By Jonathan Mandell
Special to DNAinfo
THEATER DISTRICT — When Peter Nigrini attends the Tony Awards next month, he'll be rooting for “Fela!” the musical to win as many of the 11 categories as possible for which it was nominated.
But despite his work as an integral part of the musical's acclaimed visual experience, ("Fela!"'s Marina Dragachi is nominated for a Tony in Best Scenic Design of a Musical), Nigrini isn't eligible for an award, because there is no Tony category for what he does. Nigrini creates projections for the stage.
“I think that there is a general feeling among theater artists that there should be a Tony award for projection design,” Nigrini said.
“But sound was just added as a category in the 2007-2008 season, so it may take a good while before they catch up with the state-of-the-art.”
As one of what he estimates to be around two dozen professional projection designers for the theater, Negrini has seen phenomenal growth in the use of video projections for the Broadway stage.
The trend is clear from their extensive use by at least a half a dozen of this year's Tony-nominated shows.
That includes “Enron,” “Sondheim on Sondheim,” “Everyday Rapture,” and two of the four shows nominated for best scenic design of a musical, “American Idiot” as well as “Fela!” And there are many more examples off-Broadway.
Over the past dozen years, Nigrini has designed projected imagery, which these days is most often found in the form of video projections, for about three dozen shows, including three on Broadway.
In “Fela!” his projections depict some of the most dramatic portions in the musical about the life of Fela Kuti, an outspoken political activist in Nigeria and the founding father of the musical style Afrobeat. Among them are a chilling scene where authorities beat Fela's wives, and a fantastical sequence depicting Fela's journey to meet his mother in the afterlife.
Nigrini also put together the animated bluebirds from the revenge fantasy in the movie-turned-play “9 to 5.” And he shot hours of footage for the videos of wrestling matches in “The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity,” which opens Thursday night at Second Stage Theater.
The use of video projections may be more pervasive than the average theatergoer realizes, since its effects can be subtle; not all of it is video screens showing wrestling matches.
“Projections can be used to apply a texture to the set, or create a subtle sense of motion in the stage,” Nigrini said.
Not every scenic designer is happy with the trend.
Wendall Harrington, who has been a projection designer since 1979, said some critics are upset about the transition.
Beginning this fall, Harrington will be leading a new concentration in projection design at the Yale School of Drama, which is billed as the first such course of study in the United States. Many set designers claim to be the projection designers as well, but actually hire assistants who are more tuned into the art, Harrington said.
“Thinking in luminous moving image is a mindset to which neither classically-trained set or lighting designers are particularly suited,” Harrington said. “Filmmakers, animators and photographers have a better head start.”
Unlike past technological changes, though, Nigrini doesn’t see this one as causing upheaval. “Every show I work on there is also a scenic designer,” he says. “Video projections aren’t taking away jobs, they’re adding them.”
Jonathan Mandell reviews New York theater online and tweets @NewYorkTheater.
