Jean Rosenthal

Jean Rosenthal (March 16, 1912 - May 1, 1969) is considered a pioneer of theatrical lighting design.

She was born on March 16, 1912 in New York City to Romanian immigrants. In the early part of the 20th century, the lighting designer was not a formalized position. Rather the set designer or electrician handled the lighting of a production. Through the course of her career, Jean Rosenthal made the lighting designer an integral member of the design team.

Rosenthal was one of the most sought after designers in the Theatre in her day. In 1929, she was introduced to Martha Graham at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre. She became Martha's technical assistant and this eventually led to a life-long collaboration with Graham.

Rosenthal studied Lighting at Yale University under Stanley McCandless.

In 1933, she left Yale and went back to New York where she joined the Federal Theatre Project in 1935. This led to collaborations with Orson Welles and John Houseman. She would later follow Welles to the Mercury Theatre, where she was credited as a member of the board in addition to production and lighting manager, although not as lighting designer.

Some of her major contributions were the elimination of shadows by using floods of upstage lighting and controlling angles and mass of illumination to create contrasts without shadows. Her work in Dance revolutionized lighting in that field and remains the basis for modern, post-modern and classical Ballet around the world.

She designed hundreds of shows including Broadway, the dances of Martha Graham, New York City Ballet, and the Metropolitan Opera. On Broadway she lit such famous musicals as "West Side Story" (1957), "Sound of Music" (1959), "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" (1962), "Fiddler on the Roof" (1964), "Hello, Dolly!" (1964), and "Cabaret" (1966).

On May 1, 1969 she died of cancer at the age of 57. Her book, "The Magic of Light" was published posthumously in 1972. Lael Wertenbaker assembled the book, a long-running project between him and Rosenthal, from tape-recorded dictation sessions. It remains an important reference for lighting designers to this day.