Company
Howard W. Blake School of the Arts Don Thompson Theatre Tampa, FL
Lighting design for the 2013 production of Company at Howard W. Blake School of the Arts, directed by Alan Blake Conley.
About the Lighting Design
Company at Howard W. Blake was one of the last shows I designed while on faculty there. The design was a teaching design as much as a creative one. I brought in a large rig with moving lights, more than the students had worked with before, and the show became a learning experience as well as a production.
Looking back, Company is also the earliest place I used the goal-post boom structures that became a recurring part of my work years later. The setup predates my professional architecture experiments in Hands on a Hardbody (2016), and the language carried through into The Color Purple (2022), Jersey Boys (2024) and beyond. Company is where it started, even if I didn’t recognize it as a framework at the time.
- Music and Lyrics
- Stephen Sondheim
- Book
- George Furth
- Orchestrations
- Jonathan Tunick
- Director
- Alan Blake Conley
- Scenic Designer
- Mike Wood
- Lighting Designer
- Mike Wood
- Assistant Lighting Designer
- Juni RodriguezCody Basham
About the Show
On the night of his 35th birthday, confirmed bachelor Robert contemplates his unmarried state. Over the course of a series of dinners, drinks, and even a wedding, his friends explain the pros and cons of taking on a spouse. The habitually single Robert is forced to question his adamant retention of bachelorhood during a hilarious array of interactions. Sondheim's game-changing musical is a sophisticated and honest look at modern, adult relationships, featuring a brilliantly brisk and energetic score containing many of Stephen Sondheim's best known songs.
Source: MTI