Richard V. Riddell is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 lighting designer.

He graduated from Knox College with a B.A.

Bachelor of Arts

A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...

 with honors in 1972. In 1978, he received his doctorate

Doctorate

A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder to teach in a specific field, A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder...

 from Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

.

He has had extensive teaching experience, working at such schools as the University of California, San Diego

University of California, San Diego

The University of California, San Diego, commonly known as UCSD or UC San Diego, is a public research university located in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, California, United States...

, Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

. He finally moved to Duke University

Duke University

Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...

, where he became vice president as well as university secretary and assistant to the president, Richard H. Brodhead

Richard H. Brodhead

Richard Halleck Brodhead Marquis Who's Who on the Web currently serves as the ninth president of Duke University and is a scholar of 19th-century American literature.-Early life and education:...

.

Riddell has also worked on numerous shows, including two Broadway

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 shows: A Walk in the Woods

A Walk in the Woods (play)

A Walk in the Woods is a 1988 play by Lee Blessing. It depicts the developing relationship between two arms limitation negotiators, one Russian and one American, over a year of negotiation. The play was nominated for both a Tony award and a Pulitzer Prize....

 and Big River

Big River (musical)

Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a musical with a book by William Hauptman and music and lyrics by Roger Miller.Based on Mark Twain's classic 1884 novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, it features music in the bluegrass and country styles in keeping with the setting of the novel...

. He mostly designed lighting for the shows, but occasionally dabbled in scenic design.

He is also published many articles in different magazines and newspapers such as American Theater, The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

, TheaterWeek

TheaterWeek

TheaterWeek was a favorite magazine among theater artists and theater lovers. It covered Broadway, off-Broadway, regional, and educational theater with articles theat included profiles of actors, directors, designers and behind the scenes looks at particular shows...

, The Drama Review

TDR (journal)

TDR: The Drama Review is a peer-reviewed academic journal focusing on performances in their social, economic, aesthetic, and political contexts. The journal covers dance, theatre, music, performance art, visual art, popular entertainment, media, sports, rituals, and performance in politics and...

, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Contemporary Designers, and Theater Crafts.

Teaching

Riddell taught in the theater department at the University of California, San Diego from 1978 to 1987. He then became the director of the Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard University until 1991. He moved to work at Duke in 2001 as the Mary D.B.T. and James H. Semans Professor of the Practice of Theater Studies, teaching classes such as "Arts and Contemporary Society", "Lighting Design for the Theater", and "Arts and Stage in the 20th Century". He also became the chairman of Duke's Department of Theater Studies. In 2007, it was announced that he would succeed Allison Haltom as Duke's vice president and secretary, as well as retain his position as assistant to the president.

Designs

He designed lights for such shows as The Philadelphia Story

The Philadelphia Story (play)

The Philadelphia Story is a 1939 American comic play by Philip Barry. It tells the story of a socialite whose wedding plans are complicated by the simultaneous arrival of her ex-husband and an attractive journalist.-Production:...

 for Missouri Repertory Theatre; Eleanor: An American Love Story for Ford's Theater; Kudzu for Ford's Theater; Otello

Otello

Otello is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Arrigo Boito, based on Shakespeare's play Othello. It was Verdi's penultimate opera, and was first performed at the Teatro alla Scala, Milan, on February 5, 1887....

 for the English National Opera

English National Opera

English National Opera is an opera company based in London, resident at the London Coliseum in St. Martin's Lane. It is one of the two principal opera companies in London, along with the Royal Opera, Covent Garden...

; Private Lives

Private Lives

Private Lives is a 1930 comedy of manners in three acts by Noël Coward. It focuses on a divorced couple who discover that they are honeymooning with their new spouses in neighbouring rooms at the same hotel. Despite a perpetually stormy relationship, they realise that they still have feelings for...

 for Cleveland Play House

Cleveland Play House

The Cleveland Play House is a professional regional theater company located in Cleveland, OH. As of 2005, the artistic director is Michael Bloom, the eighth artistic director since its inception. In 2011 they moved operations to the Allen Theatre in Playhouse Square Center.Founded in 1915,...

; Queen of Spades for the English National Opera; Steel for American Repertory Theater; The Return of Ulysses for English National Opera; The Flying Dutchman

The Flying Dutchman (opera)

Der fliegende Holländer is an opera, with music and libretto by Richard Wagner.Wagner claimed in his 1870 autobiography Mein Leben that he had been inspired to write "The Flying Dutchman" following a stormy sea crossing he made from Riga to London in July and August 1839, but in his 1843...

 for the Santa Fe Opera

Santa Fe Opera

The Santa Fe Opera is an American opera company, located north of Santa Fe in the U.S. state of New Mexico, headquartered on a former guest ranch of .-General history:...

; A Walk in the Woods for La Jolla Playhouse

La Jolla Playhouse

La Jolla Playhouse is a not-for-profit, professional theatre-in-residence on the campus of the University of California, San Diego. -Background:...

 and for Broadway; The Day Room

The Day Room (play)

The Day Room is a play written by Don DeLillo and first produced at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts in April, 1986. It is DeLillo's first play. Since its premiere, the play has been produced in New York in 1987, and in Chicago in 1989 and 1993, among others. The first...

 for American Repertory Theater; Akhnaten

Akhnaten (opera)

Akhnaten is an opera in three acts based on the life and religious convictions of the pharaoh Akhenaten , written by the American minimalist composer Philip Glass in 1983. Akhnaten had its world premiere on March 24, 1984 at the Stuttgart State Opera, under the German title Echnaton...

 for the Houston Grand Opera

Houston Grand Opera

Houston Grand Opera Houston Grand Opera was founded in 1955 through the joint efforts of Maestro Walter Herbert and cultural leaders Mrs. Louis G. Lobit, Edward Bing and Charles Cockrell...

