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The Peccadillo Theater Company is dedicated to the revival of lost American classics. In general, plays produced by the Peccadillo will be well-written scripts which have not been professionally produced in New York City for at least 20 years.

Room Service is a farce, originally produced in the late 1930s, and was (loosely) the basis for the Marx Brothers movie of the same name.

"The...lighting by Jeffrey E. Salzberg...serve(s) the play effectively... with just the right touch of realism in the lighting, including the obligatory flashing exterior lights (this is Broadway, after all)."

"Jeffrey E. Salzberg's lighting...provides atmospheric touches...."

"...The lighting design by Jeffrey E. Salzberg nicely compliments the cozy Bank Street stage."

In 1925, Floyd Collins was trapped while exploring a cave in rural Kentucky. With the help of the new technology of radio, the attempts to rescue him became the first nationwide media sensation, reported in real time.

"...Rarely have I seen such a beautiful and haunting opening as Floyd’s first exploration in the cave...Tayler is aided by lighting that seems to bounce off the cave walls, bathing him in blue light, sickening him in white, and obscuring him in shadow. Lighting designer Jeffrey E. Salzberg’s lighting scheme combines with the haunting echoes of Appalachian yodeling to create a clammy and otherworldly experience."

Between Sand and Stars, a collaboration between Sandglass Theater, Gemini Trapeze (former Cirque du Soleil artists), and Rob Mermin of Circus Smirkus, is a tale of creativity and flight, told with puppets and aerialists and inspired by the writing of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

The piece traces the travails of The Pilot, who — having crash-landed in the Sahara in the early days of aviation — must somehow survive. The story is largely told through flashbacks to happier times until, in a dramatic climax, he is rescued by the "Men of the Desert."

Sandglass Theater is an internationally known theater company specializing in the use of the puppet and visual imagery. Since 1982, the company's productions have toured 24 countries, performing in theaters, festivals and cultural institutions, and won international prizes. Sandglass Theater was founded in Munich, Germany and is now based in Putney, Vermont.





Gemini Trapeze (Elsie and Serenity Smith) are identical twins specializing in aerial acrobatics. They appeared as the acclaimed Duo Trapeze act on Cirque du Soleil's Saltimbanco. The sisters' teaching & performing backgrounds include Ringling Bros. & Barnum and Bailey Circus, Circus of the Kids, the New Pickle Circus, Pilobolus, Canopy Aerial Dance Studio, Sea World & Circus Smirkus.

Circus Smirkus gives kids a chance to run away and join the circus — with their parents' blessings. Since 1987, they have provided a format for youths and adults to collaborate in life-enhancing adventures in the circus arts.

The use of color in Sandglass Theater's production of Between Sand and Stars
is the subject of Rosco Labs' tutorial, "Lighting Aerialists, Puppets and the Sahara Desert."

"Jeffrey Salzberg’s lighting was particularly refined. . . ."

"Lighting designer Jeffrey E. Salzberg does an amazing job of conjuring different locations just by altering how the set is lit. To open the show, he creates the atmosphere of a dusky dive, with blue and purple lights focused tightly on McMoon at the piano. A swift transition that bathes the whole stage in warm tones quickly transforms it into the music room. The bar ambiance returns for brief interludes, allowing McMoon to shift between remembering and reliving his experiences."

"The lighting, by Jeffrey E. Salzberg is particularly effective."

Souvenir photos by Lindsay Raymondjack

"Lighting designer Jeffrey E. Salzberg enhances the atmosphere with beautiful effects. Moonlight filters through trees and glistens on the gently rippling river. Of course, there is no river; there are no trees. It’s all stagecraft."

"Jeffrey Salzberg's dramatic lighting contribute(s) to a polished and convincing production."

"(The set) provides a good palette for Jeffrey E. Salzberg’s evocative lighting...."

"The overall production... was polished and attractive....(The) expert lighting design was by Jeffrey Salzberg, who also regularly designs for Montpelier's Lost Nation Theater and Colchester's Saint Michael’s Playhouse."

"...Beautifully exaggerated to over-the-top by Jeffrey Salzberg's imaginative lighting."

"...Highlighted by Jeffrey E. Salzberg’s excellent lighting.
I got the giggles at the sudden stars in Act II."

David Budbill's Judevine is a verse play that looks at a drab, impoverished town in rural Vermont and at the people who inhabit it and give it color, humanity, and beauty. The lighting design reinforced this by using a monochromatic palette that was occasionally punctuated by moments of more saturated color.

The script of Judevine calls for all sound effects to be actor-generated; in Lost Nation Theater's production, this was done through use of the Judephone — a percussion instrument constructed from found objects including oil drums, steel pipe, and other pieces of metal. The Judephone furnished, at various moments, bells and chimes, thunder, engine sounds, and other effects for which there is no name.

"A suggestive backdrop...along with creative light by Jeffrey Salzberg and realistic costumes...all come together to create the bleak but caring atmosphere."

The Judephone also was used as a visual metaphor, serving as an oil-fired heater a welding bench (the fire
and welding effects being done entirely with light), a beer cooler, and a cathedral, as well as its use as a piece of scenery and an acting position. Various lighting fixtures were mounted within, or focused on, it to reinforce the various images.

"The black-and-white backdrop...adds to the poetry, as it takes on shadowy,
brooding dimension with the changing stage light."

In September of 2008, Lost Nation Theater mounted a new,
revised version of its acclaimed 2007 production.

"...the play's shifting time frames (are handled) with clarity and precision, aided by the effective...lighting design of... Jeffrey E. Salzberg."

Charles Fuller's Pulitzer Prize-winning A Soldier's Play is the story of the investigation into the murder of a Black army sergeant in 1944. The plot develops through closely-interwoven flashbacks and "real-time" scenes, the transitions between which were handled by the lighting design, augmented by minor changes in costume and sound.

The lighting designer's concept was based on articulation, specificity, and detail. The finished design was extremely fluid, with some cues sharply defined while others flowed smoothly from one to another. The lighting designer used scenic elements symbolically, notably the barracks window, which was used as a visual metaphor for the manner in which Black soldiers in the segregated army were figuratively penned in and prevented from full participation, and the captain's office, which was often dimly lit even when empty to symbolize the omnipresence of the power structure which did not allow these soldiers to serve their country in the same ways that others were able to do so.

The lighting for the "real-time" scenes was starkly realistic while the flashback lighting was impressionistic; for example, while no attempt was made to precisely reproduce the lighting one might have found at night alongside a 1944 rural Louisiana roadside, the general feeling of such a scene was created with color, angle, intensity, and pattern. Since the flashbacks are dramatizations of various characters' accounts of the story, the lighting designer presented those scenes as filtered through those characters' memories, primarily through subtle use of projected patterns and saturated colors. As the tension in the plot heightened, the lighting became starker and more shadowy and the color saturation increased.

ADDITIONAL THEATRE AND MUSIC LIGHTING