By Delbert Unruh, with Marilyn Rennagel and Jeff Davis. Foreword by Richard Pilbrow

$35.00
index, illustrations
128 pages
ISBN: 978-1-933348-11-9

Published by
USITT
in cooperation with
Broadway Press
March 2007

Tharon Musser was America's most distinguished lighting designer during the 1970s and 1980s. She received three Tony awards for her brilliant work which encompassed 117 Broadway productions including such greats as Follies, Dreamgirls, A Little Night Music, and A Chorus Line. THE DESIGNS OF THARON MUSSER is profusely illustrated with sixty-nine photographs of her work, as well as over a dozen example of her hand-drawn light plots, magic sheets, and other paperwork.

THE DESIGNS OF THARON MUSSER, published in March 2007, is written by Delbert Unruh, Professor of Theatre and Film at the University of Kansas, along with two of Musser's longtime assistants, Marilyn Rennagel and Jeff Davis. Professor Unruh is also a contributing editor of USITT’s quarterly journal, Theatre Design & Technology, for which he has written numerous articles on contemporary European and American design theory.

THE DESIGNS OF THARON MUSSER also features a complete design chronology (237 productions!), a listing of Musser's awards and honors, and, uniquely, a listing of all twenty-five of her design assistants and the shows they worked on. The foreword is by Richard Pilbrow who worked with Musser first as a projection designer on Golden Boy in 1964, and later as a co-producer on shows like A Little Night Music.

"A beautiful reconstruction of the life and career of Musser, it chronicles how this smart, tough-talking artist, a master colorist of the stage, cut her own path and became a pioneer in the field. …the monograph scores positive points for depth, breadth and analysis, offering a template for how these biographical studies should be done… It is a gem of a book, path-finding, and meticulously researched."
Review by Randy Gener, American Theatre, September 2007.