He won Tony Awards for his work on the Broadway productions of City of Angels, On the Twentieth Century, and The Producers.
[1] He attended art school and started his career in theatres in that city[2] with designs for Don Pasquale, Amahl and the Night Visitors, Tea and Sympathy, and Waiting for Godot, among others.
His first solo project was a short-lived 1966 production of The Condemned of Altona by Jean-Paul Sartre.
Wagner's many Broadway credits include Hair, The Great White Hope, Promises, Promises, Gantry,[3] Jesus Christ Superstar, Seesaw, Mack & Mabel, A Chorus Line, Ballroom, On the Twentieth Century, 42nd Street, Dreamgirls, Song and Dance, City of Angels, Victor/Victoria, Angels in America: Millennium Approaches, Angels in America: Perestroika, The Producers, The Boy from Oz, and Young Frankenstein.
[1] Wagner served on the Theatre Advisory Committee for the New York International Festival of the Arts, as a trustee of the New York Shakespeare Festival, and taught in the graduate theatre arts program at Columbia University.