RIP Harry Donovan

[jeffbonny]

This last Wednesday a great rigger Harry Donovan died. He was one of the first real arena riggers and hung hundreds of thousands of points. He developed techniques, systems and equipment use we take for granted today. He literally wrote the book on entertainment rigging and taught thousands of people how to hang loads safely. The last few years he was instrumental in beginning to bring professional certification standards to what has been an unregulated industry. Harry greatly enriched the rigging community and he will be missed.

jeffbonny
vancouver, bc

[Brion Toss]

Hello all,
"Great rigger" doesn't even begin to cover it. This was someone who brought rationality, reality-based safety factors, and applied mathematics to the heretofore more-or-less-guessing world of theater rigging. Everyone -- performers, techies, and even the audience -- benefitted from what he achieved. The next time you are at the theater, or at a concert, if you stop to consider the tons of gear suspended or moving about onstage, and even over your head, you are almost certainly seeing the fruits of his labors, carried on by his many students and colleagues.
This did not come easy; many in the theater world were, and still are, very hidebound, and say/said that the kind of standards that Harry insisted on were too much bother. This despite his unprecedentedly spotless safety record, the precise rightness of his designs, and his amazing ability to load in, stage, and load out the most complex shows, on time and on budget. Some people, it seems to me, just don't want to take the extra effort that first-rate-work requires. Harry always took that effort.
His work also spilled over into other fields, including sailing. Harry had a beautiful Jesperson-built sloop, and he rigged it with his typical attention to detail, in a systems-aware context. Every time I've been aboard that boat I've found something new to marvel at, and very little that I would presume to do differently. His work, just with that boat, has informed my work, and the work of many other riggers. But it was his character, his relentlessly focused intent, his desire to see complicated ideas realized in a reasonable manner, that drove his work, afloat and ashore.
I have often referred to Nick Benton as my mentor and master, the one I learned the basics of rigging from. Harry was where I went for postgraduate study, both in person, and through his wonderful, immense book on theater rigging. The Japanese have a word: Shihan. They apply it to the true masters of an art. The idea, as I understand it, is that, more than merely mastering the technical aspects of that art, a Shihan physically embodies its principles, providing students with someone upon whom to create a template for their own lives. Harry was a Shihan.
Fair leads,
Brion Toss