Video director Blue Leach, who directed video screens for last year's Depeche Mode tour, as well as for the band's music video for “John the Revelator” and the tour's Touring the Angel DVD, has worked this year on the video design for Anton Corbijn's set for the Herbert Gronemeyer tour in Germany. He also directed the live-to-screen video for the tour's Mitsubishi high-def screen. Corbijn shot the DVD for the tour, which was released in October. Leach also directed the screens for A Concert for Diana and for Live Earth, both at Wembley Stadium. REM Live, released last month, is a DVD Leach directed while on tour in 2005 in Dublin. He has also recently shot film for Toto Live at the Zenith, Paris.

The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey premieres Henry VI: Blood & Roses, resident director Brian B. Crowe's adaptation from Shakespeare's Henry VI, Parts 1, 2, and 3, with performances through November 11. Set design is by Michael Schweikardt, with lighting design by S. Ryan Schmidt, costume design by Dane Laffrey, and sound design by Guy Sherman. Fight choreography is by Doug West, and Kathy Snyder serves as production stage manager.

Lighting designer Federico Restrepo and art director/set and costume designers Ildiko Nemeth and Jessica Mitrani collaborated on the American premiere of The Round of Pleasure by Austrian playwright Werner Schwab — in a modernist retelling of Schnitzler's La Ronde — at New Stage Theatre Company in New York City from November 10 to December 16 (photo by Markus Hirnigel).

Jeff Ravitz recently designed lighting for Control Room, a series of shows for msn.com, also televised weekly on MyNetworkTV as Control Room Presents. The series debuted early October with a performance by Maroon 5.

The Nederlander Worldwide Entertainment production of 42nd Street is touring in China until the end of the month, having opened in Shanghai Majestic Theatre early September and marking the first time that a US production is touring China so extensively. The creative team includes costume designer Roger Kirk, lighting designer Rick Belzer, set designer James Fouchard, and sound designer Duncan Robert Edwards.

The world premiere of Tim Acito's musical adaptation of Gloria Naylor's novel The Women of Brewster Place is running through December 9 at Arena Stage in Washington, DC, with set design by Anne Patterson, costume design by Paul Tazewell, lighting design by Michael Gilliam, sound design by Garth Hemphill, and projection design by Adam Larsen.

Seattle Opera's first co-production with the Metropolitan Opera, Gluck's Iphigenia in Tauris, opened last month before traveling to New York, with set design by Thomas Lynch, costumes by Martin Pakledinaz, and lighting design by Neil Peter Jampolis. The sets and costumes were built by the Seattle Opera's Scenic Studios and Costume Shop. Following its Seattle run, the production is in New York, presented through December by the Metropolitan Opera with a different cast.

Abigail Rosen Holmes has wrapped a DVD shoot for her lighting design for Martina McBride's Waking Up Laughing tour. She has also designed a new tour for The Cure, set to go out next year in the US and Europe, and is starting to work on a design for a tour for Disney Channel's Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus.

Christopher Akerlind designed lighting, with Gabriel Berry designing costumes and Riccardo Hernandez designing sets, for the world premiere of Appomattox, a new opera by composer Philip Glass and Academy and Tony Award-winning playwright and screenwriter Christopher Hampton that debuted in October at San Francisco's War Memorial Opera House.

Larry Gruber (scenery), Ed McCarthy (lighting), Sam Fleming (costumes), and Michael Gunderson and James M. Grabowski (sound) worked on the New York City premiere of Irving Berlin's I Love a Piano at the Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts.

Michael Bottari and Ronald Case designed sets and costumes for the newly opened Hairspray at the Lyric Theatre at Gold Reef City Casino, South Africa, with new designs applied to the original direction and choreography, which they say was “a challenge as the floor plan and costumes had to work the same way.” Lighting design is by Denis Hutchinson, and sound design is by Mark Malherbe.

Lighting designer Durham Marenghi is having a busy autumn, lighting the The Royal Opening Ceremony of the newly refurbished St. Pancras Station in London and the Classical Spectacular concert for Raymond Gubbay at The Royal Albert Hall, and at arenas in Manchester and Birmingham. In December, he will light the launch of the new liner, Queen Victoria, in Southampton, UK, and collaborate with fireworks experts Groupe F for a Jack Morton Worldwide event at the London Eye on New Year's Eve. Marenghi has also been awarded an Honorary Fellowship at Rose Bruford College.