PQ&A - USITT at the 2019 PQ

Yi Zhao is a Beijing-born, Paris-raised and U.S.-educated lighting designer currently based in Berlin and working internationally, whose designs for theater, opera, live music and dance are informed by a rigorous background in fine art photography and a passion for music. His lighting designs have been seen at Lincoln Center Theater, New York Theatre Workshop, Signature Theatre, Soho Rep., Ars Nova, the Guthrie Theater, Mark Taper Forum, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, American Conservatory Theatre, Dallas Theater Center, The Wilma Theater, Yale Repertory Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Huntington Theatre Company, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Opera Omaha, Hong Kong Arts Festival, Curtis Institute of Music, ArtsEmerson, Philadelphia FringeArts, Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, and Ballet de Lorraine in France, among others. He has collaborated with directors & choreographers Lileana Blain-Cruz, Sarah Benson, Blanka Zizka, Les Waters, Liz Diamond, Joel Ferrell, James Bundy, Miguel Guttierrez, Michael Counts, Desdemona Chiang, Ralph Peña, Chris Bayes, Alec Duffy, Charlotte Brathwaite, and Nicole Canuso, among others. He holds degrees from the Yale School of Drama and the University of Chicago, and is a recipient of the 2016 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Theatre.

Hannah Wasileski is a visual artist and projection designer based in Berlin. She found her way into the visual and performing arts through her background as a classical violinist. Beginning as a video and installation artist after graduating with a BA in Music and Visual Art from the University of Brighton, UK, she moved to New York City where she was drawn to the interaction of live performance and projection design for the stage. She graduated with an MFA from the Yale School of Drama where she was in the inaugural class for Projection Design. Hannah creates animations, moving paintings, films, and architectural projections in the context of opera, theatre, installations and concerts, and she collaborates with composers and musicians to make music videos. Her work has been shown in the US and Europe, and has received numerous awards, including a Lucille Lortel and an Obie. Recent designs include: The Magic Flute (Staatsoper Berlin), Water by the Spoonful (Mark Taper Forum), Sleep (BAM), Pipeline (Lincoln Center Theater), La Voix Humaine (National Sawdust), The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World (Signature Theatre), Angel’s Bone (Prototype Festival), The Wreckers (Bard SummerScape Opera), and The World is Round (BAM). Her video installations have been exhibited in London, Brighton, and Glasgow.

Brad Ward is a New York City-based Sound Designer. He works as a Senior AV and Theatrical Systems Designer at DLR Group | Westlake Reed Leskosky.With his expertise in theatrical sound design and the academe, Brad is available for commissioned projects, teaching, and workshops on a freelance basis.Previously, Brad worked as Assistant Professor of Audio Engineering Technology at Belmont University in Nashville, Project Manager for Blitz Communications in London, and Lead Audio for Cirque du Soleil’s The Beatles LOVE in Las Vegas.Brad serves on the education committee for the Theatrical Sound Designers and Composers Association, is a vice commissioner for sound for United States Institute for Theatre Technology, and is a member of the Association of Sound Designers in the UK. He was the curator for Sound Kitchen at World Stage Design 2017 in Taipei. Brad enjoys sharing his knowledge through lectures and adjunct teaching assignments.Brad holds an MFA degree in Sound Design from Yale School of Drama.Sunny Kil is originally from South Korea. First earning an MFA in sound design at the University of Cinncinnati, College Conservatory of Music, she then spent five years on the faculty of the University of Central Oklahoma. In 2014 she was appointed assistant professor, Department of Theatre Arts, at SUNY New Paltz. Her sound design credits range from the musicals Caffeine at the Roppongi Blue Theatre in Tokyo, Japan, to Flipside at 59E59 in New York City.Manhattan Repertory Theatre featured her original compositions in their production Removal. Solitary Musicians, a musical she created and designed for 202 Productions in Seoul, was a finalist at the Uijeongbu International Music Theatre Festival and was invited to perform at the first Maronnier Festival in 2011.She was associate sound designer for the opening and closing ceremonies at the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in PyeongChang, South Korea.

