Conor Moore to receive the Larisa Fayad Memorial Award in Lighting Design
On Sunday, September 16, 2007, an airplane crashed in Phuket, Thailand. Among the ninety victims on that tragic flight was our dear friend and colleague, Larisa Fayad. Larisa was the Technical Director and Co-Lighting Designer, with Gerald King, for the Vancouver International Dance Festival as well as a freelance lighting designer and technician in Vancouver. She was a resident house technician at the Roundhouse Community Centre for 8 years prior to her death and was the multi-talented and energetic fireplug behind the scenes for the numerous theatre, dance and music productions that took place at this busy venue. Larisa was also the Assistant Lighting Designer for Vancouver Opera's "Faust," "Don Giovanni," "Macbeth" and "Tosca," and she toured with Kokoro Dance, Co. ERASGA, battery opera, Wen Wei Dance, Martha Carter, and Kinesis Dance to South America, Europe, Asia, the Northwest Territories, and across the rest of Canada. Larisa also worked with Chick Snipper, Flamenco Rosario, and the Western Canada Theatre among many other performing arts companies.
Everyone that ever worked with her will remember her intelligence, intellect, good humour, creative instincts, equanimity, charisma, and integrity. She worked without complaint under sometimes horrendously stressful situations. To give you one example, when Kokoro Dance toured to Poland in 2005, one of the venues we were given to perform in was a coal mine-150 metres underground in a small area where three railroad tracks converged. There was no stage, no lighting and we had only 8 hours to transform a coal mine into a theatre. Larisa did it. She trudged three hundred and fifty litres of dirt down the tunnels, covered the train tracks with some plywood and carpet, borrowed twelve lights and plugged and unplugged them into power bars during the shows. Larisa was a beautiful human being with a heart of gold and our hearts break every time we think that we will never see her again. She was thirty-one years of age and just beginning to reveal her blossoming talent as a lighting designer.
To honour and remember Larisa, we have created the Larisa Fayad Memorial Award in Lighting Design. This $1,500 cash award, generated from the interest accrued from the Larisa Fayad Memorial Fund, will help lighting designers who are in stages of their careers similar to where Larisa was at the time of her passing.
We are pleased to announce that the first recipient of the $1,500 Larisa Fayad Memorial Award is Conor Moore who is currently finishing an MFA degree in Theatre Design at the University of British Columbia. A graduate of Queen's University and a recipient of many scholarship awards from both Queen's and UBC, Conor has also worked as a lighting designer and assistant lighting designer for UBC Theatre, Capilano University, Green Thumb Theatre, Ruby Slippers Theatre, the Arts Club Theatre, and Bard on the Beach. Conor intends to use the award to further his research into the use of projectors and LED instruments in lighting design.
The Larisa Fayad Memorial Award will be given to Conor at the Body Electric Gala Fundraising Party on March 11th at the Roundhouse.
