Anna Louizos, the three-time Tony-nominated scenic designer known for her work on Avenue Q, In the Heights, School of Rock and lots more, has died. She was 69.
Louizos died Tuesday in New York of multiple myeloma following a series of health setbacks dating to an accident on horseback while on vacation in Greece last year, her wife, artistic director and producer Robyn Goodman, announced.
Her designs have been a staple of Broadway plays and musicals for nearly 25 years.
It was the breakout hit Avenue Q that brought Louizos to Broadway as principal scenic designer. She created the innovative set of a rundown block inhabited by young hopefuls in an outer borough of New York for the beloved puppet musical — a surprise winner of the Tony for best musical in 2004 — on Broadway, off-Broadway, London, Las Vegas and on tour. Her designs are now seen in a West End revival.
She was nominated three times for a Tony — for High Fidelity in 2007, for In the Heights in 2008 and for The Mystery of Edwin Drood in 2013, respectively depicting an old-school vinyl record store, the vibrant streets of contemporary Washington Heights and a cathedral city in 19th century England.
Lin Manuel Miranda, who wrote the Tony-winning In the Heights, paid tribute to her on Instagram.
“I will never forget the first time [his wife] Vanessa saw the set of In the Heights, tears streaming down her face: ‘How did you get MY block on that stage?’” he wrote. “It was a refrain I would hear again and again from Washington Heights residents AND people all over the world: That’s MY block. That’s MY home. She built us a home so real that it still reverberates in every production since.”
Born on June 24, 1957, in Marysville, California, Louizos moved to New York to pursue a degree in acting at NYU. Her interests shifted to scenic design, and she graduated with an MFA from the Tisch School of the Arts.
One of her first major assignments was to serve as art director of the Tony telecast in 1993, and she received an Emmy nomination for that.
Her early years as an associate scenic designer on Broadway included work on such shows as The Red Shoes, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Taller Than a Dwarf and Uncle Vanya, the latter two under the tutelage of her mentor, Tony Walton.
She also created masterful stage designs for School of Rock (for which she also designed costumes), Honeymoon in Vegas, Curtains, Irving Berlin’s White Christmas, Steel Magnolias, Holiday Inn, Golda’s Balcony, The Performers, Dames at Sea, All About Me, Baby It’s You, To Be or Not to Be and It Shoulda Been You.
Her Broadway designs for the 2013-15 run of the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical Cinderella included a spectacular pumpkin-turned-chariot effect in a blend of storybook, old-style Broadway glamour and modern stage technology.
She also was art director for several episodes of HBO’s Sex and the City in 2003.
Louizos also designed for regional theaters and off-Broadway productions of Jonathan Larson’s Tick, Tick … Boom!, Sons of the Prophet, Charles Busch’s Olive and the Bitter Herbs, Crimes of the Heart and The Foreigner.
More recently, she designed the set for the Broadway-bound musical Regency Girls, given its world premiere in April at the Old Globe in San Diego, and regional productions of Fiddler on the Roof starring Jason Alexander, West Side Story, Peter Pan and 18 shows at the Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope, Pennsylvania.
In 2011, she created the Broadway Design Exchange, a space where artists, designers, artisans and craftspeople of the entertainment community could share their work.
“Anna created so much more than a marketplace,” execs there noted. “She created a community where designers could be celebrated for the extraordinary work that happens behind the scenes. A place where fans and collectors could own a little piece of the magic. A place that felt like family.”
Louizos and Goodman were together for 29 years, married in 2013 in a civil ceremony at City Hall. They were wed along with another couple, their dearest friends, on Halloween, both chosen, according to Goodman, so they would have two reasons to never forget their anniversary. (They worked together on ‘Avenue Q,’ ‘In the Heights,’ ‘Cinderella’ and ‘High Fidelity.’)
Anna Louizos (right) and Robyn Goodman at a 15th anniversary celebration of ‘Avenue Q’ in New York in 2018.
Walter McBride/Getty Images
Survivors also include her mother, Diana, and her siblings, Nikolas and Justina.
“I think about putting myself in the shoes of the audience,” Louizos said in a 2016 interview. “I want to make sure whatever I do is going to be delightful for people to watch and also surprising. I love building surprises throughout the show so that it’s not like, ‘I get it. This is what the set is. It’s not going to change.’ … If I can find unconventional ways for scenery to get onstage, I try.”
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