scenographer
“Scenography is not simply concerned with creating and presenting images to an audience; it is concerned with audience reception and engagement. It is a sensory as well as an intellectual experience, emotional as well as rational.”
– Joslin McKinney | The Cambridge Introduction to Scenography
There is no theatre without scenography; the manipulation and orchestration of theatrical elements (light, sound, costume and set design) in space and time. In my work I am interested in crafting theatrical, active, and dynamic environments where the assemblages of these elements perform action and create meaning, while exploring how these different elements come together in order to engage us, push us, to channel us.
Set & Environmental Design
I am interested in how set design works as an experiential event and a dynamic ever-changing agency, rather than a set of static physical elements, or representational or metaphoric images.
To me a set design is not a built structure that envelopes a performance, or a supporting “setting” that enables a play, but rather a spatial art that has a profound impact on spectators.
I am interested in creating performance environments – whether they are new or re-framed found spaces – that move us emotionally, physically, and spiritually.
“Scenery is not an end in itself but a logical component of the complementary arts of the stage. The scenic artist collaborates on equal terms with the author and the director”
-Josef Svoboda
The Cherry Orchard
An adaptation of the Cherry Orchard about a community in transition as the old makes way for the new.
A Dozen Dreams
Part installation, part immersive theater, invites spectators to experience the pandemic dreams of 12 NYC female playwrights
The Loop
A devised site-specific meditation on the past, present and future of LaGuardia Community College and its community
Costume Design
In contemporary performance practices the presence of costume within the scenographic whole is often neglected, and by and large the contribution of the costume designer to the performance has been inferior to that of the set designer. My ambition is to contribute to creative experiments that amplify the intrinsic importance of costume within the realm of a theatrical event, and to consequently elevate the role of costume designer.
In my work I explore costume’s semiotic and phenomenological potential in making meaning in performance. I am highly interested in investigating the role of costume in transforming a performer into a character and exploring its relationships with all other visual elements of the stage.
I experiment with costume as an agent for transformation through its manipulation and interaction with body, movement, scenic elements, lighting, space. In my work costume is an active agent; it is dynamic, it performs action, creates meaning, evokes emotions. It unfolds with a narrative and moves forward in the same way a character progress.
“Costume is critical. It is critical to making performance, critical to spectatorship, critically overlooked within scholarship, notable when in crisis, and a means of critically interrogating the body. It is therefore critical that we discuss costume”
-Rachel Hahn
Holoscenes
An underwater performance installation which connects individual everyday behaviors to long-term societal patterns driving global warming
Rivers of Light
Disney’s Animal Kingdom vibrant nighttime spectacular celebration of the magical animal spirit
A Dancer's Dream
A multidisciplinary, theatrical reimagining of Stravinsky’s ballets “The Fairy's Kiss” and “Petrushka”
Dreaming Up!
One of Disney’s largest ever parades, celebrating Tokyo Disneyland's 35th anniversary
Don Juan in Prague
A radically re-conceptualized version of Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni
Orfeo ^2
A juxtaposition of Matthew Aucoin’s dramatic cantata “The Orphic Moment” with Gluck’s “Orfeo and Eurydice”
King Lear
An impressive contemporary interpretation of Shakespeare’s epic play
Offenbach!!!
An evening featuring three of Offenbach’s most zany operettas: Les Deux Aveugles, Ba-Ta-Clan and L'ile de Tulipatan
Song for New York
An ambitious and at times soaring love letter to New York City’s complex history in the form of a site-specific piece of musical theatre
The Merchant of Venice
A contemporary adaptation of one of Shakespeare's most controversial plays
HaMapah
A multimedia dance journey tracing the intersections of African, Jewish and Native American heritages
Blood Wedding
A poetic exploration of Lorca’s archetypal human characters in an allegorical world
TIDE
An intensely sensual, visually intricate piece of experimental dance theater
Masquerade
A beautiful contemporary take on Russian romantic writer Mikhail Lermontov’s verse play
Pearl of Combat
A puppet adaptation of the old Finnish mythological poem Kullervo
Visual Dramaturgy
I was educated as a theatre designer, and over the years cautiously stepped into the area of visual dramaturgy, without any formal training and without a great deal of understanding of what visual dramaturgy actually could entail.
Starting from the definition of dramaturgy as “the art or technique of dramatic composition and theatrical representation”, I approach visual dramaturgy as a technique of transforming dramatic composition into a system of visual signs to create meaning. My work as a visual dramaturg lives in the creative place between a source material (text, movement, music, etc.) and its eventual manifestation in design .
My main interest as a visual dramaturg is in helping the playwright in new play development. I help writers to develop a visual lexicon and “see” the text while they are consciously generating a play. My goal is to lay the foundations for visuality of the play and to help a playwright discover the visual potential of the text. Through this process I offer visual ideas from which a scenographer, director, and dramaturg ultimately can build a production.
The focus is no longer on the questions whether and how the theatre ‘corresponds to’ the text that eclipses everything else, rather the questions are whether and how the texts are suitable material for the realization of a theatrical project.
-Hans-Thies Lehmann
SKiNFolk: An American Show
Jillian Walker’s quilted ritual of liberation, bearing witness to the playwright-performer's identity, heritage and legacy as a Black woman in this America
Boney Manilli
Edgar Arcenaux’s revisionist historical tale of an artist outcast by society who fucks the rules and creates his own redemption