Donald Holder

Donald Holder is an American lighting designer in theatre, opera and dance based in New York. He was born in 1962. He has been nominated for fourteen Tony Awards, winning the 1998 Tony Award for Best Lighting Design as well as the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lighting Design for The Lion King. He won a second Tony in 2008 for the revival of South Pacific. His lighting design for Paradise Square has been nominated for a 2022 Tony Award for Best Lighting Design of a Musical. Additional Broadway credits include: Tootsie, Anastasia, Kiss Me Kate, Fiddler on the Roof, The Bridges of Madison County, She Loves Me, The Cherry Orchard, The King and I, Big Fish, Annie (2012 Broadway revival), Golden Boy, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, Arcadia, The Motherfucker With The Hat, Promises, Promises, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Radio Golf, The Little Dog Laughed, Movin' Out, The Times They Are a-Changin', A Streetcar Named Desire, Holiday, Cyrano de Bergerac, and Prelude to a Kiss. He holds a Masters of Fine Arts from the Yale School of Drama and is a student of Jennifer Tipton. He was the head of lighting design in the School of Theater at the California Institute of the Arts from 2006 to 2010, Head of Lighting Design at the Rutgers University Mason Gross School of the Arts from 2016 to 2025, and currently Head of Lighting Design at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale. .

Awards and nominations