The Week in Review

Oscar Night: Congratulations to all the winners of Academy Awards, given out last night, including Claudio Miranda, director of photography for Life of Pi; Jacqueline Durran, costume designer of Anna Karenina; Rick Carter and Jim Erickson, production designer and set decorator of Lincoln, and the Les Misérables sound mixing team of Andy Nelson, Mark Paterson, and Simon Hayes. (You can read about the live sound aspect of Les Miz in the February issue of Lighting&Sound America.) It was a little sad to see Eiko Ishioka, the late costume designer (last seen on Broadway with Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark) get passed up for her work on Mirror Mirror, but there can be only one winner. Under the aegis of productions Craig Zadan and Neil Mehron, the show had a Broadway patina, thanks to the choreography of Rob Ashford and the set design of Derek McLane; we'll have more to say about McLane's work in a future issue of LSA.

Broadway dropouts: It was a rocky week on Broadway, with Shia LaBeouf exiting the upcoming Broadway production Orphans in a whirl of rumors, press releases, denials, leaked emails, and statements via Twitter. You can read the whole story here: http://plasa.me/1f5kr. At the same time, a couple of already announced shows have postponed for the near term: The Velocity of Autumn, by the underrated playwright Eric Coble, which was to star Estelle Parsons and Stephen Spinella, and a revival of Beth Henley's The Miss Firecracker Contest, with Amber Tamblyn in the lead. Both productions shared the same lead producer, Larry Kaye. As per him, the reasons for the postponements were an inability to find the right intimate theatre (Velocity of Autumn) and a scheduling conflict "that stood in the way of getting our dream cast" (Miss Firecracker). There's no word on what is next for either project.

More Spider-Man litigation: The litigation beat goes on at Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. Richard Kobak, formerly a stuntman on the musical, is suing the producers for $6 million dollars, alleging that the play contained "equipment, safety devices, and other devices that were improperly maintained and eventually led to his injury." Among those being sued is Scott Fisher, of Fisher Technical Services, a name that will be very familiar to readers of LSA. Get the whole story at http://plasa.me/rb37e.

Job shuffles: A couple of high-profile job changes were announced last week. Bill Groener has left A.C.T Lighting, where he was vice president of business development, to take up a new position as general manager of the systems division at 4Wall Entertainment. And Jamey Brock, formerly of Chauvet Lighting and Zenith Lighting has joined Creative Stage Lighting as Southeast regional sales manager. Best of luck to both.