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Thank you for joining us for this
episode of DMPA Conversations. I'm Jeff Chelswig,
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President and CEO of Demain Performing Arts. Today I am joined by eight
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time Tony Award winner Natasha Katz,
lighting designer for MJ a production in our
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Willis Broadway series. These podcasts are
designed to give you an insider's perspective of
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the fantastic performances headed to our stages. Thank you again for joining us.
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And now here's my conversation with Natasha
Kats. So do you want to be
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starting SAP star? And Sup said
you want to be starting? Sup started
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Suck. Natasha, thanks so much
for joining me today. You've been doing
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this for a long time. How
did you get started in lighting design?
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I grew up in New York City
and my parents took me to the theater
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all the time, So I'm first
and foremost a theater lover and then a
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lighting designer. It's really I just
all I wanted to do was work in
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the theater, and it, you
know, it really happened by chance.
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I don't think that there are many
people who were born sort of saying I
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want to be a lighting designer.
It's something you have to sort of find
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out about it, to even know
that it exists. And I went to
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Oberlin College in Ohio, and that's
where I really learned about lighting design,
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and they happened to have a program, an internship program, and I came
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to New York for a full semester
and got college credit to work with Roger
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Morgan, a great lighting designer who
had just won a Tony Award for a
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show called Crucifer of Blood. And
the show that I worked on with him
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was I Remember Mama, which was
Richard Rogers's last musical starring leave Oleman,
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and I was able to go to
Philadelphia out of town and then come to
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New York with the show, so
and then I was hooked. Everybody was
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so kind to me at such a
young age and helpful to me. I
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find that happens a lot in the
community of theater, which is people helping
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younger people and helping each other out
that we really are a community. And
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I, you know, lighting takes
a lot of people to do lighting,
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and so it's its own sort of
subset of the community. And I just
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loved it. You know, I
found my family, really and I've been
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finding many families since tell us about
your first experience working on Broadway as the
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designer. Oh, that was a
show called Pack of Lies starring Rosemary Harris.
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I was twenty six years old.
Again, you know it's it was
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because of people bolstering me and helping
me that it happened to me at such
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a young age. But I met
Roger Morgan, turned down a job at
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the Ohio State Theater, and I
did this show with an amazing director named
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Clifford Williams, who English director.
And Clifford, I couldn't believe it invited
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me to do a Broadway show.
And I will tell you, I got
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a letter in the mail. The
a was broken on the typewriter, so
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my name is Natasha my name,
so it was dirt and I could re
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read between the lines, and it
said we'd like you to do a Broadway
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show. The producer was Arthur Canter, and I almost thought it was a
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joke, like it was hard to
tell, and I called Arthur and it
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was it was real and it was
true. And then Clifford went on to
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do two more Broadway shows consecutively in
two more years. And so I did
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three Broadway shows right away, which
really sort of it honestly really helped my
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career. So our listeners will be
happy to know that you do have a
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history with Des Moines, and that
is that you were the lighting designer for
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the musicals state Fair, which opened
its pre Broadway tour here in Des Moines
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in August of nineteen ninety five.
And oh my goodness, which will be
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how many years thirty years next year? And that was my first year being
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here in Des Moines. And I
remember the tech period of State Fair as
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if it were yesterday. I remember
because the company was here for practically an
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entire month working on rehearsals. Tell
us about your experience being here in Des
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Moines. I had a fantastic time
in Des Moines. A number of things.
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There were big moments in my life. I had recently had a child
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and my daughter. My mother and
my daughter traveled with me to Des Moines.
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I had the biggest hotel room I
think I've ever had before or since,
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and so my mother took care of
my daughter while I was in the
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theater. It was also during the
State Fair, that's right, hey,
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all the it was. I mean, I'm from New York City, so
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something like that really is in movies
for me, and then I saw it
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in its reality. I saw the
animals going down your main street. What
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is your main street called? Is
it Grand Avenue? Yeah? Grand Avenue?
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Yes, yes, yeah. So
it was a great time. It's
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a very strong memory for me and
des Moin. I'd like to go back
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to Des Moines, honestly one day
to sort of relive it. We'd love
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to have you back. It's the
State Fair is still a huge draw here
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in the state and I'm a big
fan of it. I remember opening night
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the song all Io io Iowa stopped
the show and standing ovation in the middle
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of show. I don't think that's
ever happened since. So that was so
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much. Oh my god, oh
god, isn't that something that was great?
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Great fun. Well, let's talk
about the show that you designed the
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like for that's coming to the Civic
Center, MJ and this show primarily looks
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at Michael Jackson at a point in
time when he was creating The Dangerous Tour,
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which was in nineteen ninety two.