Christopher & Justin Swader are New York-based identical twin scenic designers for theatre, opera, puppetry, site-specific performance and live events. Recent collaborations include designs with Two River Theater, Miami New Drama, The New Victory Theatre, Classical Theatre of Harlem, Big Apple Circus, Sotheby’s, National Geographic, Lincoln Center Education, ArtsEmerson, Emerson String Quartet, IBEX Puppetry, La MaMa, Park Avenue Armory, National Black Theatre, York Theatre Company, Ars Nova, 3LD, HERE Arts Center, Trusty Sidekick, Luna Stage, SpeakEasy Stage Company, Manhattan School of Music, Kitchen Theatre Company, Mason Holdings. Their design for JARRING was exhibited at the 2017 World Stage Design. 2016 American Theatre Wing Henry Hewes Design Award Nomination, 2017 AUDELCO Award, 2018 IRNE Award, Boston. Originally from Indiana, they are graduates of Ball State University. www.cjswaderdesign.com

Todd Rosenthal (Set Designer) is a Chicago based set designer. Broadway: August Osage County (Tony Award), The Motherfucker with the Hat (Tony and Outer Critics Circle Nomination), Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (Tony Award Best revival), Of Mice and Men, This is Our Youth, Fish in the Dark, Straight White Men, and the upcoming Linda Vista. Select Off Broadway premieres: Red Light Winter, Barrow Street Theater; Domesticated, Lincoln Center; Qualms, Playwrights Horizons; Close Up Space, Manhattan Theatre Club; Nice Fish, St. Ann’s Warehouse. Set designer for 6 years for the Big Apple Circus. International: August Osage County (National Theatre, London, Sydney Theater, Australia); The Beauty Queen of Leenane (Theatre Royal, Ireland); Nice Fish, (Harold Pinter Theatre, West End, London); Madama Butterfly, Dublin, Ireland; and the upcoming Downstate at the National Theatre in London. Regional: Steppenwolf (33 productions), Goodman (artistic partner), Chicago Shakespeare, Guthrie, Mark Taper Forum, ART, La Jolla Playhouse, Arena Stage, Berkeley Rep, Alley Theater, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Oregon Shakespeare Festival and many others. Select Museum Exhibitions: Mythbusters: The Explosive Exhibition and The International Exhibition of Sherlock Holmes. Other select awards: 2019 Distinguished Achievement Award (United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT), Laurence Olivier, Helen Hayes, Ovation, Bay Area Theater Critics Circle, Joseph Jefferson, Suzi Bass, and the Michael Merritt Award for Excellence in Design and Collaboration. Full Professor, Northwestern University. Graduate, Yale Drama.

ERHARD ROM (Set & Projection Designer from Seattle Washington), has designed settings for more than 200 productions around the globe and in 2015 he was named as a finalist in the International Opera Awards in London.His designs have frequently been featured in the Prague Quadrennial International Design exhibition.He has collaborated with many of the world’s leading directors and companies including; San Francisco Opera (Susannah, Lucia di Lammermoor, Nixon in China), Royal Swedish Opera (Nixon in China), Seattle Opera (Semele, La bohème, Eugene Onegin), Washington National Opera (Silent Night), Wexford Festival (Silent Night), Houston Grand Opera (Rigoletto), Vancouver Opera (Dead Man Walking, Otello), Glimmerglass Festival (A Blizzard on Marblehead neck, Later the Same Evening, Silent Night), Opera Theatre of St. Louis (Faust, Jane Eyre, Carmen), Minnesota Opera (The Shining, Dead man Walking, Rusalka, Romeo and Juliet). Other companies include;Boston Lyric Opera, Opéra de Montréal, Atlanta Opera, Wolf Trap, Syracuse Stage, Geva Theatre Center, Indiana Repertory Theatre, Folger Shakespeare Theatre, Shakespeare Santa Cruz and Merrimack Repertory Theatre among many others.In 2014 he designed the European premiere of “Silent Night” for the Wexford Festival and the 2015 Irish Times Theatre Awards Ceremony gave it two accolades, including audience choice and best opera production of 2014.Mr. Rom also teaches design at Montclair State University in New Jersey.

