Wendall K. Harrington

Wendall K. Harrington’s career has embraced diverse disciplines including theatre, publishing and multi-image/video design and production. In 1979 she founded Luminous Productions, Inc. where for six years she produced and directed multi-image and video projects for numerous corporate clients. »The Multi-Image Murders« and »Fifty Who Made the Difference« won several awards, including Gold Awards from IFPA, The Chicago Film Festival and the U.S. Industrial Film Festival.

During the mid-eighties, as design director of Esquire magazine, Wendall K. Harrington was responsible for the re-design and re-launch of the Men’s Magazine of the 90’s. As editor-at-large for Esquire, she conceived and edited Randy Shilts’s »My Life on the AIDS Tour«, which was nominated for a National Magazine Award and published in Best American Essays of 1990.

As a designer of scenic projections for the stage, her extensive work has been seen on Broadway, at the Public Theater, Lincoln Center and Paramount Theater in New York, the Mark Taper Forum Los Angeles and The Royal National Theater London. Her award-winning projections for »The Who’s Tommy« on Broadway toured the U.S. in 1994, and has had productions in Toronto, London and Frankfurt.

Projection design for opera includes »Werther« at the Metropolitan Opera, »Die Zauberflöte« in Florence as well as »Rusalka«, »Die tote Stadt«, »La fanciulla del West«, »Orfeo et Euridice«, »Nixon in China« or »Brundibár«, amongst many others.

In the dance field Wendall K. Harrington worked with Alexei Ratmansky (»Anna Karenina«, »Pictures at an Exhibition«, »Cinderella« and »The Firebird«), Doug Varone and Dancers (»Ballet Mecanique«) and created the projection designs for »Othello« for American Ballet Theatre, »Nutcracker« for San Francisco Ballet and a new »Don Quixote« for Joffrey Ballet. Concert work includes tours for Simon & Garfunkel, Chris Rock and John Fogerty.

For her work in the theatre, Wendall K. Harrington is the recipient of the Drama Desk Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, the American Theatre Wing Award, the TCI Award for Technical Achievement, the Obie Award for Sustained Excellence of Projections, the Michael Merrit Award for Collaboration, the Ruth Morely Design Award, USITT education award and Players Club Theatre person of the year. She lectures widely on the art of Projection design and is the head of the MFA programme in Projection Design at the Yale School of Drama.