Jennifer Tipton
2001 Recipient
Jennifer Tipton is one of theater’s most accomplished and acclaimed lighting designers with credits across the stage in dance, opera and drama. In a career spanning over 35 years, Tipton has used her unique affinity for light to transform productions in ways both subtle and forceful, heightening the theater experience for both audiences and performers alike.
“Ninety-nine and nine-tenths percent of the audience is not aware of the lighting,” Tipton has stated, “…though 100 percent is affected by it.”
Like her work, Tipton is an unseen master working her magic behind the scenes. Many of theater’s top talents have recognized the power of Tipton’s work and have trusted their productions to her. She has maintained long alliances with choreographers Paul Taylor, Twyla Tharp, Dan Wagoner, Robert Joffrey, Eliot Feld, Mikhail Barshnikov, Jerome Robbins, Jiri Kylian and Dana Reitz. Among the directors she has worked with include Mike Nichols, Peter Sellars, Robert Wilson, Richard Jones, JoAnne Akalaitis and Elizabeth LeCompte.
Born in Columbus, Ohio, Tipton entered Cornell University in 1954 to study astrophysics, but graduated in 1958 with a degree in English and a resolve to dance. She moved to New York where she studied at Martha Graham School and eventually performed with the Lucas Hoving Company and the Merry-Go-Rounders. Along the way, Tipton became interested in how performers looked and especially how they were lit. A course with the eminent lighting designer Thomas Skelton led to an apprenticeship that eventually launched her own distinguished career.
Tipton began by lighting what she understood best – dance. She created her first design in 1965 for Paul Taylor’s Orbs. She has continued working with Paul Taylor Dance Company ever since. In 1973, she attracted attention in theatrical circles for her lighting of Jerome Robbins’ high profile Celebrations: The Art of the Pas de Deux at Spoleto, Italy. Over the years, she has become regarded as one of the most versatile lighting designers in dance. Her achievements range from the forceful, sculptured effects in Twyla Tharp’s “Fait Accompli” (1963), to the subtle, shimmering vision for Jerome Robbins’ In Memory of… (1985).
By the mid 1970s, Tipton had expanded beyond the dance stage and was regularly engaged by Joseph Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival. She also made many inroads on Broadway. Tipton’s outstanding designs for dramatic works have won her numerous awards, including a Drama Desk Award for Ntosake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf (1976); a Joseph Jefferson Award for John Guare’s The Landscape of the Body (1976); a Drama Desk and Tony Award for The Cherry Orchard (1977), directed by Andrei Serban; an Obie for Sustained Excellence at the New York Shakespeare Festival (1979); another Obie for Lifetime Achievement (1998); and three Bessie Awards – the first for Sustained Achievement (1984), and the latter two for her collaborations with Dana Reitz on Circumstantial Evidence (1987), and The Wooster Group designers for Houselights (1999). Tipton has also been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship (1986), a Commonwealth Award of Distinguished Service in Dramatic Arts (1989) and a MacArthur “Genius” Grant (2008).
Since 1981, Tipton has been a Professor-Adjunct at the Yale University School of Drama.
