Setting the university stage for a multitude of ceremonies, celebrities, musicians and statesmen

By Rose McIlveeen

Al White: Putting the spotlight on IU

Have you heard the story about the ballerina who was pirouetting across the stage and the lights started going out one by one? Allen "Al" White, professor of music and lighting design at the IU School of Music in Bloomington, can tell you about it, because he was not only there, but in charge of the lighting for the performance.

White, who also is coordinator of University Technical Production, has a knack for making stage productions come alive. His expertise has come from experience on both sides of the footlights.

The ballerina, by the way, was Marina Svetlova, former prima ballerina at the Metropolitan Opera and dancer with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. An international star, she became chair of the IU Department of Ballet in 1969. The problem with the lights had something to do with the computer controlling them.

But back to White. If he chooses to write his memoirs, they will include a wide variety of artists, performers, famous persons and faraway places. And closer to home, he will write about his work with the Office of University Ceremonies in staging commencements, installations, dedications and other events that mark the milestones of the university on all eight IU campuses.

As a lighting designer, he was been in charge of more than 370 opera and musical theater productions and ballets. Those figures do not begin to describe the wealth of his experience.

White has gone where IU's opera and musical productions have taken him‹to the Tanglewood Bernstein Festival, the Metropolitan Opera, the Opera Bastille in Paris, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and other places including Israel, Austria and Yugoslavia. Campus events have brought celebrities to town, and he has been on the spot, literally putting them in the best light for their appearances in halls as well as the old Memorial Stadium, which stood where the 10th Street arboretum now stands.

There was Bob Hope, who presented a show in conjunction with a Little 500 race weekend, and Assembly Hall concerts by Elvis Presley and the Roll-ing Stones.

Not all of the best laid plans turn out well. Take the outdoor production of Mephistopheles, for instance. The idea was to produce a dramatic effect for the end of the show.

"We ran hundreds of feet of gutter all the way around the edge of the set so that at the end of the show, when we lit that off, all these flames and smoke would be coming up. We had a horrendous rain, and we only had one out of four burning," explained White.

He was born into a musical family with a father who was a timpanist/percussionist for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The family moved to Evanston, Ill., when his father took a position with the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

What brought White to IU? The former boy soprano wanted to major in voice, and he had already been to the IUB campus to attend an Order of the Arrow (a Boy Scout honorary) convention. "I knew a lot of people who had been here. My father had played under Ernst Hoffman, for instance. I remember being in the auditorium, and I fell in love with the place," said White.

The ex-boy soprano had been transformed into a counter-tenor and unwittingly became a learning experience for the faculty.
"I studied with Carl Van Buskirk. In 1958, counter-tenors were an unknown breed. Now there are a lot of them around," he said.
Between 1961 and 1964, White was in the Army chorus as a producer and soloist. That led him to concerts at such places as Fort Myer, Va., the White House, the U.S. Senate and Department of State, and even the steps of the Watergate apartments.

Back in Bloomington after his discharge, White started working for a master of music degree, still concentrating in the area of voice, but switching to choral conducting. After graduation in 1966, he was appointed to the faculty as instructor of music, opera and lighting design.
On the IUB campus, White has been on hand to handle the staging arrangements for public appearances of such noted celebrities as U. S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Tipper Gore, wife of the vice president. On those occasions, he applies his expertise to the preparations amid a host of strangers‹Secret Service men and bomb-sniffing dogs imported from Indianapolis. That's nothing new to White, since he was working for a television network when President Lyndon Johnson made his first public appearance after the John F. Kennedy assassination.

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