Polly Wood-Holland ’75 still feels the impact of advice she encountered from comedian and composer Tim Minchin: “Be aware that the next worthy pursuit will probably appear in your periphery,” he said. “Which is why you should be careful of long-term dreams. If you focus too far in front of you, you won’t see the shiny thing out the corner of your eye.”

“It really resonated as I have never had a long-range plan but concentrated always on doing the best I could with what came along,” she says of a speech Minchin recorded in 2013 at the University of Western Australia. “It struck me as a rather wonderful way to describe how I had actually traveled in my career.”

As she’s moved through her life and her work, Wood-Holland—a scenic artist and designer who has helped create worlds from Simba’s home in the pride lands of Africa to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ sewer dwelling—has kept her eyes open and gathered plenty of shiny things.

She’s worked on Broadway, in Hollywood, at Disney World, and around the world. She counts famed scenic designers David Mitchell and Tony Walton among her mentors. In recent years, Wood-Holland served as scenic foreperson of the popular, award-winning Amazon Prime series, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. In November 2022, the show wrapped shooting its fifth and final season, which will premiere on April 14, 2023.

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