Meet Joe Levendusky

Nicole Gardner
Apr 22
6 min read

Updated: May 9

Q: Joe, your career spans a wide range of roles in the performing arts, from lighting and scenic design to project management. What first drew you to theatre design, and how has your career evolved over the years?

I have always been fascinated with light and did stage lighting in high school. When I was seventeen, I had the good fortune to work on Broadway for a week as an overhire carpenter for the set-up of the original production of Annie.

From there, things evolved in a very organic way.

I arrived in Boston in late May of 1983. Immediately I found work at the Huntington Theatre scenery shop building a set for the Wagner Ring Cycle for Boston Lyric Opera. I went on to work for Boston Shakespeare and eventually became the head of production at Dance Umbrella. All along, and to this day, I have designed lighting for Boston dance companies.

One of the great pleasures of my run at Dance Umbrella was working on a touring tap dance production called Fascinating Rhythms. I got to know the legendary tapper Jimmy Slyde. Jimmy was a gracious and fun-loving man whose first priority was the continuity of tap as an art form. He was an avuncular and supportive presence for young dancers like Savion Glover, who was also on the tour.

They say that Miles Davis was the personification of “cool” in jazz. Well Jimmy was the personification of “cool” in tap, which is really a form of jazz. If you are hip, you don’t say that you saw Jimmy Slyde tap, rather you heard him. Tappers are considered musicians first and dancers second. I admired Jimmy deeply, especially as a black man of my father’s generation who remained positive, generous, and caring (and cool!) despite the many trials that he undoubtedly experienced.

Q: How do you strike the balance between the technical and functional requirements of a space and the artistic vision behind a production? I sometimes wonder how a show would feel in a different venue. Have you had similar thoughts?

I spent time touring with dance companies, so I was constantly thinking about how a piece we were making would look in other theatres on the road.

These days I consult on new theatres, and I am always seeking to maximize possibilities available to the artists, designers and technicians who will work in them. I try to imagine a new building through their eyes.

I consulted on the design of the theatre at the ICA Boston. The ICA had hired the emerging avant garde architects Diller and Scofidio. The museum was seeking a dramatic building that would itself be a work of art and would draw patrons like the Guggenheim in New York.

The original draft of the theatre had no discernible center—either on stage or in the seating—and the ICA envisioned dance as a major programmatic element.

We had some deep conversations about the importance of the concept of center to dance. In the end, I believe we built a theatre that is striking and has been a successful dance venue for nearly twenty years.

At present I am a technical consultant for the 585 Theatre which is housed in a bio-tech building in the Kendall Square area. It is a supremely flexible 400 seat venue meant for dance and music. I believe it will be one of the finest and most important theatres to open in Boston in the last century.

Q: You’ve worked across a diverse array of performance disciplines—dance, opera, theater. How did you develop an understanding of the unique needs for each of these art forms?

I worked on stage at the Fine Arts Center while at UMass Amherst. The programming there was quite diverse, so I learned a lot. There I got hooked on dance, largely because of the opportunity to create light environments for dancers.

If one pays attention—keeping eyes and ears open—one learns constantly on the job. Experience is the best teacher. Even now I learn new things every day. That’s what keeps me interested. One of the compensations for aging is the acquisition of more and more knowledge.

Q: I imagine your role requires both deep technical expertise and a strong aesthetic sensibility. How do you navigate the relationship between these two aspects in your work?

Over time, they begin to merge. I have always had a strong interest in visual art, literature and architecture, so I think that I bring that reflexively to my work. As soon as I have a visual thought, or hear one from a director, I am already proceeding to the means of accomplishing it.

Q: You’ve collaborated with nearly every theater company in the Boston area and beyond. Do you have any favorite memories or stories from these experiences?

There are so many.

I worked on a production of the opera Dido and Aeneas for Handel and Haydn. The director, Chen Shi Zeng, had us flood the Majestic stage with a four inch deep pool of water that had a trap and elevator from the basement center stage. That was a memorable undertaking to be sure.

In a rehearsal for that production, I got involved in an audio fix in the orchestra pit just as the maestro struck up the band. I was stuck. I couldn’t leave without disturbing the players. But the music sounded so glorious down there that I didn’t want to leave.

Also, I premiered an opera here in Boston, Madame White Snake, that won a Pulitzer Prize. Eventually we toured to Beijing and Hong Kong, which were incredible experiences. I have a great deal of respect for our composer, Zhou Long, and I was overjoyed that he won the Pulitzer.

Q: How is AI being integrated, if at all, into the design of live performances? What are your thoughts on the possibilities it brings? Do you see a potential for collaboration with AI in the creative process?

I see AI as a creative tool. Video has increasingly become an element in live performance and video editing, effects, and mapping are very processor intensive processes. I am certain that AI tools embedded in software make this work simpler. The same with digital audio engineering.

There is The Sphere, the immersive theatre in Las Vegas. Surely there is extensive AI involved in mapping and blending the projections that surround the audience on all sides.

But I firmly believe that art must have a person in charge. Taste and sensibility are human traits. AI is a tool for humans to use. Let’s hope it never works the other way around.

Q: Joe, in addition to your work in theatre design, you are a photographer. Could you tell us more about your personal artistic practice and where we might be able to see your work?

In my early thirties, I rekindled a childhood interest in photography and began photographing in urban environments. I was inspired by the French street photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson and the American Gary Winogrand, who is perhaps the quintessential photographer of New York in the 60’s and 70’s.

In 2010 I had the good fortune of an extended stay in Beijing. I began shooting a photographic document of street life in Beijing, with emphasis on the ancient hutong neighborhoods. This project was exhibited at the Multicultural Arts Center in Cambridge with support from the Cambridge Arts Council. It consisted of 49 black and white photographs interspersed with bits of text essay. The idea was an expanded version of the photo essays that captured my youthful attention in Life and Look magazines.

Nicole: You can see the photographs and texts here. They tell the story of a community in rapid (and forced) transition.

Recently I have returned to color work and worked digitally for the first time. My photography has begun to focus on what I refer to as human habitat. That’s a kind of archaeology with a camera as one friend put it. I am very interested in the artifacts that define places where we conduct our lives, both in the past and the present.

Currently, I have an exhibit at the Paul Dietrich Gallery at Cambridge Seven Architects. It is on view until June 27th.

Nicole: Learn more about Joe’s current exhibit here, and read the Boston Globe review!