We are pleased to announce our 2025 Distinguished Achievement Award winners who will be honored on Thursday, March 6, at our Awards, Awards, Awards Ceremony in Columbus as part of our 65th Annual Conference & Stage Expo. Join us for the ceremony, and afterward join our group of award winners and other attendees to be one of the first on our 2025 Expo floor as our winners drop the rope and open Stage Expo for all!

Distinguished Achievement Awards (DAA)

The Distinguished Achievement Awards honor individuals who have established meritorious career records in specific fields of expertise in any area of design or technology in the performing arts or entertainment industry. Each awardee will be featured in a special session presented by their corresponding Commission at USITT25.

Areas of achievement include but are not limited to, disciplines represented by the Commissions of USITT: scenic design, lighting design, sound design, technical direction, costume design & technology, theatre architecture, theatrical consulting, production management, stage or arts management, entertainment technology, education, or a convergence of these disciplines.

Distinguished Achievement in Management: Deb Acquavella

Deb is a native New Yorker and former BFA Acting student at Adelphi University. Unfortunately, Deb’s proficiency in acting did not extend beyond the walls of her parents’ basement, and she was seldom cast in shows. Eventually, she was thrown a “stage management bone”, having not been cast (again) in the Sophomore Workshop. Having no idea what a stage manager was or did, with the help of a student stage manager friend, Deb took to all that is stage management like a duck to water and has never looked back, only forward, joyfully.

Deb’s early career was spent primarily working off-Broadway at theatres such as Manhattan Theatre Club, Hudson Guild, ELT, etc., before venturing forth into the LORT world, first at Studio Arena in Buffalo and then for a short 3-month engagement at Actors Theatre of Louisville that lasted 15 wonderful years. Deb’s love for new plays was founded at ATL during many Humana Festivals and her true education as a theatre artist developed. Dozens of playwrights, directors, designers, actors, and apprentice/intern companies impacted and changed the course of her life, for the better. These relationships, along with The Farm, made possible both the volume and quality of productions during those years. Here, too, began a long collaboration with Anne Bogart and the SITI company, that went beyond ATL, to NYC & Madrid.

Following ATL, Deb packed up the horse and farm and moved back to NYC, working on several Broadway shows, most notably Jane Eyre, the Musical, PSM’d by best friend and stage manager extraordinaire, Lori Doyle. Other Broadway shows include PSMing the Tony Award-winning Metamorphoses at Circle in the Square, a show held closely in heart. Another highlight was Master Harold… and the boys. directed by Lonny Price, and starring Danny Glover. A childhood dream come true, it became time to go back to the rehearsal studio and PSM more new plays at Baltimore’s Center Stage for 4 seasons and Contemporary American Theatre Festival, summer home since 2005.

Since 2007 Deb has been head of the Stage and Production Management program at Emerson College in Boston. It is a privilege to mentor and train her amazing students, many of whom have gone on to have extraordinary careers in all aspects of the industry. Deb is deeply grateful that they continue to share their lives post-grad, allowing her to live vicariously through them! 

“I had such remarkable teachers and mentors in college,” Deb says. “Notably Nick Petron and Bob Perkins, and it has been my wish to return the kindness shown me. I hope I have lived up to their achievements with my own students. Since 2010-ish, I have been a proud member of USITT serving on panels, as MGMT Representative for Stage Management 2019 – 2021 as well as a Mentor with the SMMP from 2013 – 2019. I am still in awe of and so grateful for the astonishing Mentors – Jay, Alana, Cary, Crissie, Christy, Laura Lee, Fenty, Nancy, Nykol, Juan, Brian - and Mentees from whom I learned so much over time. Pablo. Such gratitude for my “go-to” SM girlfriends: Nancy Uffner, Michele Kay, and Tina Shackleford. You all mean the world to me.”

“To say I am honored and grateful for this recognition from USITT does not adequately express my feelings. I am so delighted and so humbled as well. ‘To Lead The People, Walk Behind Them’, Lao Tzu has said. That’s all I have wanted to do; inspire and support others in their endeavors. That’s how I’d like to continue on into my third act, whatever that may be.”