Ripe Time, is an Obie-winning theatre company founded in 2000 and led by director and deviser Rachel Dickstein. We develop and present ensemble-based theatre with rich language, visual power, and physical rigor. We tell stories from the inside out, using the language of memory, imagination and associative thought to trace how women negotiate identity in the face of cultural constrictions. Inspired by the most searing writing and cinema of the past, we create original multidisciplinary events for the 21st century celebrating women’s dreams and awakenings.

Josafath Reynoso is a Mexican scenographer and Scenic Designer currently working in the US as a freelance designer and an Assistant Professor at the University of Richmond. He holds an MFA in Scenic Design from UT Knoxville and a BFA in Scenography from Escuela Nacional de Arte Teatral. Regional venues include: Triad Stage, Virginia Sage Company, Alice Jepson Theatre, Clarence Brown Theatre, Lexington Children’s Theatre, Donald Bedell Performance Hall, among others. International venues include: Teatro del Borde (Argentina), Escena 8 (Venezuela), KCDC (Israel), Teatro Salvador Novo (Mexico), Industrial Palace (Czech Republic), among others.Winner of the 2017 Gold Medal at World Stage Design in Taiwan, 2015 USITT National Scene Design Award, 2014 SETC Scenic Design Award, 2013 BroadwayWorld Award, and the SETC Ready-for-Work Award, among many others.He was selected as curator for the exhibit Mexico Rising: New exponents of performance design at USITT 2018, keynote speaker at Stage|Set|Scenery (Berlin), presenter at the International Biennale of Architecture (Buenos Aires), one of fifteen designers selected to present at 2015 USITT Young Designer’s Forum and the 2015 National Design Portfolio Review in NYC. He has represented the US in Germany, and Wales; and Mexico in Taiwan, the Czech Republic and Venezuela.

Regional: The Three Musketeers, Romeo and Juliet (Denver Center Theatre Company); Othello, Julius Caesar, The Man in the Iron Mask, Henry IV, Parts One and Two(Shakespeare Santa Cruz); Circle Mirror Transformation, No Man’s Lands, Seven Guitars, Invisible Hand, The Duchess of Malfi (Artists Repertory Theatre); A Lesson Before Dying; Lips Together, Teeth Apart; Master Harold . . . and the Boys (Profiles Theatre Company); Hansel and Gretel, Snow White, Pinocchio, El Zorrito, Peter Pan(Northwest Children’s Theater); Lorca in a Green Dress; Adriente Paciencia; Elliot, a Soldier’s Fugue (Miracle Theatre); Charlotte’s Web, Tuck Everlasting, BFG, Holes, Cyrano (Oregon Children’s Theatre).Other credits: Associate artist in composition, Shakespeare Santa Cruz. Awards: 2000–2001 Drammy, Sound Design and Composition, for a season of outstanding work at multiple theatres; 2001–2002 Drammy in Composition (Tuck Everlasting); 2004 Drammy in Composition (Lorca in a Green Dress). Education: MA, Music, Manhattan School of Music; BA, Music, University of Arizona.

Originally from Maine, Tony Award winning lighting designer Tyler Micoleau has lived in Brooklyn for the last 24 years. He has designed extensively throughout New York as well as regionally and internationally, for world premiere plays, musicals and operas as well as outdoor spaces and touring pieces.His work can currently be seen on Broadway in The Band’s Visit at the Barrymore Theater and Be More Chill at the Lyceum Theater.Other New York designs for Lincoln Center Theater, the Public Theater, New York Theatre Workshop, Manhattan Theater Club, Atlantic Theater, Signature, Second Stage, Playwrights Horizons, New York Theatre Workshop, Vineyard Theatre, New Georges, Epic Theatre Ensemble, Page 73, Rattlestick, Barrow Street Theater, Foundry Theatre, The Play Company, Soho Rep and many others.Regional designs for the Huntington Theater, Alley Theatre, Goodman Theatre, Dallas Theater Center, the Old Globe, La Jolla Playhouse, Trinity Repertory Theatre, Arena Stage, Shakespeare Theater, Kansas City Rep, Philadelphia Theatre Company, Wilma Theater, Pig Iron Theatre, the Folger, Long Wharf Theater and many others.Opera designs for palm beach Opera, Dallas Opera, Spoleto Festival USA, PORTopera, Curtis Opera, Manhattan School of Music, and Connecticut Grand Opera.Dance design for Eliot Feld’s Mandance Project at The Joyce Theater, Neil Greenberg and The Chase Brock Experience.Fine art installation projects include 2×4 Tree (PIFA Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts), Åhus Sommaren 1974 (Bellwether Galleries, Chelsea NYC), Beneath the Floorboards (Ohio Theater Gallery, Soho NYC).Tyler has served on the faculty at Sarah Lawrence College and has been a visiting artist at Dartmouth College, Yale University, Bates College and his alma matter, Bowdoin College.

