit of Broadway Theater in Norwich, CT. We continued our fourth season at Nevada Ballet Season. Lisa stage managed A Taste of Honey at Cherry Lane Theater in NYC. We’ve also stayed busy with some lectures for schools with Apollo and training ETC clients on ION and EOS consoles from West Point, NY to College Station, TX. We have a little bit of time now to catch up on a few things. But we’ll soon head out again. Starting the first of May, we’ll be off to Sun Valley, Idaho to consult and design the rig for their new Entertainment Pavilion. After that, we’re back for our sixth season at Platteville, WI for the Heartland Theatre Festival. Straight from there, we’ll return to Surflight Theater where we will design and Lisa will be the plant for Little Shop of Horrors. We’ll also design the following show, The Buddy Holly Story. In case your wondering, nothing has changed now that we're married. Things continue just like they always have. -------------- Updated October 2, 2008 First of all, we’re excited that it’s now official. You can read all about our Standing O award at www.apollodesign.net. We won't say much about it here because you can see for yourself there. We just finished Sophia's Fall for the dance portion of NYMF at 37Arts. Lisa stage managed the show and we both designed the lights for it. We often get the response to our website that all of our shows use a lot of color. We are proud of the way we use color, but we rarely work on shows that call for a less saturated look. Sophia's Fall gave us that opportunity. There were a number of scenes we lit with more of a feel of opera lighting. We did throw some color in there at times, too, as the angels fell from heaven and became evil. While the show is a full musical, this production allowed us to light a number of scenes as if it were a dance piece. This show really pushed our range of styles and we were happy with the way we were able to support the many moods and environments of this show, especially considering we programmed the whole show offline and had only one run-thru in the theater to get it right. You can see pictures here. Following that show, Lisa worked as an ASM/PA for the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting. She had fun being in the presence of some of the greatest minds in the world. Right now we are in Wisconsin where Lisa is teaching Master Classes on Stage Management at Ripon College. Next week we head back to Vegas for the start of another season of Nevada Ballet. And, of course, we'll hang around for LDI while we're there. If you're there, I'm sure we'll see you around. -------------- Updated August 8, 2008 It’s hard to call this the “What’s New” section of our web page if we go a year between updating it. So, 366 days later, here are some of the highlights since the last update. Last November, we designed, and Lisa stage managed an off-Broadway show, Growing Up 70’s. The show starred Barry Williams, tv’s Greg Brady. It ran for a couple months and Lisa joined Equity for this show. In January, we spent a week at ETC’s headquarters in Middleton, WI training on some of their new boards. We are now certified to train ETC’s clients on the ION, Congo Jr., and Smartfade ML. In February, Lisa was ALD for the International Homebuilders’ Conference at the Orlando convention center. She really enjoyed her experience on the corporate side of lighting and production. In March, we incorporated. Our company name is Sharp Edge Lighting Design, LLC. If you got to our web site by going to http:LisaMichaelLD.com, you can now also get here by going to www.SharpEdgeLighting.com. In April, we designed an opera for Diva’s Unleashed called The Benefit. The show was performed at John Jay College and directed by Rick Sordelet (fight choreographer for over 40 Broadway shows, plus film and tv). Lisa continued her opera work in April as the ASM for American Opera Projects’ production of This is the Rill Speaking, performed at Purchase College and Symphony Space. We completed our fifth season at Heartland Theater Festival this summer. This season we designed I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change, A Year with Frog and Toad, and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. In the middle of all that, Lisa made three trips to California to light Society of Seven concerts. The biggest of which was at the 14,000 seat Cow Palace in San Francisco. This was certainly the biggest venue we have ever designed in. We were lucky enough to fit it into our schedule for both of us to go out on that show. Now onto current projects. We are designing a show for the NYC Fringe Festival called The Cycle. It will have five performances at Spiegelworld. Spiegelworld is a unique venue under a tent next to South Street Seaport. I’m sure the Fringe shows will do well there, and the non-Fringe shows seem to be very popular. At the same time, Lisa is working as a PA for Theater of the Stars’ tour of Les Miz, which features many actors and staff from the original and revival Broadway productions. Next month, we will be joining up again with Jason Summers (Growing Up 70’s director) for a NYMF show. We will design, and Lisa will stage manage, Sophia’s Fall at 37Arts. Having read the script, we really look forward to working on that show. We expect it to be a great production. With all of this going on, we were just awarded Apollo Design’s Standing O award. A couple of weeks ago we had our photo shoot. Keep an eye out in the October trade magazines for the ads featuring the two of us. For those of you who know us, we’re sure you’ve been thinking it’s just a matter of time until we become spokesmodels. We’ll let you know when we decide to give up lighting to become full-time models. Until that happens, we’ll try to keep the web page updated a little more frequently. Hopefully we’ll get some pictures up soon of some of these productions. As always, feel free to contact us if you want to know anymore about anything we’ve been doing. ------------------------ Updated August 7, 2007 It's been a while since we've updated the site. We just finished a stretch with six shows opening in six weeks. Now that we have a little time to take a breath, we'll give you an update of what we've been up to. Prior to this recent stretch, we had the wonderful opportunity to work on Where's Darfur, a benefit concert to raise awareness and funds for Darfur. The show was a cabaret style show featuring Broadway singers and composers including Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez (Composers - Avenue Q and Finding Nemo), Lisa Howard (Drama Desk Award - ...Spelling Bee) and Luren Molina (Johanna - Sweeney Todd Broadway Revival). The show was at the Knitting Factory in Manhattan. It was an incredible night of entertainment and all for a good cause. Find out more about Darfur at SaveDarfur.org. We then went on to start our Summer season. First on the schedule was the Free Spirit Dancers concert. This is the company picked from dancers in the Wempner Studio, for whom we have designed the previous three recitals. (2002, 2004, 2006) After that, we returned to Platteville, WI for our fourth season with the Heartland Festival. This year, for the first time, they did four shows instead of three. The season included Nunsense II, Greater Tuna, Seussical and The Sound of Music. Seussical was certainly a favorite at the festival this year and the most exciting show for us from a lighting standpoint. Thank you to Spencer Lyons from ETC for loaning us a couple of Source Four Revolutions to make the lighting even more fun. Just as the last Heartland show opened, we quickly moved on to our next project. We returned to NJPAC to design the NJPAC/New Jersey Youth Theater (formerly WYACT) co-production of Carousel. It played there for two weekends and then transferred to the Algonquin Arts Theater in Manasquan, NJ. Right now we have a couple of projects going on. We are doing sound and lights for a couple of shows at the HA! Comedy Club in Times Square. One is a Rat Pack show and the other is an Elvis show. The shows are a lot of fun to work on and a nice change of pace for us. Lisa is also currently PSM'ing The Commission, a New York Fringe show. We have a couple of other projects in the works, which we will update soon. We have a new addition to the web site. On our 'Honors' page, you can see what other people think of our lighting. And, as always, we are working on getting more pictures up on the site. Come back soon to see some new pictures. For more information, you can contact us at (201) 232-5546 or return to our home page and explore more of our site. |