Profile: Lee Kennedy
R. Lee Kennedy caught the theater bug at age 6, when his parents took him to see the Washington Ballet. Much to his parents’ dismay, he caught the design bug at about the same time.
“I used to produce all my productions at home, and it drove my parents crazy,” says Kennedy, an award-winning lighting designer and faculty member in the drama department. “I would totally destroy the living room with all my grand ideas.”
His grand ideas have since found larger and more high-profile stages, including those of the New York City-based Transport Group, a theater company founded and largely run by U.Va. drama alums.
Transport Group’s roots trace back to Culbreth Theatre in 1994, Kennedy’s first year at the University. He joined the production team for the Arthur Miller classic “The Crucible,” a team that included Kathryn Rohe and Jojn Story, fellow faculty members at the time. The show was directed by graduate student Jack Cummings III.
“It was a random event that put Kathryn, John, Jack and me together,” Kennedy says. “It was one of those things that was just magic.”
That production’s unique witch’s brew of talent and inspiration has now produced a decade’s worth of collaborations. They founded Transport Group in 2001 and have had tremendous success and critical raves from The New York Times, Newsday, Variety, Backstage and others.
The company has earned four coveted Drama Desk nominations, and last year Kennedy was singled out for a nomination of his own for his work on the Cummings’ groundbreaking original work, “The Audience.”
The success of Transport Group allows Kennedy to share the Off-Broadway spotlight with several students each year. “I actually take students with me to New York to assist me, and they get on-site, hands-on experience. I also bring back all the design materials, photographs, etc., from every show and do classroom presentations to students so they have actual practical experience of all the things that we are working on in an academic setting.”
The experience also helps students keep up with the arts world’s fast-moving technology scene.
“I have one foot in the technological world and one foot in the artistic world, so I am just really interested in any kinds of ways we can get those two things together.”
Toward this end, Kennedy has been and remains active in seeking grant support to help introduce the kind of state-of-the-art automated lighting technology used in Broadway theaters and arena and stadium concerts. Thanks to these efforts, even his first-year lighting students find themselves at the controls of some of the sleekest systems in the marketplace today. “This used to be completely out of reach for the University theater,” he says, “but now, not so much.”
Over his 12 years at the University, Kennedy has had his share of student success stories. Brendan Gray (Drama ’97) recently opened his own commercial lighting design and consulting business in New York. Connie Yun (Echols ’96) is lighting designer and assistant for the Seattle Opera and other Puget Sound theaters. And the list of theaters in which his students have worked is on the north side of 100 at this point.
But it is not only the theater successes that put a smile on Kennedy’s face.
“When prospective students come in and ask what our graduates are doing now, I am always happy to say they are doing a variety of things,” law school or medical school, for instance. “They can do that with a U.Va. degree.”