We're back to the nineties here.
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Let's start with your involvement with the
show. Oh I well, Chris Wielden,
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who directed it and choreographed it,
we've worked together. It's almost thirty
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years now we did. I met
him on Sweet Smell of Success. He
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choreographed Sweet Smell of Success, and
I think it was two thousand and one
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that we did it on Broadway.
And then Chris took me into the world
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of ballet and I've done many ballets
with Chris since then. And so that's
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one reason Leah Volak are protu sure. She's a good friend, and she
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asked me to do the show.
So once again another family exactly right.
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Did the show have a pre Broadway
I can't remember it. We were supposed
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to have pre Broadway, but we
we really came in in the time of
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COVID, so that pre Broadway was
canceled and then we just opened cold in
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New York. A number of workshops
and a lot of meetings, and then
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COVID ended up in some ways helping
us even have more time to kind of
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lend knowledge work on the script.
Chris worked on things, I worked on
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things. But no, we didn't
have a we didn't try out out of
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town. Let's talk about some of
the elements about the show, because the
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show takes place in the nineteen nineties, so this makes this kind of a
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period piece, right, Does that
inform your design in some way? Oh,
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it really informed the lighting for the
show because the show does take place
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in a rehearsal room for the Dangerous
Tour, and when you walk in,
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it just feels like the whole evening
is going to be in this rehearsal room.
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So you talked about it being in
nineteen ninety two, but what happens
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in the show is there are a
lot of memories that so they go back
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even further in time, and the
memories are sort of through Michael Jackson's own
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eyes. They're also through questions that
have been asked of him by a reporter.
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So it's kind of what memory brings
and how we deal with memory.
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So there are a couple of things
in terms of the period. So there's
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the period of nineteen ninety two,
the period of being in this rehearsal room,
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the period of the day sort of
going on as they're rehearsing. So
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as a lighting designer, that's exciting
to me because the day is progressing and
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sunlight is coming through and how all
of that affects the mood of how the
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characters feel. But the real sort
of exciting part then happens as we go
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back in time. It's all really
about sort of transformation and transitions and through
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his emotions and feelings and that earlier
period when the Jackson Five were started.
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They started in a crummy club called
Lucky's. It's in our show. Not
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only is there the patina of what
lighting can do for memory and make it
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change from the sort of harsh light
of the rehearsal room into this warm memory
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feeling, there's also the kind of
lighting that they had at the time,
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those lights like Marquee lights that are
around and how do you make a club
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feel sort of dingy and dirty where
they first started. And then as you
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see the rise of the Jackson Five, not only does the lighting change,
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but the kind of environment that they're
in completely changes, and all of a
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sudden, all of those lights start
to get more and more and more modern,
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and the lighting gets more modern and
more exciting and more like what you
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might remember from a television show with
the Jackson Five or Soul Trained with the
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Jackson Five. So then we start
to touch on what we think the audience's
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memories of that period are. And
you know, it's so hard to talk
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about lighting, but lighting has so
much to do with some what A lot
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of these transformations are in the show, which hopefully people will you don't have
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to notice it, but at least
it will carry the story on. I'm
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so fascinated by lighting. In fact, I studied lighting design. I did
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a little bit of lighting design,
which is why I remember seeing you in
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the theater in nineteen ninety five,
you know, sitting at the desk in
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the middle of the house working on
cues and just I remember that distinctly.
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The technology has changed so much over
the last fifteen twenty years. Is it
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make it easier or harder? It's
easier. It actually is easier. That's
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great the technology. It is easier. So when we did State there we
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did not have what they call today
moving lights, which means lights, the
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robotic lights that can be controlled from
a computer. So if the light is
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hanging there, you can from the
computer point the light over here, change
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the color, make it big,
make it small. When we did State
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Fair, you'd have to get four
people at the bottom of First you have
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to pull the ladder down off the
wall, and you have to roll in
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on the stage stand at the bottom
of the ladder, so that nobody will
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fall off, and then Electrician goes
up the ladder and hangs the light or
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points the light in only one direction
with only one color in it. So
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the versatility of what we have today
is astounding compared to what we had during
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State Fair. And I'm very proud
of the work on State Fair. I
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thought the show looked beautiful, gorgeous. It was really was, but I
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was really proud of it. But
I had no idea then where technology would
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take us to today. And I
think we can do many more sophisticated things
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than we could do before. You
couldn't have the lighting from MJ twenty years
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ago that we have today. I've
seen the production only in New York.
