John Napier
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Description
The most honored and admired theatrical designer of our times, John Napier has received Broadway's Tony Award for his set designs for Nicholas Nickleby, Cats, Starlight Express, Les Miserables and Sunset Boulevard. He has also created acclaimed settings for the New York and London productions of Equus, Jesus Christ Superstar and Miss Saigon. A native Londoner, he began his formal art studies in his teens, and progressed from painting, to sculpture to set design. He became an Associate Designer at the Royal Shakespeare Company, designing numerous classics there and at Britain's National Theatre before his unparalleled series of successes on Broadway and in London's West End. Napier has applied his creativity in other fields as well, creating settings for the Royal Opera and the Metropolitan Opera, for Las Vegas nightclub spectacles, for Michael Jackson's Captain EO video, and for Steven Spielberg's film, Hook. In this podcast, recorded at the Academy of Achievement's 1994 Summit in Las Vegas, Nevada, he tells the Academy's student delegates that he essentially regards his work as play. He also discusses the meaning of talent, illustrating his point with an anecdote from his art school days.
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