George Izenour

The boy had a condition known as keratoconus, a non-spherical deformation of the cornea of the eye, and he needed extra help from his parents in his early years of education.

Shortly after moving to San Francisco, Izenour met Hallie Flanagan, the national director of the Federal Theatre Project.

Started by the President Franklin D. Roosevelt administration during the Great Depression, this program was an effort to support productions in order to employ actors, playwrights, and technical staff to maintain theater during the hard times.

During World War II, Izenour worked on antisubmarine warfare and countermeasures for proximity fuses at a government lab in Long Island, New York.

He and Hildegard had a son, Steven Izenour, born in New Haven in July 1940; he later became a world-renowned architect and artist.

He developed the Electro-Mechanical Laboratory in an abandoned squash court at the Yale School of Drama Annex, under the general direction of Stanley McCandless.

Izenour was contacted for a formal consultation by McGeorge Bundy, then Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University.

Through his consultancy firm, Izenour advised such prestigious clients as the Metropolitan Opera Company and the Juilliard School of Music on technical matters.

“Some of his initial project work, such as the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Illinois, relied on a number of individual spaces to satisfy a broad menu, whether it be a great hall, an amphitheatre, a studio theatre, and so on.

Over time, George began to roll a lot of these functions into what was referred to as the multi-use theatre, and that's really George’s invention, wherein technology was used to vary acoustics, move ceilings, to do all of these things with moving architecture, changing the physicality of the space itself.”—Yale School of Drama Alumni Magazine, 2010–11[4] In 1977 Izenour retired from Yale from his positions both as professor emeritus of theatre design and technology and director emeritus of the electro-mechanical laboratory of the Yale University School of Drama.

He continued his consulting business in a converted oyster shack next to his home at Stony Creek, Connecticut, where he overlooked the Thimble Islands.

He won both national recognition for it by the American Institute of Architects and international acclaim in an exhibit at the Pompidou Center in Paris.

During construction, Izenour fired a starter's pistol every day in the living room to record the reverberation and adjust the baffles.

Some of his many contributions to theatre technology include: Pennsylvania State University houses a collection of Izenour's original prototypes for lighting control and automated fixtures.

Each year, the "Wally" honors one individual who exhibits a strong sense of leadership, a commitment to technological innovation, and a career of service to the lighting industry.