Donald Holder has worked extensively in Theatre, Opera, Film, Television, and Architectural lighting in the US and abroad for over 35 years.  He has designed 64 Broadway productions and has been nominated for sixteen Tony awards, winning the Tony for Best Lighting Design for The Lion King in 1998, and for the 2008 revival of South Pacific.  Broadway productions include: Schmigadoon!, Ragtime (2009 and 2025 revivals), Pirates! The Penzance Musical, Call Me Izzy, Tootsie, Kiss Me Kate, McNeal, Anastasia, My Fair Lady, Oslo, Straight White Men, She Loves Me, Fiddler On The Roof, Spiderman-Turn Off The Dark, The King and I, On The Twentieth Century, and many others.  Projects at the NY Metropolitan Opera include: La Sonnambula, Champion, Rigoletto, Porgy and Bess, Otello, The Magic Flute and Two Boys.  He has worked at most of the nation's leading resident theatres, and has designed over 100 Off-Broadway productions.  His television/film work includes the theatrical lighting for Spirited (Apple Studios), American Classic (MGM+), SMASH (NBC-Dreamworks), Oceans 8 (Warner Brothers Pictures), Gossip Girl (HBO Max), and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Amazon).

Recent International projects include the 2024 London West End revival of Kiss Me Kate (Barbican), The Great Qin (Xian, China), and Civilization to Nation (Mumbai, India). Mr. Holder's architectural lighting projects include a full LED light conversion at St Agnes Cathedral, Rockville Centre, NY, several NYC restaurants including Bond 45, Brooklyn Deli (West 43rd St.) and The Redeye Grill, Sony Plaza's Public Spaces and the Sony Wonder Technology Lab, and the America's Smithsonian touring exhibition (visiting 12 cities across the United States). Holder was Head of the lighting design program at CalArts from 2006-2010, and at Rutgers University- Mason Gross School of the Arts from 2016-2025. He was recently appointed as  Professor in the Practice and Head of Lighting Design at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale