Scope and arrangement
The Dennis Parichy lighting designs and papers, dated 1964 to 2009, document the career of Dennis Parichy. The collection holds lighting designs, scripts, contracts, playbills, memos, notes, production calendars, fabric swatches, and audio recordings.
The collection is arranged in the following groups: Productions; Assorted Files; and Audio Recordings.
The Productions are arranged alphabetically by title. When there are multiple venues for the same production, these theatres are listed under the title of the production. The Productions represent hundreds of theatrical lighting designs created by Parichy. These lighting designs were visible in many New York City productions, regional theatres, college theatrical productions, operas, special events, and occasionally in other countries.
Parichy's lighting designs represent an extensive body of work as follows, American Days, Angels Fall, Annie Get Your Gun, Boesman and Lena Book of Days, Cherry Orchard and The Fifth of July, The Cradle Will Rock, Fiddler on the Roof, Fifth of July, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Penn and Teller (New York City and national tours), Redwood Curtain, and Talley's Folly.
Parichy's early productions include Balm in Gilead (La Mama, 1965), Coffee Grind Among Tea Leaves (La Mama, 1967), The Haunted House (Café Cino, 1964) and Ludlow Fair (Café Cino, 1965). Café Cino was an Off-Off Broadway theatre that operated between 1958 through 1968 and is recognized as the birth place of the Off-Off Broadway theatre.
Through the decades as Parichy gained more experience as a lighting designer, he retained extensive technical elements that include cues, focus charts, floor plans, hook-ups, notes, and light plots. The files hold Parichy's hand-drawn light plots. Parichy's working copies were kept with his other files. Some of the light plots are not complete and may be used in tandem with the working copies. There are also souvenir playbills in the collection that credit Parichy for his work on the productions.
Another important and critical element for Parichy to prepare his lighting designs were scripts which he heavily annotated in order to plot out his lighting design.
One of the most colorful aspects of the collection are the fabric swatches. There are several examples of fabric swatches (occasionally with sketches of clothing) that were retained with the productions. These swatches provide additional information as to how the lighting affected the colors of the actors' clothes. Examples of fabric swatches are located in the productions Billy Budd, Born Yesterday, Death of A Salesman, and Rumors.
The Sound Recordings are from Arabian Nights, Keystone, and Lennon.