, New York City Opera

New York City Opera

The New York City Opera is an American opera company located in New York City.The company, called "the people's opera" by New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, was founded in 1943 with the aim of making opera financially accessible to a wide audience, producing an innovative choice of repertory, and...

, and English National Opera; Big River for La Jolla Playhouse and Broadway; Pieces of Eight for The Acting Company National Tour

The Acting Company

The Acting Company is a theatre company associated with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1972 by John Houseman, then a professor of acting at the Juilliard School...

; The Tempest

The Tempest

The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1610–11, and thought by many critics to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone. It is set on a remote island, where Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan, plots to restore his daughter Miranda to her rightful place,...

 for the London and Stratford-Upon-Avon Royal Shakespeare Companies

Royal Shakespeare Company

The Royal Shakespeare Company is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs 700 staff and produces around 20 productions a year from its home in Stratford-upon-Avon and plays regularly in London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and on tour across...

; The Yellow Sound

The Yellow Sound

The Yellow Sound is an experimental theater piece originated by the Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky. Created in 1909, the work was first published in The Blue Rider Almanac in 1912....

 for Marymount Manhattan Theatre and Alte Oper

Alte Oper

The Alte Oper is a major concert hall and former opera house in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. The building was inaugurated in 1880. Many important works have been premiered at the Alte Oper, including Carl Orff's Carmina Burana in 1937....

; Káťa Kabanová

Káta Kabanová

Káťa Kabanová is an opera in three acts, with music by Leoš Janáček to a libretto by Vincenc Červinka, based on The Storm, a play by Alexander Ostrovsky. The opera was also largely inspired by Janáček's love for Kamila Stösslová...

 for Houston Grand Opera; Our Town

Our Town

Our Town is a three-act play by American playwright Thornton Wilder. It is a character story about an average town's citizens in the early twentieth century as depicted through their everyday lives...

 for Guthrie Theater

Guthrie Theater

The Guthrie Theater is a center for theater performance, production, education, and professional training in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is the result of the desire of Sir Tyrone Guthrie, Oliver Rea, and Peter Zeisler to create a resident acting company that would produce and perform the classics in...

; and Satyagraha

Satyagraha (opera)

Satyagraha is a 1979 opera in three acts for orchestra, chorus and soloists, composed by Philip Glass, with a libretto by Glass and Constance DeJong.Loosely based on the life of Mohandas K...

 for De Nederlandse Opera

De Nederlandse Opera

De Nederlandse Opera , in Amsterdam, is a Dutch opera company based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Its present home base is the Het Muziektheater, a modern building designed by Cees Dam which opened in 1986....

, Brooklyn Academy of Music

Brooklyn Academy of Music

Brooklyn Academy of Music is a major performing arts venue in Brooklyn, a borough of New York City, United States, known as a center for progressive and avant garde performance....

, Lyric Opera of Chicago

Lyric Opera of Chicago

Lyric Opera of Chicago is one of the leading opera companies in the United States. It was founded in Chicago in 1952, under the name 'Lyric Theatre of Chicago' by Carol Fox, Nicolà Rescigno and Lawrence Kelly, with a season that included Maria Callas's American debut in Norma...

, Seattle Opera

Seattle Opera

The Seattle Opera is an opera company located in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1963 by Glynn Ross, who served as the company's first general director through 1983, Seattle Opera's season runs from August to late May, with five or six operas offered and with eight to ten performances each, often...

, and San Francisco Opera

San Francisco Opera

San Francisco Opera is an American opera company, based in San Francisco, California.It was founded in 1923 by Gaetano Merola and is the second largest opera company in North America...

. Additionally, he worked on the scene design for Krapp's Last Tape

Krapp's Last Tape

Krapp's Last Tape is a one-act play, written in English, by Samuel Beckett. Consisting of a cast of one man, it was originally written for Northern Irish actor Patrick Magee and first titled "Magee monologue"...

 for Akademie der Künste

Akademie der Künste

The Akademie der Künste, Berlin is an arts institution in Berlin, Germany. It was founded in 1696 by Elector Frederick III of Brandenburg as the Prussian Academy of Arts, an academic institution where members could meet and discuss and share ideas...

, Akhnaten

Akhnaten (opera)

Akhnaten is an opera in three acts based on the life and religious convictions of the pharaoh Akhenaten , written by the American minimalist composer Philip Glass in 1983. Akhnaten had its world premiere on March 24, 1984 at the Stuttgart State Opera, under the German title Echnaton...

, and The Yellow Sound

The Yellow Sound

The Yellow Sound is an experimental theater piece originated by the Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky. Created in 1909, the work was first published in The Blue Rider Almanac in 1912....

.

Awards

Riddell won the Tony Award for Best Lighting Design

Tony Award for Best Lighting Design

This is a list of the winners of the Tony Award for Best Lighting Design in a play or musical, first presented in 1970. In 2005 the category was divided with each genre represented separately.-1970s:* 1970: Jo Mielziner – Child's Play...

, Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lighting Design

Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lighting Design

The Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lighting Design is presented by the Drama Desk, a committee of New York City theatre critics, writers, and editors...

, and Hewes Design Award for his work on Big River in 1985. Additionally, he received a Knox College Alumni Achievement Award in 1986.