 

Distinguished Achievement in Lighting Design & Technology: Jane Cox

Jane Cox is a theater maker and lighting designer working in theater, opera, dance, and music. She is a Professor of the Practice and Director of the Program in Theater and Music Theater at Princeton University, where she is also the co-director of the Fund for Irish Studies and a member of CreativeX. Jane is interested in how light, shadow, and color impact emotion and reveal space and relationships.

Jane won a Tony, a Drama Desk, and the Henry Hewes award in 2024 for her lighting for Appropriate, and has three Tony nominations for Macbeth (‘22), Jitney (‘17), and Machinal (‘14). Her creative career has been built on relationships; some of the extraordinary theatrical artists who have shaped her creative life include Ruben Santiago-Hudson, John Doyle, Elise Thoron, Shariffa Ali, Caitríona MacLaughlin, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, and Sam Gold. Jane has been a member of the Monica Bill Barnes dance company for more than twenty years.

Recent highlights have been co-organizing the 2023 symposium and creative convening The Future of Race in Design at the Park Avenue Armory with Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Mimi Lien, and Mikaal Sulaiman; acting as community director for a Public Works The Winter’s Tale with a cast of 120 at Princeton, and organizing a series of events with returning citizens in conjunction with performances of Felon: An American Washi Tale by Reginald Dwayne Betts. In her role as Director of the Theater and Music Theater Program at Princeton, Jane has focused on more inclusive theatrical story-telling and on deepening the program's relationships with contemporary American theater-making. Jane is married to a fantastic production designer Evan Alexander, and has a wonderful daughter Becket who shows no interest in going into the theater so far.

“Penny Remsen was my undergraduate teacher at UMass Amherst, and John Gleason (no longer with us) was my primary professor at NYU Tisch. I am forever grateful to them both. I am deeply humbled to be honored by USITT, since my work sits at the intersection of education and theater making and I care equally about both!”

 

Distinguished Achievement in Costume Design & Technology: Laura Crow

Laura Crow is an internationally known costume designer whose designs have been seen in China, Japan, Micronesia, Yugoslavia, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Italy, France, the Netherlands, and the UK. In the United States, her designs have been seen on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and in prominent Regional Theatres including her five years as a resident designer for Connecticut Opera at the Bushnell Theatre in Hartford. Among her many awards that reflect over three hundred designs are: the Drama Desk Award, the American Theatre Wing Award, the OBIE Award, the Maharam Award, and the Village Voice Award for New York work; the Joseph Jefferson Award and multiple Joseph Jefferson Award nominations in Chicago; three Drama-Logue Awards, the Backstage Garland Award and the Bay Area Critics Award for work in Los Angeles and San Francisco; the Phoenix Drama Critics Award plus four ZONI Awards from Phoenix and a Helen Hayes Award nomination in Washington, DC.

Her designs were included in the Lincoln Center Exhibition Curtain Call: Celebrating a Century of Women Designing for Live Performance, focusing on 100 women designers from the past 100 years in the United States, and were included in Costume Design at the Turn of the Century:1990 – 2015 celebrating the work of over 300 designers from around the world, opening at the Bakhrushin Theatre Museum in Moscow 2015 and touring to the USA, China, Taiwan, Canada, and Poland. Her designs have been chosen five times to be part of the United States pavilion at the Prague Quadrennial which hosts over 60 countries from around the world and she has been selected to be part of the World Stage Design Exhibitions in Toronto 2005, Seoul 2009, Cardiff 2013 and Taiwan in 2017.

