George Izenour taught at Yale University from 1940 to 1977.
31 Facts About George Izenour
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George Izenour is best known for creating one of the first electronic theatre lighting dimming systems.
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George Izenour was born in 1912 in New Brighton, Pennsylvania; his family moved to Ambridge in 1917.
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George Izenour's mother taught him English and Latin, and his father history and mathematics.
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George Izenour began formal schooling at the age of six in Mansfield.
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George Izenour painted scenery for the productions and became increasingly interested in the technical aspects of theatre.
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George Izenour's thesis was the embodiment of what would later become the first electronic theatre lighting dimming system.
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Benjamin Franklin 8.
George Izenour married Hildegard Hilt, a classmate from Wittenberg, after graduation.
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Shortly after moving to San Francisco, George Izenour met Hallie Flanagan, the national director of the Federal Theatre Project.
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George Izenour designed the theatre built for the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco.
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George Izenour had a mandate to establish a laboratory dedicated to the advancement of theatre technology.
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George Izenour and Hildegard had a son, Steven Izenour, born in New Haven in July 1940; he later became a world-renowned architect and artist.
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George Izenour developed the Electro-Mechanical Laboratory in an abandoned squash court at the Yale School of Drama Annex, under the general direction of Stanley McCandless.
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George Izenour built and installed several dimming systems in that space.
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Century Lighting became interested in the system; however, George Izenour refused to sell the patents he had acquired.
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George Izenour designed a theater that could be converted from one stage type to the other by a process, part manual and part electronic, that took about 15 minutes.
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Today George Izenour theatres have been built across the United States, as well as in Canada, Venezuela, and Israel.
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Over time, George Izenour began to roll a lot of these functions into what was referred to as the multi-use theatre, and that's really George Izenour's invention, wherein technology was used to vary acoustics, move ceilings, to do all of these things with moving architecture, changing the physicality of the space itself.
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In 1977 George Izenour retired from Yale from his positions both as professor emeritus of theatre design and technology and director emeritus of the electro-mechanical laboratory of the Yale University School of Drama.
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George Izenour continued his consulting business in a converted oyster shack next to his home at Stony Creek, Connecticut, where he overlooked the Thimble Islands.
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George Izenour won both national recognition for it by the American Institute of Architects and international acclaim in an exhibit at the Pompidou Center in Paris.
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George Izenour enjoyed playing a concert recording of the 1812 Overture at volume for visitors.
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The Juilliard String Quartet said George Izenour's living room was one of their favorite recording spaces.
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George Izenour continued to work on theatre design projects until his death in 2007.
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George Izenour is credited with over 27 patents for various technologies and design improvements.
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Benjamin Franklin 26.
George Izenour's developments have significantly affected the art of stagecraft and theatre in general.
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George Izenour held fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
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George Izenour was appointed a Benjamin Franklin Fellow of the Royal Society.
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George Izenour was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, Acoustical Society of America, and the National Council of Acoustical Consultants.
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George Izenour received the USITT Award from the United States Institute for Theatre Technology in 1975, The George Freely Award from the Theatre Library Association in 1977, and the Distinguished Service Award from the American Theatre Association in 1978.
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In 2004, George Izenour was presented with the Wally Russell Lifetime Achievement Award.