A theatre student at Vancouver Island University has won the second biennial Larisa Fayad Memorial Award in Lighting Design. The Vancouver International Dance Festival has announced that Andrew Pye, who is completing a technical theatre diploma, will use the $2,000 prize to collaborate on a new production with choreographer Holly Bright.

They will work under the mentorship of VIU theatre department head Mike Taugher.

The award was created by friends and family of Larisa Fayad, a highly regarded lighting designer who died in a plane crash in Phuket, Thailand in 2007. She was technical director and colighting director for the Vancouver International Dance Festival. She also spent eight years as the resident house technician at the Roundhouse Community Centre in Vancouver.

In addition, Fayad worked on several Vancouver Opera productions, including Faust, Don Giovanni, Macbeth, and Tosca, as well as with several other companies.