XAVIER PIERCE LIGHTING DESIGNER
Xavier Pierce has designed Pipeline and The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963 at the IRT. This season he is designing our first three productions: This Wonderful Life, Tuesdays with Morrie, and the upcoming NO. 6. HOW DID YOU FIRST GET INTERESTED IN THEATRE? I was born in Atlanta and raised in Miami. In elementary school I won a lot of oratory contests. Then a fine arts magnet school opened, which allowed me the opportunity to be in theatre. Then I got into an inner-city touring dance company, and I was with them for eight or nine years. The son of the woman who led the program started getting into lighting and production, and that was intriguing. When I transitioned into high school, it wasn’t a great one, so I began to go on more jobs with the dance company, and I learned more about lighting. But I wasn’t doing well in school, and I was worried they were going to kick me out of the magnet program. I thought if I learned something that no one else could do, they would have to keep me. The lighting person was a senior, and he was graduating, so I set myself up to take over after he was gone. I did my undergrad at Florida A&M University, a historically black university in Tallahassee. I studied theatre and fine arts. I also took classes at Florida State University, which is just across the railroad tracks from FAMU. I was getting two very different educations in lighting. At FAMU, I was getting a very hands-on experience of lighting, designing a whole bunch of shows with a whole bunch of people. At 34
FSU, I was taught the structural components of lighting. With those two educational modalities, I became a super-lighting kid! In the summer I would be at the Santa Fe Opera; then when I graduated I was with the Utah Shakespeare Festival. When I finished there I was with Arena Stage for a year assisting a whole bunch of designers. From there I decided I wanted to be in New York. But I didn’t have any money and I didn’t know anybody, so I figured the only way I could do it was if I went to grad school. I applied at NYU, and luckily, two of the professors were designers I had assisted at Arena Stage, so NYU offered me an assistantship. After I finished grad school, my professor Robert Wierzel asked me to assist him when he designed Fela! on Broadway. That was a big deal for me. Bill T. Jones was directing it and choreographing it, and the show was comprised of mostly black people. It was wonderful to be around so many black people at the height of their professions. It gave me a lot of understanding of how the industry works. It gave me a lot of understanding about being around my people in the art making process. And it gave me something to look forward to as I moved into my career.
