Jonathan Bixby


Jonathan Charles Bixby was a costume designer and a founding member of Drama Dept., a New York-based theater company.

Background

Bixby was born June 21, 1959, in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. He attended and graduated from Penncrest High School in 1977. He was a performer in Emanon, the theatrical group at Penncrest, mentored by Judy Roman. He left Mansfield College after his first year and moved to New York where he enrolled in the renowned Lester Polikoff School of Set and Costume Design to pursue his love of the stage. He was at that time the youngest person ever accepted at Polikoff.
Jonathan Bixby died April 29, 2001, at Cabrini Medical Center Hospice in New York City due to complications from colon cancer.

Works

Bixby served as the costume designer on many of the Drama Dept's productions, including The Torch-Bearers; Country Club ; As Bees In Honey Drown and June Moon. Among Bixby's Broadway credits are Band In Berlin, the revival of Hello Dolly and Street Corner Symphony. Numerous other credits include Strike Up the Band and The Tenderloin directed by John Rando ; The Coconuts ; Sheba ; Advice From a Caterpillar ; The Skin of Our Teeth; Man Is Man; The Three Sisters; Galileo; Life is a Dream and The Importance of Being Earnest.
Jonathan Bixby and his designing partner Gregory Gale designed the Broadway hit Urinetown. In 2002 Bixby and Gale received the Theater Development Fund Irene Sharaff Young Master Award.
Among the Regional theater productions he created costumes for were Rhinoceros ; Merton of the Movies ; Lives of the Saints ; Sayonara - LA Drama Critics Award ; June Moon ; Man of La Mancha and Oklahoma! ; A Streetcar Named Desire and The Caucasian Chalk Circle.
His unique imagination was expressed in the costumes he designed for the long touring international Cirque Ingenieux, and designs for many international and U.S. touring companies, including The Sound of Music, Brigadoon, The Wiz, Evita, My Fair Lady, West Side Story, Jesus Christ Superstar, Tango Passion, The King and I and Hello Dolly.
His film work includes Angel Passing with Hume Cronyn and Teresa Wright, Eventual Wife and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:Coming Out of Their Shells Tour Video. Along with his Daytime Emmy award-winning TV work with Carol Luiken on All My Children, Bixby also served as a costume designer on the ABC daytime series One Life to Live.