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Lighting Design in America has a long history of pioneering women and we sit down with one of those women today…it’s Vivien Leone! Vivien is arguably the most experienced, sought after Associate working on Broadway and she brings with her a wealth of knowledge from her 30 years in the business. She and Cory discuss her ongoing relationship with ‘Phantom of the Opera’ and how much of the Broadway production remains the same from the day it opened, the personal and psychological effects she experienced being in tech for a year on ‘Spiderman’, and her experiences with both sexism and ageism in her field. She also shares stories from ‘The Last Ship’ and ‘The Bridges of Madison County’, tells us about the fork in the road that led her to pursue the Associate track, and of COURSE talks about her lighting paperwork, which is considered by many to be the best paperwork in the business.

Vivien Leone has designed lighting for Off and Off-Off Broadway productions, regional theatre and opera with credits including the Theatre-in-Limbo productions Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, Gidget Goes Psychotic, and Lady in Question. She can most often be found working as an Associate/Assistant on Broadway. Her long list of credits includes The Last Ship (Chris Akerlind, LD), The Bridges Of Madison County, Spiderman, Gem of the Ocean, Little Shop of Horrors (Don Holder, LD), Lucky Guy, Caroline Or Change (Peggy Eisenhauer & Jules Fisher, LD), Dead Accounts (David Weiner, LD), Private Lives, The Norman Conquests (David Howe, LD), The Woman in White (Paul Pyant, LD), Spamalot (Hugh Vanstone, LD), The Play What I Wrote (Tim Mitchell, LD), A Little Night Music (Hartley T A Kemp, LD), The Phantom Of The Opera, Fosse, Sunset Boulevard, Five Guys Named Moe (Andrew Bridge, LD), La Boheme (Nigel Levings, LD), Titanic, Big, Crazy For You (Paul Gallo, LD), and Broadway Bound (Tharon Musser, LD.) Vivien is on the Advisory Committee for The Lighting Archive.org and has guest lectured at LDI, The Broadway Lighting Master Classes and various colleges on the topic of recording and preserving lighting design.