SCENIC DESIGNER
Libretto by Guillaume Apollinaire
Music by Francis Poulenc
Conceptual scene-by-scene digital renderings for MFA thesis at Boston University.
Synopsis: Guillaume Apollinaire coined the term “surrealist” for his play, The Breasts of Tiresias (1917), in which a Frenchwoman, Thérèse, decides to become a man, and her breasts float away like two balloons. She is renamed Tiresias and becomes a general and a member of parliament. Between the first and second acts, her abandoned husband gives birth to over 40,000 children, all in one afternoon, flipping the script on conventional gender norms and expectations.
SCENIC DESIGNER
Boston University, Studio One
By Ron Richardson
Director: Sonoko Kawahara
Lighting Design: Qian Chengyuan
Costume Design: Ryan Goodwin
Sound Design: Ryan Blaney
Props Master: Katey Christianson
Photographer: Andrew Brilliant
Synopsis: In both Japanese kagura-music and dance, and Noh theatre, the descent of the deity is called kamioroshi. Kamioroshi occurs in sacred time and space. It bends and fuses both dimensions to bring a Shawnee and an African American fugitive slave into an encounter with Japanese peasants during the violent and destructive creation of modernity. Discovering that they share many fundamental values in common, they set out on a pilgrimage to rectify the world.
SCENIC DESIGNER & PROPS MASTER
Boston University, Studio One
Book by Alan Jay Lerner | Music by Fredrick Loewe
Director: Avital Shira
Lighting Design: Amanda Fallon
Costume Design: Sophia Baramidze
Sound Design: Jon Beals
Photographer: Andrew Brilliant
Synopsis: Eliza Doolittle, a rough Cockney girl, meets Colonel Pickering and Henry Higgins in Covent Garden where she’s selling flowers. When Higgins remarks that he could help Eliza speak properly and raise her status in the community, Pickering challenges him to do so and Eliza takes him up on the offer. Though difficult and frustrating for both Eliza and Higgins at first, the lessons soon begin to work wonders, and produce results that neither predict.
SCENIC DESIGNER
Boston University, Joan & Edgar Booth Theatre
Music and Lyrics by Elizabeth Swados
Director: Elaine Vaan Hogue
Music Director: Matt Stern
Lighting Design: Kat Zhou
Costume Design: Zane Kealey
Sound Design: Stephanie Yackovetsky
Props Master: Michelle Sparks
Photographer: Andrew Brilliant
Synopsis: Runaways is a collection of songs, dances, and spoken-word pieces performed by youth who have run away from their homes. Initially created from interviews with homeless children and those in orphanages, Liz Swados weaves songs about personal struggle and the world at large through the eyes of youth in New York City in the ’70s. The show blends different musical styles, from pop to hip-hop and jazz to reggae, while asking why children can’t remain children.
SCENIC DESIGNER
Boston University, Studio One
By Mikhail Bulgakov | Translated by Keith Reddin
Director: Jillian Robertson
Lighting Design: Matthew Rogers
Costume Design: Zane Kealey
Sound Design: Kaitlyn Sapp
Props Master: Emma Barron
Photographer: Kalman Zabarsky
Synopsis: When Maxudov's novel fails, he attempts suicide. When that fails, he dramatizes his novel. To Maxudov's surprise—and the resentment of literary Moscow—the play is accepted by the legendary Independent Theater, and Maxudov plunges into a vortex of inflated egos. Each rehearsal sees more and more sparks flying higher and higher...with less and less chance of poor Maxudov's play ever being performed. Black Snow is the ultimate backstage novel, and a brilliant satire on Mikhail Bulgakov's ten-year love-hate relationship with Stanislavsky Method acting and the Moscow Arts Theater.
SCENIC DESIGNER
Boston University, Studio One
Libretto by Thom K. Miller
Composed by Griffin Candey
Director: Emily Ranii
Lighting Design: David Orlando
Costume Design: Brittany Meehan
Props Master: Sam Galvao
Photographer: Kalman Zabarsky
Synopsis: A darkly comic opera in two parts. When Elizabeth Brigmann’s father dies suddenly, she decides to return to the small town that shunned her twelves years earlier. Amid in the outwardly-cheery glow of 1950’s rural America, Elizabeth and her partner, Kate, must square with the lurking disapproval of the town, the teetering success of the family business, and her family's (quite literal) deals with the Devil.
SCENIC DESIGNER & PAINT CHARGE
Harvard University, Agassiz Theater
Libretto by William Gilbert / Music by Arthur Sullivan
Director: Zachary Mallory
Music Director: Sydney Mukasa
Lighting Design: Kat Zhou
Costume Design: Cassie Lowell & Julia Thomas
Synopsis: The Mikado is one of the most famous and best-loved of Gilbert and Sullivan‘s operettas. Nanki-Poo loves Yum-Yum but she’s betrothed to Ko-Ko, the new Lord High Executioner. When the Mikado orders a beheading, Nanki-Poo and Ko-Ko try to come to an arrangement that doesn’t involve anyone losing their head!