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I have not seen the touring production. I'm looking forward to it, but
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enjoyed it very much. Is there
a favorite moment of yours in the show?
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Oh? My god, you know
what, of course, I'm going
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to say there isn't. It's chock
well with so many incredible moments. It's
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a visual delight. The choreography is
insanely good. There are not enough superleances
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for me about what this show is. It's got to be one of my
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favorite shows that I've ever worked on, because you know what, there's a
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seamlessness between all of us. We
all worked the costumes, Paul Taswell's costumes,
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Derek set the sound design for the
show, Chris's choreography, the music,
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it all really blends into one in
a way that I find absolutely astounding.
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You mentioned the choreography and I was
blown away by it. And our
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audiences have seen Chris's work, most
notably American and Paris that we presented a
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few years ago. He's just such
a terrific choreographer. I just went to
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the Duain Ballet actually performed a couple
of his pieces recently that I saw and
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oh great. Yeah. So it's
really this is a show that's selling extremely
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well. It's going to be,
I think, a high point of our
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season. It astounds me every time
I see it. It's always got something
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new. And we opened a production
in London now, which is right.
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You know, every time Chris adds
stuff, so he's added us up to
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the tour that as a matter of
fact, we so we did the tour
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in Chicago. We started in Chicago
and then we went back to New York
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City and added a lot of the
things that we had put into the tour
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into the New York City production.
So there was a lot of things in
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the tour that were better than New
York, so we had to put them
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into New York. I love hearing
that. I know that happens more frequently
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than people might imagine. To be
able to step back and reimagine the work
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when it goes out on tour and
then go and put it back into the
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Broadway production. I think that's so
cool, yes, because you learn and
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you learn so much from the audiences
and what the audiences really want and how
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to sort of craft the show based
on that kind of reaction, and a
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lot of that we learned when we
after we left New York and had another
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chance to do it. Thank you, Natasha. We appreciate you joining us
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for this special conversation. The d
mp A Conversations podcast is produced by Andrew
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Downs. To our donors and season
ticket holders, thank you for providing the
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foundation for great performances and educational opportunities
at Des Moines Performing Arts. Visit DMPA
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dot org or wherever you get your
podcasts for future conversations like this one.
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Thank you for listening
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Thank you for joining us for this
episode of DMPA Conversations. I'm Jeff Chelswig,
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00:00:10.240 --> 00:00:14.519
President and CEO of Demain Performing Arts. Today I am joined by eight
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time Tony Award winner Natasha Katz,
lighting designer for MJ a production in our
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Willis Broadway series. These podcasts are
designed to give you an insider's perspective of
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the fantastic performances headed to our stages. Thank you again for joining us.
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And now here's my conversation with Natasha
Kats. So do you want to be
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starting SAP star? And Sup said
you want to be starting? Sup started
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Suck. Natasha, thanks so much
for joining me today. You've been doing
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this for a long time. How
did you get started in lighting design?
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I grew up in New York City
and my parents took me to the theater
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all the time, So I'm first
and foremost a theater lover and then a
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lighting designer. It's really I just
all I wanted to do was work in
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the theater, and it, you
know, it really happened by chance.
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I don't think that there are many
people who were born sort of saying I
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want to be a lighting designer.
It's something you have to sort of find
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out about it, to even know
that it exists. And I went to
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Oberlin College in Ohio, and that's
where I really learned about lighting design,
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and they happened to have a program, an internship program, and I came
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to New York for a full semester
and got college credit to work with Roger
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Morgan, a great lighting designer who
had just won a Tony Award for a
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show called Crucifer of Blood. And
the show that I worked on with him
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was I Remember Mama, which was
Richard Rogers's last musical starring leave Oleman,
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and I was able to go to
Philadelphia out of town and then come to
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New York with the show, so
and then I was hooked. Everybody was
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so kind to me at such a
young age and helpful to me. I
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find that happens a lot in the
community of theater, which is people helping
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younger people and helping each other out
that we really are a community. And
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I, you know, lighting takes
a lot of people to do lighting,
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and so it's its own sort of
subset of the community. And I just
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loved it. You know, I
found my family, really and I've been
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finding many families since tell us about
your first experience working on Broadway as the
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designer. Oh, that was a
show called Pack of Lies starring Rosemary Harris.
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I was twenty six years old.
Again, you know it's it was
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because of people bolstering me and helping
me that it happened to me at such
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a young age. But I met
Roger Morgan, turned down a job at
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the Ohio State Theater, and I
did this show with an amazing director named
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Clifford Williams, who English director.