Carlo is a scenic and production designer, native of the Philippines and is based in Los Angeles, working internationally in multiple fields from theatre, film, live events, and installation art. Previous credits include the French national tour of ‘Fore!’ by Aleshea Harris, and directed by Arnaud Meunier (St. Etienne, Paris, Nice, FR. Brussels, BE). West Coast premiere of Erin Courtney’s ‘A Map of Virtue’ (Atwater Village Theatre), Rosanna Gamson’s ‘Still/Restless’ (REDCAT), and ‘The Enormous Wound’ with Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre (Boston Court Theatre). He has served as Associate Designer for productions such as ‘Joan of Arc: Into the Fire’ by David Byrne (Public Theatre, NY), ‘He Brought her Heart Back in a Box’ by Adrienne Kennedy (Theatre for a New Audience, NY), and ‘Sweat’ by Lynn Nottage (Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles, CA).Production design credits include ‘WINGS’ by The Black Eyes Peas, and Kristianne Bautista’s (formerly of Kan Wakan) upcoming EP ‘Woman.’ He is also often in collaboration with event design companies, such as GES Events, Entertainment Design Corporation, and Vizier Productions. With a strong belief in the art of world-building, Carlo’s work is often motivated by his search for spaces and environment that have both potential and empathy.

Sheryl Liu is a New York City based set designer who works in theater, opera, dance and musicals.Her recent design credits include Shadows,a dance musical at the Connelly Theater, The Sound of Music and Man of La Mancha, which both began touring internationally since June of 2017.Upcoming productions in 2019: The Chorus(musical) and Next to Normal touring in internationally

Learning Curve is an immersive performance that places you within the walls of a Chicago public high school and in the shoes of its students. With each step, you’ll experience the real-life triumphs and struggles of students, teachers and parents during the years that hopefully lead to a high school diploma.Albany Park Theater Projects is a multiethnic, youth theater ensemble that inspires people to envision a more just and beautiful world. We are dedicated to art, to youth, and a vision of social justice.We make our home in one of the three most ethnically diverse neighborhoods in the entire country, where we create original theater based on the life experiences of people whose stories might otherwise go untold: urban teens, immigrants, and working-class Americans. The art we make enriches the cultural vitality and quality of life in our neighborhood and throughout Chicago.We cultivate a community where teens engage critically and creatively with the world as artists, thereby embarking on purposeful lives as adventurous dreamers and accomplished achievers. Teens emerge from APTP as young leaders with the vision and capacity for a lifetime of personal success and community engagement.At APTP, people directly impacted by sociopolitical issues create original plays that humanize those issues with intellectual rigor, fervent humanity, and vibrant imagination. When we believe passionately in an issue, we also take to the streets to fight for change. The justice-minded youth leaders who emerge from APTP have a ripple effect that extends into schools, colleges, communities, and institutions well beyond our corner of Chicago.To see an APTP play is to go on a journey deep into a world that you may have never visited before, a world you might not otherwise experience, guided on your journey by someone who lives in and knows that world intimately. We are storytellers, and we’ve filled our online home with the stories of our efforts on and off stage. We invite you to spend some time with these stories, and we hope you’ll revisit often.

Learning Curve is an immersive performance that places you within the walls of a Chicago public high school and in the shoes of its students. With each step, you’ll experience the real-life triumphs and struggles of students, teachers and parents during the years that hopefully lead to a high school diploma.Albany Park Theater Projects is a multiethnic, youth theater ensemble that inspires people to envision a more just and beautiful world. We are dedicated to art, to youth, and a vision of social justice.We make our home in one of the three most ethnically diverse neighborhoods in the entire country, where we create original theater based on the life experiences of people whose stories might otherwise go untold: urban teens, immigrants, and working-class Americans. The art we make enriches the cultural vitality and quality of life in our neighborhood and throughout Chicago.We cultivate a community where teens engage critically and creatively with the world as artists, thereby embarking on purposeful lives as adventurous dreamers and accomplished achievers. Teens emerge from APTP as young leaders with the vision and capacity for a lifetime of personal success and community engagement.At APTP, people directly impacted by sociopolitical issues create original plays that humanize those issues with intellectual rigor, fervent humanity, and vibrant imagination. When we believe passionately in an issue, we also take to the streets to fight for change. The justice-minded youth leaders who emerge from APTP have a ripple effect that extends into schools, colleges, communities, and institutions well beyond our corner of Chicago.To see an APTP play is to go on a journey deep into a world that you may have never visited before, a world you might not otherwise experience, guided on your journey by someone who lives in and knows that world intimately. We are storytellers, and we’ve filled our online home with the stories of our efforts on and off stage. We invite you to spend some time with these stories, and we hope you’ll revisit often.

Ana Kuzmanic is Yugoslav born, Chicago based costume designer. Her theatrical work has been seen on Broadway (August: Osage County, Desire Under the Elms, Superior Donuts), off-Broadway (The Jacksonian), in the U.K. (The Royal National Theatre) and Australia (Sydney Theatre Company). Based in Evanston, she is closely associated with many Chicago companies including the Goodman Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre, Looking Glass Theatre, Chicago Shakespeare Theater and The House. Among the regional companies with whom she has worked are Milwaukee Repertory Theater, Berkley Repertory Theatre, McCarter Theatre Center, Washington Shakespeare Theatre Company, Trinity Repertory Company, Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the Geffen Playhouse. The Lyric Opera of Chicago’s production of Don Giovanni, directed by her long-time collaborator Tony Award-winning director Robert Falls was Ana’s opera debut.Ana earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Costume and Fashion Design from Faculty of Applied Arts and Design in Belgrade, Serbia and her Master of Fine Arts in Stage Design from Northwestern University, USA. She has designed for her fashion label from 1993 to 2002.Ana is an Associate Professor of costume design at Northwestern University in Evanston, USA.

Jaamil Olawale Kosoko is a Nigerian American poet, curator, and performance artist originally from Detroit, MI. He is a 2017-2019 Princeton Arts Fellow, a 2018 NEFA National Dance Project Award recipient, a 2018-20 New York Live Arts Live Feed Artist-in-Residence, a 2019 Gibney DiP Artist-in-Residence, a 2017 Jerome Foundation Artist-in-Residence at Abrons Arts Center, a 2017 Cave Canem Poetry Fellow, a 2016 Gibney Dance boo-koo resident artist, and a recipient of a 2016 USArtists International Award from the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation. His previous work #negrophobia (premiered September 2015, Gibney Dance Center) was nominated for a 2016 Bessie Award and has toured throughout Europe having appeared in major festivals including Moving in November (Finland), TakeMeSomewhere (UK), SICK! (UK), Tanz im August (Berlin), Oslo Internasjonale Teaterfestival (Norway), Zurich MOVES! (Switzerland), Beursschouwburg (Belgium) and Spielart Festival (Munich). His current work, Séancers, premiered at Abrons Arts Center in December 2017 and has toured nationally and internationally to critical acclaim. Recent highlights include Mousonturm (Frankfurt, DE), FringeArts (Philadelphia, PA), Sophiensaele (Berlin, DE), and the Wexner Center (Columbus, OH). In 2019, Séancers will have engagements at the Fusebox Festival (Austin, TX) and Montréal Arts Interculturels (Montréal, CA), among others.American performance venues include: Abrons Arts Center, Joyce SoHo, DTW, FringeArts, Dixon Place, Dance Theater Workshop, Bennington College, Danspace at St. Mark’s Church, the CEC Meeting House Theater, Wexner Center for the Arts, Kelly Strayhorn Theater, LAX Festival, Miami Theater Center, Art Basel Miami, and the Painted Bride Arts Center, among others.He was a Co-Curator of the 2015 Movement Research Spring Festival and the 2015 Dancing While Black performance series at BAAD in the Bronx; a contributing correspondent for Dance Journal (PHL), the Broad Street Review (PHL), and Critical Correspondence (NYC); a 2012 Live Arts Brewery Fellow as a part of the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival; a 2011 Fellow as a part of the DeVos Institute of Art Management at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; and an inaugural graduate member of the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP) at Wesleyan University where he earned his MA in Curatorial Studies.His work in performance is rooted in a creative mission to push history forward through writing and art making and advocacy. Kosoko’s work in live performance has received support from The Pew Center for Arts and Heritage through Dance Advance, The Philadelphia Cultural Management Initiative, The Joyce Theater Foundation, and The Philadelphia Cultural Fund. His breakout solo performance work entitled other.explicit.body. premiered at Harlem Stage in April 2012 and went on to tour nationally. As a performer, Kosoko has created original roles in the performance works of Nick Cave, Pig Iron Theatre Company, Keely Garfield Dance, Miguel Gutierrez and The Powerful People, and Headlong Dance Theater, among others. In addition, creative consultant and/or performer credits include: Terry Creach, Lisa Kraus, Kate Watson-Wallace/anonymous bodies, Leah Stein Dance Company, Emergent Improvisation Ensemble, and Faustin Linyekula and Les Studios Kabako (The Democratic Republic of Congo).Kosoko’s poems can be found in such publications as The American Poetry Review, Poems Against War, The Dunes Review, and Silo. In 2009, he published he chapbook, Animal in Cyberspace, and, in 2011, he published his own collection, Notes on an Urban Kill-Floor: Poems for Detroit (Old City Publishing). Publications include: The American Poetry Review, The Dunes Review, The Interlochen Review, The Broad Street Review, Silo Literary and Visual Arts Magazine.Kosoko has served on numerous curatorial and funding panels including the Brooklyn Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, MAP Fund, Movement Research at the Judson Church, the Philadelphia Cultural Fund, and the Baker Artists Awards, among others. In 2014, Kosoko joined the Board of Directors for Dance/USA, the national service organization for dance professionals. He is also a founding advisory board member for the Coalition for Diasporan Scholars Moving.He has held producing and curatorial positions at New York Live Arts, 651 Arts, and The Watermill Center among others. He continues to guest teach, speak, and lecture internationally.

Alice SheppardAlice Sheppard took her first dance class in order to make good on a dare; she loved moving so much that she resigned her academic professorship in order to begin a career in dance. She studied ballet and modern with Kitty Lunn and made her debut with Infinity Dance Theater. After an apprenticeship, Alice joined AXIS Dance Company where she toured nationally and taught in the company’s education and outreach programs.Since becoming an independent artist, Alice has danced in projects with Ballet Cymru, GDance, and Marc Brew in the United Kingdom. In the United States, she has worked with Full Radius Dance, Marjani Forté, MBDance, Infinity Dance Theater, and Steve Paxton.As an emerging, award-winning choreographer, Alice creates movement that challenges conventional understandings of disabled and dancing bodies. Engaging with disability arts, culture and history, Alice attends to the complex intersections of disability, gender, and race by exploring the societal and cultural significance of difference. AliceSheppard.comLaurel LawsonLaurel Lawson found that dance combines her lifelong loves of athleticism and art, and began her professional career with Full Radius Dance in 2004. She has performed and taught in Atlanta and worldwide with the company. At Kinetic Light, in addition to choreographic collaboration and performance she designed and created the DESCENT costumes, designed the DESCENT wheelchairs in collaboration with Top End’s Paul Schulte, and is the product designer for AUDIMANCE, a revolutionary app centering non-visual audiences. Laurel also performs, choreographs, and teaches as an independent artist, and is the CTO and co-founder of CyCore Systems, a boutique engineering consultancy which specializes in solving novel, multi-realm problems. She is also a member of the USA Women’s Developmental Sled Hockey Team.Michael MaagMichael Maag designs at the intersection of lighting and projections for theatre, dance, musicals, opera, and in planetariums across the United States. He sculpts with light and shadow to create lighting environments that tell a story, believing that lighting in support of the performance is the key to unlocking our audience’s emotions. He has built custom optics for projections in theatres, museums and planetariums, and also designs and builds electronics and lighting for costumes and scenery. As a wheelchair user, Michael is passionate about bringing the perspective of the disabled artist to technical theatre and design. He is currently the Resident Lighting Designer at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. His designs have been seen on the Festival’s stages for the last 20 years, as well as at Arena Stage, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Utah Shakespearean Festival, Florida Studio Theatre, Henry Hudson Planetarium, Albany, and many other places. Michael has been a proud member of USITT since 1986.

