Jules Fisher and Jennifer Tipton To Receive Ming Cho Lee Lifetime Achievement Award

The Henry Hewes Design Awards committee announces that legendary lighting designers Jules Fisher and Jennifer Tipton will each be honored with the Ming Cho Lee Award for Lifetime Achievement in Design, bestowed by the Henry Hewes Design Awards at the 58th annual event on October 24 in a livestream awards ceremony.

"In honoring Jules Fisher and Jennifer Tipton, both of whom have had a profound impact on the artistry, history, and innovation in the craft of illumination, we celebrate two pioneers who have given us so many important dramatic memories -- and have lit the way for those who follow," says Jeffrey Eric Jenkins, chairman of the HHDA committee. "It gives me great pleasure in announcing that they are both being honored with the Ming Cho Lee Award for Lifetime Achievement in Design."

In a Broadway career spanning more than 50 years, Jules Fisher has conceived and designed productions for Broadway, film, the music industry, and digital animation. He has designed more than a hundred plays and musicals and has been honored with nine Tony Awards and 21 nominations. The Henry Hewes Design Awards committee has honored him for seven productions dating back to Dancin' in 1978. Among his celebrated Broadway designs are the original versions of Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar, Pippin, Ragtime, Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk, Angels in America, Assassins, and the recent revival The Iceman Cometh starring Denzel Washington.

His film lighting designs have been seen on Dreamgirls with director Bill Condon, on Rob Marshall's Best Picture winner Chicago and Richard Linklater's School of Rock, among other projects. Evolving naturally into dramatic and fantastical lighting in the digital realm, his musical lighting scenes have been conceived for CG environments in the live-action Beauty and the Beast, as well as development projects for DreamWorks Animation. (Link to full bio).

Jennifer Tipton came to New York to study dance, after attending Cornell. Her interest in lighting began with a course in the subject at the American Dance Festival, Connecticut College. She has been awarded two "Bessies" and a Laurence Olivier Award for lighting dance; her work in that field includes pieces choreographed by Mikhail Baryshnikov, Jiri Kylian, Dana Reitz, Jerome Robbins, Paul Taylor, Twyla Tharp, and Dan Wagoner, among many others.

In the theatre, she has won a Joseph Jefferson Award, a Kudo, a Drama-Logue Award, two American Theatre Wing Awards, an Obie, two Drama Desk Awards, the first for The Cherry Orchard and For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf; the second for Jerome Robbins' Broadway, and two Tonys for The Cherry Orchard and Jerome Robbins' Broadway. Tipton was recently nominated for a Tony Award for To Kill A Mocking Bird. She is a recipient of six Henry Hewes Design Awards and teaches lighting design at the Yale University School of Drama (Link to full bio).