Peggy Clark

Margaret Brownson Clark (1915 – June 19, 1996) was a lighting designer, costume designer, and set designer. She designed lighting for dance and opera, but she "is best known for her work on [stage] musicals".[1]

Biography

Peggy Clark graduated from Smith College with a B.A. in dramatic arts, and attended the Yale School of Fine Arts with a major in scenic design and lighting.[2] She served as an assistant to many set designers, including John Koenig, Stewart Cheney, Donald Oenslager, Howard Bay, Nat Karson and Raoul Pene du Bois, as well as Oliver Smith. Smith gave her the opportunity to work on her own as a lighting designer on Beggar's Holiday (1946). She had started as a scenic designer in 1941 with the play Gabrielle.

She worked on some 78 Broadway productions, as a lighting designer and also occasionally as a set designer. She designed the lighting for musicals, such as Bells Are Ringing (1956) and Bye Bye Birdie (1960), and plays, such as The Trip to Bountiful (1953) and The Rose Tattoo (1966).[3]

Her papers are in the Clark Collection at the Library of Congress.[2]

She died on June 19, 1996.[4]

References

1. Wilmeth, Don and Bigsby, Christopher (ed). "Lighting" The Cambridge History of American Theatre, Volume 3, Post World War II to the 1990s (2000), Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-66959-6, p. 519
2. Zvonchenko, Walter. "Peggy Clark, Lighting Up the Stage" loc.gov, accessed April 9, 2012
3. "Peggy Clark" Internet Broadway Database listing, accessed April 9, 2012
4. Smith, Dinita. Peggy Clark, Pioneer Designer Of Stage Lighting, Dies at 80" The New York Times (abstract), June 22, 1996

External links

• Peggy Clark at the Internet Broadway Database
• A brief history of stage lighting by Larry Wild at Northern State University
• Peggy Clark papers, 1880-1997 at the Library of Congress