Melpomene Katakalos has been a freelance scenic designer, combining the art of storytelling with a compelling environment, collaborative processes, and the dynamics between collaborators. She has been designing predominately in San Francisco, NYC, and Philadelphia designing over 100 productions, many of which were world premieres, over the last 20+ years. Her designs have been seen on a variety of stages including La Jolla Playhouse, San Francisco Mime Troupe, Berkeley’s California Shakespeare Theatre, Los Angeles’ Cornerstone Theatre and Philadelphia’s InterAct Theatre. In NYC, she has designed off-Broadway at the Clurman, at HERE Arts Center, La Mama, 45th Street Theatre, and the Triad. Her designs and devised works have been performed at the Beijing International Fringe and the Singapore International Fringe. Katakalos is the director of the New Play Design Lab at the Bay Area Playwrights Foundation, and is a co-founder of San-Francisco-based Crowded Fire Theater Company, which has been producing and commissioning new works for over 20 years. Among her many nominations and awards are two San Diego Playbill Awards, two Bay Area Critics Circle nominations, a Barrymore nomination, and the honor of Best Set Designer from The East Bay Express. Ms. Katakalos is an Associate Professor of Theatre at Lehigh University where she was recently appointed as the Class of 1961 Professor. She received her BFA in Theatrical Production Arts, Concentration in Design from Ithaca College, and her MFA in Scenic Design from UC San Diego.

Born and raised in Japan, Izumi came to the states to learn performing arts at age of 18. She double majored in dance and theatre design at State University of New York, Buffalo. Right after the graduation, she moved to Chicago to attend the master program at Northwestern University, focusing on costume and scenic design. Soon after completing the program in 2009, she started working as a freelance costume/makeup designer in Chicago. She has joined Red Tape Theatre as an ensemble member in 2012, where she has designed all productions since such as Skriker, Elephant’s Graveyard, Lear, Madam Barker, and Hamlet is Dead. She has also designed costumes for production with Griffin Theatre, A Red Orchid, The Gift, The Music Theatre Company, The Hypocrites, Lifeline, Strawdog, Albany Park Theatre Project, Steep, Porchlight Music, CPS Shakespeare at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, The Building Stage, Marry-Arrchie, Two Pence Shakespeare, Evanston Dance Ensemble, Wheaton College, Sideshow, TUTA, Raven Theatre, and Buzz 22. Her makeup designs appeared in the productions with Theo Ubique Cabaret (Cats, Non-Equity Jeff Award for Artistic Specialization), and Chicago Dramatists. She has served as a costume staff/designer at National High School Institute for last 7 years. Izumi is honored to receive Michael Maggio Emerging Designer Award 2014.

Gregory Gale is a two-time Tony Award nominated designer for Rock of Ages, and Cyrano de Bergerac featuring Kevin Kline and Jennifer Garnerwhich can be seen on Amazon. Other Broadway designs include: The Wedding Singer, Urinetown, Arcadia, and Band in Berlin. Off-Broadway he designed the costumes for the world premieres of Douglas Carter Beane’s To Wong Foo, Hood, and Fairycakes. His work at the Atlantic Theater with The Voysey Inheritance earned him a Lucille Lortel Award. Mr. Gale has an Irene Sharaff Young Master Award and has multiple Lucille Lortel and Henry Hewes Design Award nominations. His opera productions include world premieres of The Prince of Players by Carlisle Floyd for Houston Grand Opera and An American Soldier by Huang Ruo and David Henry Hwang for Opera Theater of St. Louis. Other opera designs include: The Magic Flute for Chicago Opera Theater, Camelot for Virginia Opera, and La Rondine for Opera Theater of Saint Louis.Mr. Gale designed two films that will be released in 2019: The Mental State and Real Drag. He is currently designing the feature film Blinded by Ed.

