Lighting Design
Festival 56 | The Grace Theatre | July 2018
Based on the book of the same name, this fantastical play explores the origin of everyone’s favorite ageless boy. Using clever and innovative theatrical storytelling techniques, the story focuses on bravery, the difficulties of growing up and what truly leads you home.
Playwright: Rick Elice
Director: Tim Seib
Scenic Designer: Ali Strelchun
Costume Designer: Courtney Anderson Brown
Lighting Design
Festival 56 | The Grace Theatre | June 2018
Based on the beloved TV show and comic strip, this cheeky musical takes us a bit into The Addams family’s future. Eighteen-year-old Wednesday brings home a boy. The only problem is…he’s completely normal.
Book and Music by: Andrew Lippa
Director: James Calitri
Scenic Designer: Ali Strelchun
Costume Designer: Courtney Anderson Brown
Scenic Design
Strawdog Theatre Company | The Berenice Theatre | November 2018
Set in a surreal re-imagining of the height of the French Terror, four women try to wrestle with the bonds of gender, station and destiny as the threat of the guillotine looms ever closer with each second. Oh, and did we mention it’s a comedy?
Playwright: Lauren Gunderson
Director: Denise Yvette Serna
Lighting Designer: Claire Chrzan
Costume Designer: Leah Hummel
Lighting Design
Festival 56 | Soldiers and Sailors Park | July-August 2018
Deep in the forest, bewildered by the fall of night, four lovers do their best to overcome fairies’ tricks, magic spells and the ever-changing fickle nature of young love.
Playwright: William Shakespeare
Director: Jennifer J. Hopkins
Scenic Designer: Christopher Gadomski
Costume Designer: Justin Gannaway
Scenic Design
The University of Iowa | Thayer Theatre | March 2016
Based on the Greek tale of Iphigenia being sacrificed by her father for strategic political gain, Iphigenia Crash Land Falls onto the Neon Shell that was Once Her Heart (a rave fable) is a modern adaptation of the tragedy that asks a new series of questions, the most prevalent being: “Why do we find the death of young women beautiful?”
Playwright: Caridad Svich
Director/Projections Designer: Mario El Caponi
Lighting Designer: Lucas Ingram
Costume Designer: Angie Esposito
Scenic Design
The University of Iowa | Thayer Theatre | November 2016
Three siblings, one much younger boyfriend, a sisters' bitter rivalry that has spanned almost half a century: all in an ancestral home threatened to be lost to them all forever.
In Christopher Durang's Tony-winning play, Vanya, a would-be playwright foiled by diffidence, Sonia, a woman woefully unfulfilled and Masha, their bombastic movie star sister come to proverbial blows over their clashing personalities, past transgressions and ultimately the fate of the house where it all began.
Playwright: Christopher Durang
Director: Eric Forsythe
Lighting Designer: David Thayer
Costume Designer: Hayley Ryan
Lighting Design
The University of Iowa | Mabie Theatre | February 2017
Mr. Burns, a post-electric play is a show that asks “If all the lights were to go out tomorrow, what would we remember? What about seven years from now? What about seventy-five?” Set directly after a nuclear apocalypse, Mr. Burns answers these questions over three acts. These acts get progressively more heightened in tone until we are transported from a gritty, realistic portrait of survival to a grotesque new form of opera the likes of which we have never seen.
Book and Lyrics: Anne Washburn
Score: Michael Friedman
Director: Tlaloc Rivas
Scenic Designer: Nic Wilson
Costume Designer: Brittany Dee Bodley
Scenic Design
The University of Iowa | Theatre B | May 2016
squeeze: A Motel Play focused on the societal pressures faced by women in America. The expectation to be well-mannered, mentally stable, to adhere to a certain standard of beauty, to marry by a certain age or even to be a certain race can build up until there’s no room to breathe. This unbearable pressure is what squeeze achieved.
*squeeze was commissioned for the Iowa New Play Festival 2016
Playwright: Theresa Giacopasi
Director: Ariel Franceour
Lighting Designer Hoejeong Yoo
Costume Designer: Morgan Meier
Lighting Design
The University of Iowa | Theatre B | May 2017
An off-the-wall and often zany deconstruction of Henrik Ibsen's Lady From the Sea, Aurora is at the same time a queer re-telling and a completely original conversation about what it means to live a life full of love, passion and instability as opposed to one of safety, predictability and comfort.
