Cousineau, the busiest sound, light and multimedia designer for professional stages in metropolitan Philadelphia, was at Manhattan's Union Square Theatre for the announcement of the winners of the Lucille Lortel Awards - Off-Broadway's version of the Tonys, chosen by theater artists, journalists and others.

"It was a little surreal, really. I didn't expect it. For me, it was a big thing to be nominated," Cosineau, 37, said yesterday at Philadelphia Theatre Company's Suzanne Roberts Theatre, where he is creating sound and video for PTC's forthcoming The Happiness Lecture with Bill Irwin.

Also present Monday night were Michael Hollinger, who wrote Opus, and Terrence J. Nolen, Arden's artistic director. Nolen directed the premiere at Arden and the subsequent new production at Off-Broadway's Primary Stages.

"Philadelphia won - Jorge, an out-of-towner working in New York for the first time," Nolen said after the awards ceremony.

Nolen's staging of Opus for Primary Stages marked his directorial debut in New York. He was nominated for a Lortel for outstanding director, and Opus was nominated for outstanding play.

The Lortel in the directing category went to David Cromer for his work on Adding Machine, a dark musical about the machine age imported from Chicago's Next Theatre Company. The outstanding-play winner was Betrayed, by New Yorker magazine writer George Packer, about Iraqi interpreters who risk their lives to work for Americans. Packer based the play on interviews he did in Iraq for the magazine.

Nolen, happy to have been nominated his first time out in New York and proud of Cousineau's win, said a producer had optioned Opus for Broadway. This reserves the rights to the work, and is a first step toward a production in any of the 39 houses considered Broadway theaters.

Hollinger, a Philadelphia playwright trained as a classical violist at Oberlin College, drew on his own musical immersion when he wrote Opus, his sixth play. Hollinger is tantamount to Arden's playwright-in-residence, without the title; all his plays have been premiered by the company, whose two-stage theater and offices are on Second Street near Market. Several have gone on to Off-Broadway.

Primary Stages produced Opus in August, giving Hollinger, Nolen and Cousineau their second crack at it. Nolen persuaded the New York theater company that Cousineau and set designer James Kronzer should continue with the work they did on the play at its premiere at the Arden in 2006. The production - solid in Philadelphia - was more lyrical in New York, with a new scene that grounded the plot, a faster pace, and Cousineau's reworked sound design that wove the scenes together more tightly.

Opus was originally coproduced by Arden with Pittsburgh's City Theatre Company, where it played immediately after its Philadelphia run. A memorable effect, in its premiere and in New York, was the way the cast "played" the string-quartet music the audience heard: The music was recorded by Curtis Institute students; the actors moved their bows precisely, inches above the strings, while their string fingers remained still - a clearly staged, yet convincing, illusion that they were actually playing.

Cousineau's most recent work on Philadelphia stages is his video design for Jeanne Ruddy Dance's season opener last month and, with Steve Organ, the video work for Azuka Theatre's Hedwig and the Angry Inch, currently playing.