Lighting Designer Kevin Adams Also to Receive Distinguished Alumni Award
AUSTIN, Texas—Houston businessman and producer Allen Becker will receive the 2016 Doty Award, the highest honor bestowed by the College of Fine Arts at The University of Texas at Austin. The Doty Award, now in its 21st year, honors individuals who have distinguished themselves through extraordinary professional achievement and/or demonstrated a dedicated loyalty to the College of Fine Arts.
This year, the college will also honor Tony Award-winning lighting designer Kevin Adams with the Distinguished Alumnus Award.
Allen Becker (B.B.A. 1954) built a successful career in the insurance industry before forming PACE Entertainment in 1966. PACE Entertainment became the largest live entertainment company in the world and transformed the live entertainment industry as the group pioneered national tours of Broadway productions. In more than 30 years of growth and successful operations, PACE and its associated divisions—PACE Concerts, PACE Theatrical Group and PACE Motor Sports—became pre-eminent producers of live entertainment attractions as well as leaders in the construction and management of outdoor amphitheaters in the United States.
Becker has received three Tony Awards for his Broadway productions, as well as a Lifetime Achievement Tony Award. He has supported and advised the College of Fine Arts and Texas Performing Arts for a number of years, beginning with the opening of Bass Concert Hall in 1981.
Distinguished Alumnus Award recipient Kevin Adams (B.F.A., Theatrical Design, 1984) is a four-time Tony Award-winning lighting designer. Upon graduation from UT, Adams continued on to the California Institute of the Arts, where he received an M.F.A. in set design for theater and film and spent the next decade designing scenery for theater, music videos, commercials and feature films in Hollywood. Influenced by fine artists who used light in their work, he began lighting his own set designs. Although he had had no previous interest or training in lighting, he was soon lighting well-known L.A. solo artists Rachel Rosenthal and John Fleck, as well as productions in Los Angeles and various American regional theaters. Adams moved to New York City in 1996 to work primarily as a lighting designer and has since designed 20 Broadway shows, including “Spring Awakening,” “American Idiot,” “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” “Next To Normal,” “The 39 Steps,” “Hair” and “Passing Strange” and solo shows featuring John Leguizamo, Eve Ensler and Kevin Bacon.
Becker and Adams will be honored at a private event in January.