LDI 2016

Benny has been putting lights on the stage since the spring of 1985 when he walked away from a promising career repairing pinball machines for a family oriented pizza restaurant to take a job running a carbon arc spotlight at the local amusement park. The beleaguered crew would regularly be asked to produce professional quality shows with outdated equipment on unrealistic schedules. It was the greatest job ever. Benny worked as a technician touring with the likes of Ozzy Osbourne, Pink Floyd, Def Leppard, The Grateful Dead, Janet Jackson, Nine Inch Nails, and INXS in the early 90s. In 1995, due to a lack of qualified personnel, he was assigned to program and run the console on the Boyz II Men tour. From that tour on, he can be found on the calmer end of the lighting snake. Stints as programmer and LD on touring shows such as Michael Jackson, Aerosmith, and the Dixie Chicks followed. In 2000, Vari*Lite disbanded the full time touring road crew. Surprisingly, clients continued to hire him into the new millennium. Some combination of design, programming, and directing for Pat Metheny, A Perfect Circle, Eminem, Elton John, Nickelback, Brad Paisley, and The Blue Man Group as well as television and film work on American Gladiators, HBO Comedy, and the feature film Pitch Perfect. In 2007, Cirque du Soleil lowered their standards to the point of hiring Benny to program their Vegas permanent shows BeLIEve and MJ One. For the past three years, he has been fortunate enough to program shows on Broadway – a long time aspiration. An American in Paris as well as Hedwig and the Angry Inch both won the Tony award for lighting. Benny lives in Henderson, Nevada with his family. He prefers corn tortillas.