And Clifford, I couldn't believe it invited
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me to do a Broadway show.
And I will tell you, I got
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a letter in the mail. The
a was broken on the typewriter, so
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my name is Natasha my name,
so it was dirt and I could re
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read between the lines, and it
said we'd like you to do a Broadway
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show. The producer was Arthur Canter, and I almost thought it was a
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joke, like it was hard to
tell, and I called Arthur and it
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was it was real and it was
true. And then Clifford went on to
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do two more Broadway shows consecutively in
two more years. And so I did
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three Broadway shows right away, which
really sort of it honestly really helped my
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career. So our listeners will be
happy to know that you do have a
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history with Des Moines, and that
is that you were the lighting designer for
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the musicals state Fair, which opened
its pre Broadway tour here in Des Moines
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in August of nineteen ninety five.
And oh my goodness, which will be
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how many years thirty years next year? And that was my first year being
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here in Des Moines. And I
remember the tech period of State Fair as
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if it were yesterday. I remember
because the company was here for practically an
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entire month working on rehearsals. Tell
us about your experience being here in Des
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Moines. I had a fantastic time
in Des Moines. A number of things.
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There were big moments in my life. I had recently had a child
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and my daughter. My mother and
my daughter traveled with me to Des Moines.
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I had the biggest hotel room I
think I've ever had before or since,
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and so my mother took care of
my daughter while I was in the
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theater. It was also during the
State Fair, that's right, hey,
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all the it was. I mean, I'm from New York City, so
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something like that really is in movies
for me, and then I saw it
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in its reality. I saw the
animals going down your main street. What
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is your main street called? Is
it Grand Avenue? Yeah? Grand Avenue?
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Yes, yes, yeah. So
it was a great time. It's
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a very strong memory for me and
des Moin. I'd like to go back
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to Des Moines, honestly one day
to sort of relive it. We'd love
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to have you back. It's the
State Fair is still a huge draw here
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in the state and I'm a big
fan of it. I remember opening night
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the song all Io io Iowa stopped
the show and standing ovation in the middle
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of show. I don't think that's
ever happened since. So that was so
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much. Oh my god, oh
god, isn't that something that was great?
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Great fun. Well, let's talk
about the show that you designed the
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like for that's coming to the Civic
Center, MJ and this show primarily looks
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at Michael Jackson at a point in
time when he was creating The Dangerous Tour,
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which was in nineteen ninety two.
We're back to the nineties here.
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Let's start with your involvement with the
show. Oh I well, Chris Wielden,
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who directed it and choreographed it,
we've worked together. It's almost thirty
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years now we did. I met
him on Sweet Smell of Success. He
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choreographed Sweet Smell of Success, and
I think it was two thousand and one
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that we did it on Broadway.
And then Chris took me into the world
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of ballet and I've done many ballets
with Chris since then. And so that's
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one reason Leah Volak are protu sure. She's a good friend, and she
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asked me to do the show.
So once again another family exactly right.
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Did the show have a pre Broadway
I can't remember it. We were supposed
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to have pre Broadway, but we
we really came in in the time of
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COVID, so that pre Broadway was
canceled and then we just opened cold in
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New York. A number of workshops
and a lot of meetings, and then
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COVID ended up in some ways helping
us even have more time to kind of
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lend knowledge work on the script.
Chris worked on things, I worked on
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things. But no, we didn't
have a we didn't try out out of
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town. Let's talk about some of
the elements about the show, because the
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show takes place in the nineteen nineties, so this makes this kind of a
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period piece, right, Does that
inform your design in some way? Oh,
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it really informed the lighting for the
show because the show does take place
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in a rehearsal room for the Dangerous
Tour, and when you walk in,
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it just feels like the whole evening
is going to be in this rehearsal room.
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So you talked about it being in
nineteen ninety two, but what happens
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in the show is there are a
lot of memories that so they go back
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even further in time, and the
memories are sort of through Michael Jackson's own
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eyes. They're also through questions that
have been asked of him by a reporter.
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So it's kind of what memory brings
and how we deal with memory.
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So there are a couple of things
in terms of the period. So there's
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the period of nineteen ninety two,
the period of being in this rehearsal room,
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the period of the day sort of
going on as they're rehearsing. So
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as a lighting designer, that's exciting
to me because the day is progressing and
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sunlight is coming through and how all
of that affects the mood of how the
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characters feel. But the real sort
of exciting part then happens as we go
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back in time. It's all really
about sort of transformation and transitions and through
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his emotions and feelings and that earlier
period when the Jackson Five were started.
