2022 Ming Cho Lee Lifetime Award Honorees


Jules Fisher

Jules Fisher

Lighting Design – 1978 Honoree for Dancin', 1990 Honoree for Grand Hotel, 1992 Honoree for Jelly’s Last Jam, 1996 Honoree for Bring in ‘da Noise, Bring in ‘da Funk, 1998 Honoree for Ragtime, 1998 Honoree for Street Corner Symphony, 2004 Honoree for Assassins

​​​​​​​2022  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 9 Tony Awards and 21 nominations. The Henry Hewes Design Awards committee has honored him for 7 productions dating back to Dancin’ in 1978. Among his celebrated Broadway designs are the original versions of Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar, Pippin, Ragtimw, Bring in ‘Da Noise, Bring in ‘Da Funk, Angels in America, Assassins, and the recent revival The Iceman Cometh starring Denzel Washington.

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.

Fisher created inventive lighting before and throughout the evolution of digital lighting sources for such diverse artists as David Bowie, Kiss, Parliament-Funkadelic, Whitney Houston, The Rolling Stones, Neil Young, and Simon and Garfunkel.

In addition to entertainment, Fisher is a founding partner in the architectural lighting design firm, Fisher Marantz Stone, Inc., which has designed such landmark projects as The Getty Museum, The museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Rose Center for Earth and Science at the American Museum of Natural History in New York; the Washington Monument; National Gallery of London; and the renovation of Carnegie Hall and Radio City Music Hall in New York. Perhaps most notably they have also created the now iconic Tribute in Light at the World Trade Center Memorial. 

Fisher also founded Fisher Dachs Associates, one of the world's foremost, forward-thinking, and experienced theatre planning and design consulting firms. FDA works on a diverse range of projects including concert halls, opera houses and university theaters. FDA’s projects include the renovations of Radio City Music Hall, the Park Avenue Armory, the Hollywood Bowl and The Stephen Sondheim theater in NYC.  Opera-ballet theatres including the Arsht Center in Miami, the Four Seasons Centre in Toronto, and the Mariinsky II in St. Petersburg; concert halls including Lotte Concert Hall in Seoul, the Schermerhorn Center in Nashville, and Maison Symphonique de Montreal.

Fisher holds a bachelor’s degree in Drama from Carnegie Mellon University, as well as a 2015 Honorary Doctorate. His current lighting design company, with partner Peggy Eisenhauer, is known as Third Eye, which conceives and designs lighting for all forms of entertainment.  

His hobby and vice are a lifelong interest in “magic”, leading him to consult for many of the top magicians including the late Ricky Jay, Derek DelGaudio, Harry Blackstone Jr.



Jennifer Tipton

Jennifer Tipton
Lighting Design – 1987 Honoree for Worstward Ho, 1989 Honoree for A Tale of Two Cities, 1989 Honoree for Jerome Robbins’ Broadway, 1989 Honoree for Long Day’s Journey Into Night, 1989 Honoree for The Rimers of Eldritch, 1989 Honoree for Waiting for Godot

2022  Ming Cho Lee Award for Lifetime Achievement in Design

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. Ms. Tipton was recently nominated for a Tony Award for To Kill A Mocking Bird. She is a recipient of six Henry Hewes Design Awards.

Her opera work includes Robert Wilson's production of Parsifal at the Houston Grand Opera and Peter Sellar's production of Tannhauser for the Chicago Light Opera. In the fall of 1991 she directed a production of The Tempest at the Guthrie. She has been an artistic associate with the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge and the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. In 1982, she received the Creative Arts Award in Dance from Brandeis University. She held a Guggenheim Fellowship for the 1986-87 season and received the 1989 Commonwealth Award in Dramatic Arts. In 1991, she received a Dance Magazine Award. She has been a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Theater Program Distinguished Artist Award, and a grant in the National Theatre Artist Residency Program funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts. Ms. Tipton also teaches lighting at the Yale University School of Drama. Her lighting designs have been employed at the American Ballet Theatre's repertory since 1971.

Her recent work in theater includes To Kill A Mocking Bird for Broadway, Beckett’s First Love for Zoom and all of Richard Nelson’s Rhinebeck plays. Her recent work in opera includes Ricky Ian Gordon’s Intimate Apparel with libretto by Lynn Nottage, based on her play by the same name, at the Lincoln Center Mitzi Newhouse Theater; her recent work in dance includes Lauren Lovette’s Pentimento for the Paul Taylor Company and Balanchine’s Midsummer Night's Dream for the Paris Opera Ballet. She has received the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize in 2001, the Jerome Robbins Prize in 2003 and in 2008 she was awarded the USA “Gracie” Fellowship and a MacArthur Fellowship.

See her YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubcYEcM40bM


The Henry Hewes Design Awards are sponsored by The Henry Hewes Foundation for the Theater Arts.