3 Purchase Alums Nominated for Tony Awards

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The spotlight at this year’s Tony Awards on Sunday, June 10 will shine brightly on three Purchase College, SUNY graduates, who have been nominated for Tony awards in the category of Best Lighting of a Play.

All three lighting designers—Jeff Croiter, Brian MacDevitt  and Kenneth Posner—are graduates of The Purchase College School of the Arts. 

Jeff Croiter, a 1993 alum, is nominated for his work in Peter and the Starcatcher, a play by author Rick Elice, that answers the century-old question: How did Peter Pan become The Boy Who Would Not Grow Up? Croiter has his own lighting design company located in New York City and has been the lighting designer for numerous Broadway and off-Broadway productions in recent years.  

Brian MacDevitt, a 1980 alum, is nominated for his work in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, the classic American story of Willy Loman, the 60-year old salesman struggling with family, work and self esteem. MacDevitt, who honed his lighting skills for a decade off and on Broadway, is now an associate professor at the University of Maryland. He has earned five Tony awards in recent years.

Kenneth Posner, a 1987 graduate, is nominated for his lighting designs in Other Desert Cities, a play by Robin Baitz, that probes the story of a once-promising novelist who announces to her family the imminent publication of a memoir dredging up a pivotal and tragic event in the family’s history. Posner has provided lighting design for off- and on Broadway productions since graduating from Purchase College, and received a Tony Award in 2007 for The Coast of Utopia.

The Purchase College School of the Arts, which includes the Conservatories of Dance, Music, and Theatre Arts, as well as the School of Art + Design, provides world-class professional training for students of the arts. Through intense hands-on experience, synergistic inter-disciplinary collaboration, and rigorous training from some of the most highly regarded professionals in the industry, graduates of the School of the Arts routinely garner nationwide recognition for their artistic contributions. 

The Theatre Design/Technology B.F.A. Program within the Conservatory of Theatre Arts at Purchase places major emphasis on studio/classroom training under the guidance of established working professionals. After a freshman year of general courses, students choose a specialty among a variety of concentrations: scenic design, costume design, lighting design, costume technology, stage management and technical direction/production management.

The lighting design concentration teaches students to develop conceptual and artistic ideas that will be used to guide the design of the lighting for a production.  

More than 86 percent of the theatre design/technology graduates are working in their chosen profession. Many alumni are now members of U.S.A. local 829, I.A.T.S.E and A.E.A. and have received Tony, Emmy, Obie and Drama Desk Awards.

Purchase College, part of the State University of New York (SUNY) network of 64 universities and colleges, was founded in 1967 by Governor Nelson Rockefeller. His aspirations for Purchase were to combine on one campus conservatory training in the visual and performing arts with programs in the liberal arts and sciences. Today, Purchase College, SUNY is a community of students, faculty and friends where open-minded engagement with the creative process leads to a lifetime of intellectual growth and professional opportunity. For more information about the College, visit www.purchase.edu.