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They started in a crummy club called
Lucky's. It's in our show. Not
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only is there the patina of what
lighting can do for memory and make it
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change from the sort of harsh light
of the rehearsal room into this warm memory
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feeling, there's also the kind of
lighting that they had at the time,
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those lights like Marquee lights that are
around and how do you make a club
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feel sort of dingy and dirty where
they first started. And then as you
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see the rise of the Jackson Five, not only does the lighting change,
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but the kind of environment that they're
in completely changes, and all of a
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sudden, all of those lights start
to get more and more and more modern,
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and the lighting gets more modern and
more exciting and more like what you
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might remember from a television show with
the Jackson Five or Soul Trained with the
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Jackson Five. So then we start
to touch on what we think the audience's
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memories of that period are. And
you know, it's so hard to talk
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about lighting, but lighting has so
much to do with some what A lot
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of these transformations are in the show, which hopefully people will you don't have
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to notice it, but at least
it will carry the story on. I'm
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so fascinated by lighting. In fact, I studied lighting design. I did
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a little bit of lighting design,
which is why I remember seeing you in
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the theater in nineteen ninety five,
you know, sitting at the desk in
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the middle of the house working on
cues and just I remember that distinctly.
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The technology has changed so much over
the last fifteen twenty years. Is it
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make it easier or harder? It's
easier. It actually is easier. That's
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great the technology. It is easier. So when we did State there we
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did not have what they call today
moving lights, which means lights, the
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robotic lights that can be controlled from
a computer. So if the light is
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hanging there, you can from the
computer point the light over here, change
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the color, make it big,
make it small. When we did State
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Fair, you'd have to get four
people at the bottom of First you have
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to pull the ladder down off the
wall, and you have to roll in
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on the stage stand at the bottom
of the ladder, so that nobody will
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fall off, and then Electrician goes
up the ladder and hangs the light or
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points the light in only one direction
with only one color in it. So
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the versatility of what we have today
is astounding compared to what we had during
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State Fair. And I'm very proud
of the work on State Fair. I
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thought the show looked beautiful, gorgeous. It was really was, but I
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was really proud of it. But
I had no idea then where technology would
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take us to today. And I
think we can do many more sophisticated things
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than we could do before. You
couldn't have the lighting from MJ twenty years
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ago that we have today. I've
seen the production only in New York.
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I have not seen the touring production. I'm looking forward to it, but
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enjoyed it very much. Is there
a favorite moment of yours in the show?
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Oh? My god, you know
what, of course, I'm going
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to say there isn't. It's chock
well with so many incredible moments. It's
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a visual delight. The choreography is
insanely good. There are not enough superleances
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for me about what this show is. It's got to be one of my
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favorite shows that I've ever worked on, because you know what, there's a
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seamlessness between all of us. We
all worked the costumes, Paul Taswell's costumes,
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Derek set the sound design for the
show, Chris's choreography, the music,
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it all really blends into one in
a way that I find absolutely astounding.
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You mentioned the choreography and I was
blown away by it. And our
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audiences have seen Chris's work, most
notably American and Paris that we presented a
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few years ago. He's just such
a terrific choreographer. I just went to
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the Duain Ballet actually performed a couple
of his pieces recently that I saw and
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oh great. Yeah. So it's
really this is a show that's selling extremely
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well. It's going to be,
I think, a high point of our
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season. It astounds me every time
I see it. It's always got something
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new. And we opened a production
in London now, which is right.
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You know, every time Chris adds
stuff, so he's added us up to
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the tour that as a matter of
fact, we so we did the tour
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in Chicago. We started in Chicago
and then we went back to New York
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City and added a lot of the
things that we had put into the tour
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into the New York City production.
So there was a lot of things in
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the tour that were better than New
York, so we had to put them
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into New York. I love hearing
that. I know that happens more frequently
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than people might imagine. To be
able to step back and reimagine the work
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when it goes out on tour and
then go and put it back into the
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Broadway production. I think that's so
cool, yes, because you learn and
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you learn so much from the audiences
and what the audiences really want and how
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to sort of craft the show based
on that kind of reaction, and a
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lot of that we learned when we
after we left New York and had another
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chance to do it. Thank you, Natasha. We appreciate you joining us
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for this special conversation. The d
mp A Conversations podcast is produced by Andrew
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00:14:52.240 --> 00:14:56.159
Downs. To our donors and season
ticket holders, thank you for providing the
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foundation for great performances and educational opportunities
at Des Moines Performing Arts. Visit DMPA
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dot org or wherever you get your
podcasts for future conversations like this one.
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Thank you for listening
