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Sunday Spotlight: Meet Princess Grace Award-Winning Lighting and Set Designers

Welcome to our “Sunday Spotlight” series, where we recognize many of the incredible artists who have been awarded by the Princess Grace Foundation-USA.

In the spirit of the spooky season, we are delighted to share renowned Princess Grace Award winners working in lighting and set design. These designers are key collaborators in artistic projects with their ability to bring a vision to life by creating spaces and worlds for characters to inhabit. Using their knowledge of light and space, each of these designers are masters of mood, using light and design to evoke deep emotions. Read on to see some of their work.

Rachel Hauck

Set Design, 1998

A dedicated champion of emerging artists, set designer Rachel designs plays and musicals on Broadway, Off Broadway, and for regional theater. It is common to see her name attached to the world premiere of productions and she has built an extraordinary resume since the Princess Grace Foundation first became acquainted with her in 1998. As Broadway reopens after a year of darkness, you can see her TONY award-winning set design for the critically acclaimed musical, Hadestown.

Set design for "Hadestown"

Adam Rigg

Set Design, 2015

Costume and set designer Adam are making their Broadway debut, and the Princess Grace Foundation is thrilled to have been part of their journey. Adam is designing the set for an adaptation of Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth, opening in Spring 2022 at Lincoln Center’s the Beaumont. While we don't have any photos to share just yet, we are thrilled to feature their incredible work on the world premiere of Breaking the Waves at Opera Philadelphia. An epic tale of love, sex, and religion in the Scottish Highlands, the set transports the viewer to a decaying land, the cramped quarters of an oil rig, and the bowels of a ship.

Set design for “Breaking the Waves”

María-Cristina Fusté

Lighting Design, 2018

The luminary lighting designer María-Cristina’s work can be seen on stages in New York and other major cities in the United States as well as in Puerto Rico, Bolivia, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico. Her work on an adaptation of Maria Irene Fornés' The Conduct of Life plays with light and shadow to explore power, gender, and greed under authoritarianism. The Princess Grace Foundation is thrilled to be part of María-Cristina’s artistic success and could not imagine a more chilling production to highlight for this holiday.

Lighting design for “The Conduct of Life”

Tanya Orellana

Set Design, 2016

The Princess Grace Foundation is honored to have been part of Tanya’s set design career since 2016. She is currently collaborating with Virginia Grise on a site-specific performance installation rasgos asiáticos. The installation examines migration and displacement and is a space for personal and political exploration drawing from memories, stories, dreams, and even historical re-imaginings. We look back at her work on the Mexican premiere of the critically lauded, Angels in America, written by fellow Princess Grace Award winner Tony Kushner (1994).

Set design for "Angels in America"

Arnulfo Maldonado

Costume & Set Design, 2008

Arnulfo has made a mark on both the international and national theater scenes. The Princess Grace Foundation is happy to have “heard” of Arnulfo in 2008 and watch his accomplishments across stages throughout the globe. He is currently working on two productions: the world premiere of Jocelyn Bioh's romantic comedy, Nollywood Dreams, at MCC Theater, and the New York premiere of Sylvia Khoury’s tense drama, Selling Kabul, at Playwrights Horizons. In 2020, he designed the set for the US premiere of Anne Washburn’s Shipwreck: A History Play About 2017, a nightmarish drama about American divisions.