Some of the highlights of Laura Crow’s Broadway career include the productions of Burn This, starring John Malkovich and Joan Allen, Fifth of July, starring Christopher Reeve and Swoozie Kurtz, Redwood Curtain, starring Jeff Daniels and Debra Monk, Sweet Bird of Youth, starring Irene Worth and Christopher Walken, The Water Engine, starring Patti LuPone, and The Seagull, starring Tyne Daly and John Voight. Linda Lavin wore Laura’s costumes in Cakewalk, which was about the life of author Lillian Hellman. As the resident costume designer for 13 years at the Circle Repertory Theatre in New York City, Laura and scenic designer John Lee Beatty and lighting designer Dennis Parichy founded the Poetic Realism movement in contemporary American theatre design. This was the movement that flowered around the work of playwright Lanford Wilson and director Marshall W. Mason in the 1970s and 1980s.

Laura Crow, now Professor Emerita, was a professor of costume history, design, and technology at the University of Connecticut where she was head of design before her retirement in 2017. She has pioneered student exchanges for American students, both graduate and undergraduate to other countries and has encouraged foreign students in the UCONN graduate program from other institutions around the world. She is a firm believer in promoting peace and understanding by uniting people through cultural exchanges and live performances. The University awarded her an Excellence in Teaching Award and a Lifetime Achievement Award, prior to her retirement.

 

Distinguished Achievement in Scene Design & Technology: Regina García

Regina is a Chicago-based scenic designer from Puerto Rico. She has had long-standing relationships with the Latinx Theatre’s renowned Teatros including Repertorio Español, the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater, Teatro Vista, and Pregones Theater. Recently completed projects include Steppenwolf and Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, American Players, and Indiana Repertory, amongst others. Her work was recently nominated for a 2024 Henry Hewes Design Award along with her colleagues of Between Two Knees, written by the 1491’s and directed by Eric Ting; presented at the Perelman Center (PAC) on their inaugural season in NYC. Regina is a Fellow of the NEA/TCG Career Development Program for Designers and the Princess Grace Awards, USA; a Regional Associate member of the League of Professional Theatre Women; and a company member with Rivendell Theatre Ensemble in Chicago; and Boundless Theatre Company (San Juan/ NYC). She is the Head of the Scenic Design at The Theatre School, DePaul University, and a founding organizational member of La Gente: The Latinx Theatre Production Network. 

“I would love to thank the professors, friends, and colleagues who saw me for who I am, warts and all! Their voices are the ones I hear in moments of sadness and frustration, and those moments of great joy, Pregones Theatre, who gave me a foundation and a clear understanding of what community engagement looks like, my colleagues at OSF (former and new) who taught me so much about the design and production process, including that the process must look like and serve the unique group of artists gathered around the table to work. I would like to thank my Latinx/é Theatre community, for reminding me that the table was indeed built by those before who failed to see us all, fully. My friends, my chosen family of collaborators: educators, production managers, technical directors, properties directors, and artisans who have made a long-term commitment to figuring out how to build "a new table" for all of us; so that we become more nimble, flexible, and inclusive. I am grateful for your words of wisdom, your magic.”

“What an incredible honor, after an autumn full of challenges and curve balls, to be recognized by USITT. I see you dear friends and all your hard work. I am forever grateful for the support you've given me and to have you all as a resource. Thank you.”

 

Distinguished Achievement in Sound Design & Technology: Paul Garrity

For over 45 years, Paul has been a trusted leader in the design of sophisticated sound reinforcement systems, video projection, projection mapping, show control, and production communication systems for multi-media venues of all sizes. As a consulting principal for Apeiro Design, Paul’s international consulting and theatrical production sound design experience have allowed him to provide specialized design support for venues throughout North America, China, Europe, and the Middle East. Paul has designed extensive systems for theatres, concert halls, showrooms, conference centers, and other special performance spaces for clients ranging from university theatres to Carnegie Hall to complex venues for Cirque du Soleil and Franco Dragone. His immersive environment spaces include planetariums such as the Rose Center at the American Museum of Natural History and the Griffith Observatory, as well as the 360-degree Allosphere at UCSB. Prior to joining Apeiro Design, Paul was a senior consultant at Artec Consultants Inc., where he designed systems for projects including the UK’s International Conference Center Birmingham. Theatrical sound design credits include plays and musicals at Playwrights Horizons, the American Place, Westside Arts Theatre, Village Gate, WPA Theatre, INTAR, and Circle in the Square. In his early career, Paul also served as the A1 for productions including the original productions of Little Shop of Horrors and One Mo’ Time! A graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, Paul has taught sound design at Yale University School of Drama and Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts. He was named LDI’s Sound Designer of the Year in 2004.

