VIDEO: Tony Winner David Rockwell Talks TOOTSIE, KISS ME KATE, And More

David Rockwell, who won the Tony Award for She Loves Me and recently received acclaim for his sets for Tootsie and Kiss Me, Kate on Broadway, is the guest on May's episode of Theater: All the Moving Parts, on the television station of the City University of New York (CUNY TV). The show, hosted by commentator and veteran journalist Patrick Pacheco, is now streaming on tv.cuny.edu/theaterallthemovingparts.

In this new episode, Rockwell talks about how his growing up with community theater in Deal, NJ and then with public spaces when he moved to Mexico at 12 led to his celebrated career as an architect and set designer. He designs hotels, hospitals, museums, airport terminals, restaurants, playgrounds, and theaters including the Kodak Theatre, home of the Oscars, the newly renovated Hayes on Broadway, and the spectacular $500 million, 200,000 square-foot The Shed in Hudson Yards (Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Lead Architect, and Rockwell Group, Collaborating Architect). Despite these monumental achievements, theater has always claimed his passion, even if, as he puts it, "a little terror" is bound to come his way when he starts any new project. "My drive as a designer is in the finding ways in which design connects people and for me that has been both a career and a way of navigating the world in a way that life-giving and endlessly fascinating."

Says Pacheco, "David is so incredibly successful as an architect that I've often wondered why he would also find a home in the theater which, as we know, can be incredibly heartbreaking, and even cruel. The answer has a lot to do with emotionally compensating for tragic losses and healing transitions in his own personal life."

THEATER: All the Moving Parts features in-depth interviews with directors, choreographers, writers, designers, composers and others - the unheralded professionals behind the scenes who are crucial to the success of any stage production. Pacheco delves deeply not only into the intricacies of craft but also elicits from his guests what drives their artistic achievements. Says playwright Theresa Rebeck, who launched the series, "I felt like I was being interviewed by someone who knows me better than I know myself." (See first episode.) Each episode is taped at Chez Josephine Restaurant in NYC.

Patrick Pacheco is an Emmy-winning commentator and journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, Esquire.com, and many other periodicals. He wrote the 2009 Disney documentary Waking Sleeping Beauty and is the co-writer, with Maria Cassi, of the play, My Life with Men...and Other Animals. He is the writer and editor of the Amazon best seller American Theatre Wing, An Oral History: 100 Years, 100 Voices, 100 Million Miracles.

David Rockwell is the recipient of a TONY Award for She Loves Me and has been nominated for five more, including for Hairspray, Kinky Boots, Lucky Guy, You Can't Take it With You, and On the Twentieth Century. As the founder of the Rockwell Group, the 250-person multi-disciplinary and innovative architecture and design firm, Rockwell is the recipient of innumerable honors from the American Institute of Architects, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, the Pratt institute and he also received the Presidential Design Award for his renovation of Grand Central Station. As a humanitarian, Rockwell is the Chair Emeritus of DIFFA, the fashion world's response to AIDS. He also serves on the boards of Citymeals on Wheels and The New York Restoration Project.