59 Productions

59 Productions

Industry	creative direction, technical design, and projection
Founder	Leo Warner and Mark Grimmer
Headquarters	Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Number of employees	11

59 Productions is a Tony Award-winning creative direction, technical design, and projection team, best known as the video-designers for the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony.

59 Productions was founded in Edinburgh by Leo Warner and Mark Grimmer. Early projects included the video design for Stellar Quines Theatre Company's Sweet Fanny Adams in Eden (2003), followed by the video design for the recently formed National Theatre of Scotland's Roam (2006) and Black Watch (2006), which featured in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Shortly after the success of the show, which won multiple awards at Edinburgh Festivals, a Critics' Circle Theatre Award, a South Bank Sky Arts Award, four Critics' Awards for Theatre in Scotland, four Laurence Olivier Awards, and a New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, 59 Productions relocated to London, where they began a series of collaborations at the Royal National Theatre, causing critics to say that the company had "created an entirely new art form."

59's Leo Warner and Mark Grimmer were part of the original creative team for War Horse in 2007, which went on to win six Laurence Olivier Awards in London and five Tony Awards for the subsequent production on Broadway.

59 Productions undertook its first opera in 2007 at the English National Opera, providing the projection design for Philip Glass's Satyagraha, directed by Phelim McDermott and designed by Julian Crouch of Improbable theatre. This was the first of several collaborations with Improbable theatre, including the design for the Metropolitan Opera's 125th Anniversary Gala in 2009, which raised more than $10 million.