“Thanks to the faculty and alumni of Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama, my colleagues at Apeiro Design, and to my family. Receiving a USITT Distinguished Achievement Award caught me by surprise. I was sure I was just going to "fade away" as I headed toward retirement. Being recognized in this way is the perfect capstone to my career, as I wind down and head into retirement. Thanks to all for your support and recognition.”

 

Distinguished Achievement in Digital Media: Jeromy Hopgood

Jeromy Hopgood is an educator, designer, and author whose work includes scenery, projection design, lighting, sound, dance, and event/installation work. You can explore his design work at hopgooddesign.com. Jeromy is a tenured Professor at Eastern Michigan University, where he coordinates the multidisciplinary Entertainment Design & Technology program- one of the first programs of its kind in the US. He is a regular presenter at LDI in Las Vegas, USITT, and various IATSE locals, as well as regularly teaching master classes on projection design and the industry-standard QLab show control software.

Jeromy is a proud member of United Scenic Artists, Local USA 829 in the Projection Design category. In the last 25 years, he has designed more than 175 productions for professional theatres, dance companies, and universities across the world. His projection design for After Ünica was selected as part of the US National Exhibit at the Prague Quadrennial ’23, marked as one of the finest media designs created by an American designer during the previous four years. His projection design for Skeleton Crew at People’s Light and Theatre Company was nominated for the Barrymore Award for Excellence in Theatre, Outstanding Media Design.

Jeromy is also the author of QLab 3 Show Control, and QLab 4: Projects in Video, Audio, & Lighting Control (the definitive guidebooks for Figure 53’s popular audio/video/lighting software), Dance Production: Design & Technology (in its 2nd edition), and The Projection Designer's Toolkit. In addition to his books, Jeromy is a regular contributor to such trade publications as Live Design, TD&T, Stage Directions, and Southern Theatre, as well as his own Entertainment Design & Technology blog, found at jeromyhopgood.wordpress.com.  

“Thanks to Katie, Kira, and Izzy for their unfailing support over the years. Thanks to Dr. Ardith Morris at Arkansas Tech University for opening my eyes to a new world of possibilities and to Michael Riha and the University of Arkansas Department of Theatre for giving me a solid foundation for a career in this industry. It's difficult to put into words how deeply touched I am at receiving this award from USITT. I grew up in a rural Arkansas town with limited access to the arts. Luckily, I encountered a lot of people in my formative years who helped nurture my artistic passion, and I was privileged to become the first member of my family to graduate with a university degree. Being honored in this way is incredibly humbling, especially within the projection design community that I so admire. Many of us didn't have the opportunity to study projection design in school, because it didn't even exist as a program of study. So we worked hard, experimented, learned, and shared with one another in our little community. To now be recognized by some of those same peers and mentors whose work has inspired me means so much. This award represents not only a personal achievement but also a tribute to the individuals who made it possible for me and countless others to access knowledge and grow within this creative industry.”

 

Distinguished Achievement in Technical Production: John Huntington

John Huntington is an author, educator, entertainment and show control systems consultant, and sound engineer. Huntington is a Professor Emeritus of Entertainment Technology after more than 24 years at New York City College of Technology, also known as Citytech, which is part of CUNY. At Citytech, he led the audio, live video, and networking/control areas, and for more than 20 years designed the show control systems and oversaw the A/V for the Gravesend Inn®.  Huntington's book Show Networks and Control Systems was the industry standard until it was retired in 2023 and replaced with two books: Introduction to Show Networking (2020) and Introduction to Show Control (2023). Over his career, he has worked in many aspects of live entertainment and media production, and he is a member of Local 1 IATSE stagehands.  He is also an award-winning photographer and storm chaser.