Marcus Doshi designs lighting and sets for theatre, dance, opera, and collaborates with artists and architects on non-performance-based work. Doshi is a frequent collaborator with New York’s Theatre for a New Audience, where his work has been seen in 11 plays, including The Skin of Our Teeth, A Doll’s House/The Father in rep., Othello (2009 — Lucille Lortel Award Nomination) and Hamlet (2009 – Drama Desk Award Nomination). He is also a frequent collaborator with Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company, where he has designed the world premieres of Linda Vista, Mary Page Marlowe, and Visiting Edna, as well as several others including Pass Over, which was later filmed for Amazon by Spike Lee. Other New York credits include productions for Juilliard Opera (Les Mamelles de Tirésias, Der Kaiser von Atlantis, La Calisto), Lincoln Center Theatre, the Public Theatre, the Vineyard Theatre, and New York Theatre Workshop, among others. His work has been seen at virtually every important regional theater nationwide. Internationally he has designed for the Comedie Francaise, the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, La Monnaie in Brussels, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the Royal Opera House Linbury Studio, the National Theater of Sarajevo, the Sydney Festival, among many other venues. Doshi holds degrees from Wabash College and Yale University, and is a tenured Associate Professor of Theatre at Northwestern University, where he teaches in the MFA Design and Directing programs.

Marcus has designed for opera, theater and dance across North America and in Europe, including numerous productions for the Minnesota Opera, Lyric Opera Kansas City, the Guthrie Theater, Children’s Theater Company, Minnesota Dance Theater, and Theatre de la Jeune Lune. Recent designs include La fanciulla del West and Hansel and Gretel for Minnesota Opera, Otello for Pittsburgh Opera, Silent Night for Cincinnati Opera, Love’s Labour’s Lost for Actors Theatre of Louisville and The Moving Company; Tartuffe for South Coast Repertory; Dead Man Walking for Madison Opera; The Ballad of Emmett Till for Penumbra Theater; and Cabaret for Theater Latté Da. Other projects include By the Way and Meet Vera Stark for Penumbra Theater; Silent Night for Lyric Opera Kansas City; Tartuffe for Berkeley Repertory Theater and the Shakespeare Theater; and The Barber of Sevillefor Madison Opera.

Recent projects include: Born Yesterday for Ford’s Theatre; MacBeth for Chicago Shakespeare Theatre; Penn and Teller on Broadway, directed by John Rando; the premiere of Queens for a Year, directed by Lucie Tiberghien for Hartford Stage; The Tempest for American Repertory Theatre, Chicago Shakespeare, and South Coast Repertory theatres directed by long time collaborators, Aaron Posner and Teller.The Scottsboro Boys directed by Joe Calarco for The Signature Theatre.At Wit’s End, Love in Afghanistan, Vanya, Sonia, Masha and Spike for Arena Stage; the premiere of American Song, directed by Mark Clements for Milwaukee Rep; The Games Afoot for the Cleveland Playhouse; Company, Hairspray, Chess, and Sunset Boulevard for The Signature Theatre directed by Eric Schaeffer; Sabrina Fair for The Ford’s Theatre and The Merry Wives of Windsor for The Shakespeare Theater; Hand to God, directed by Joanie Schultz for The Studio Theatre; Jelly’s Last Jam for Signature Theatre, directed by Matt Gardiner; District Merchant for South Coast Repertory, directed by Michael Michetti; At Wit’s End, for Cincinnati Playhouse, directed by David Esbjornsen; Three Sisters for The Studio Theatre directed by Jackson Gay; and the premiere of No Sisters for The Studio Theatre written and directed by Aaron Posner.Nominated for Washington, D.C’s Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Set Design fourteen times, he received the award in 2000, 2009, 2015 and most recently in 2017 for Stunning, for Woolly Mammoth Theatre, directed by Anne Kaufmann.Inclusion of materials for The Chicago Shakespeare production of Macbeth was funded in part by The University of Maryland International Program for Creative Collaboration and Research where Mr. Conway is a Professor of Design.