Donald Holder has worked extensively in theatre, opera, dance, architectural, film, and television lighting in the US and abroad for over 30 years. He has designed over 60 Broadway productions and has been nominated for fourteen Tony awards, winning the Tony for Best Lighting Design for The Lion King in 1998 and for the Lincoln Center revival of South Pacific in 2008. Broadway productions include: McNeal, Call Me Izzy, Pirates! The Penzance Musical, Paradise Square, Tootsie, Kiss Me Kate, Anastasia, Oslo, Straight White Men, She Loves Me, Fiddler on the Roof, The King and I, On the Twentieth Century, The Bridges of Madison County, Spiderman-Turn Off the Dark, Bullets Over Broadway, Movin’ Out, and many others. He has designed for most of the nation’s leading resident theatre companies and has an extensive list of Off-Broadway credits, winning the OBIE, Drama Desk, Lucille Lortel, Helen Hayes, Connecticut Critics Circle, LA Drama Desk and many other awards for his work. Projects at the NY Metropolitan Opera include La Sonnambula, Champion, Rigoletto, Porgy and Bess, Samson et Delilah, Otello, The Magic Flute and Two Boys. His film/television work includes the theatrical lighting for Spirited (Apple Studios), Ocean’s 8 (Warner Brothers Pictures), Gossip Girls (HBO Max), The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Amazon Studios), American Classic (MGM+), and two seasons of Smash (NBC - Dreamworks). Mr. Holder is a graduate of the University of Maine and the Yale School of Drama. He served as head of the lighting design program at California Institute of the Arts from 2006-2010 and Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University, from 2016-2025.
Donald Holder
Professor in the Practice of Design and Head of Lighting Design Concentration; Yale Rep Lighting Design Advisor