*Aurora Fra Bergen, or, Ibsanity was commissioned for The Iowa New Play Festival 2017
Director/Playwright: Nina Morrison
Scenic Designer: Savannah Genskow
Costume Designer: Lindsey Kuhn
Lighting Design
The University of Iowa | Space Place | March 2016
Hattie Mae’s Juke Joint was a devised musical revue produced as an MFA Dance Thesis. Using 1960’s juke joint culture as a lens, the piece studied the economic struggle and vehement racism African Americans have historically faced and still do today.
Producer: Alvon Reed
Lighting Design
The University of Iowa | Space Place | March 2016
Rhythm Unbound was an MFA Dance Thesis piece focusing on the choreographer’s experience teaching ballroom dance to people suffering from Parkinson’s Disease. Through a series of vignettes, Rhythm used abstracted and expanded ballroom and ballet techniques to explore the loss and reclaiming of agency in the body.
Director/Choreographer: Tallis Strub
Lighting Design
The University of Iowa | Theatre B | February 2017
GIRL: A Labyrinth Dark was an experimental gallery piece that combined projections, dance, circus arts, puppetry and traditional theatre techniques to explore the non-linear way the brain processes the trauma of sexual assault.
Playwright: Emma Genesen
Director: Anne Marie Nest
Scenic Designer: Kenton Jones
Costume Designer: Hayley Ryan
Lighting Design
The University of Iowa | Thayer Theatre | May 2015
In the woods, there is a house where no one goes until they pass away. There, Laila stands guard to the world of the dead. Outside the house, there is a silo from which a tree has burst forth. In the silo and beneath the tree, there is Wiley who is neither part of our world, nor the world beyond. Wiley exists in a monotonous purgatory that seems to last forever. That is, until Lou comes along and shatters the wall standing between what we know and what we never shall.
*Silo Tree was commissioned for The Iowa New Play Fesitval 2015
Playwright: Sam Collier
Director: Nina Morrison
Scenic Designer: Kevin Dudley
Costume Designer: Hiram Orozco
Lighting Design and Rigging
SOFA CONNECT 2015 | Chicago Navy Pier | November 2015
In collaboration with the 3D Design Department of The University of Iowa, Lucas Ingram (another MFA Lighting Design student) and I designed an installation to compete in the 2015 CONNECT Contest at Chicago’s SOFA Conference (Sculpture, Objects, Functional Art and Design). Our challenge was to create an inviting space where people would be drawn to sit and connect with other artists and designers on the expo floor.
The contest had a few parameters. These included seating for at least twelve people, special lighting, display space for the furniture designs of Iowa students and a constructed element which embodies connectivity. 3D Design was responsible for the design and construction of the physical installation. They were interested in tree canopies and what life flourished underneath their shade and protection. The resulting swirling pattern was based off of the forest's natural growth.
Installation Design: Sarah Gutowski, Justin Bailey, Vako Darjania
Production Team: Yingjie Chen, Yi Xie, Magen Krones, Yiwen Chu, Elissa Opfer, Bree Glenn and Darcy MacGuire.
*3DS Max Renderings courtesy of Justin Bailey
Lighting Design
The University of Iowa | Thayer Theatre | November 2015
Interrupted was a devised dance piece that took place in a series of overlapping vignettes. Through movement, theatre, video and sound, we explored the theme of interruption and the various ways it interferes with or makes our lives that much more interesting.
Projection Design: Angie Esposito
Original Composition: Jonah Elrod, Carlos Cotallo Solares
Read the Daily Iowan article here.
Scenic Design
Paper Project | PCPA Marian Stage | October 2016
A blistering commentary on the manipulative, paranoid and hypocritical way of humankind, The Crucible has been said to be one of the greatest American plays. The Crucible is heavily based on the events of the Salem Witch Trials and studies how jealousy, power and a spark of fear can overturn an entire society.
In this theoretical iteration, the stage floor is a giant sandbox in a Salem that has long since turned to dust. The players are ghosts onstage, meant to tell and re-live their stories until their message is finally received.
Lighting Design
Cornell College | The Uptown Stage | December 2013
Martin McDonough's The Pillowman is a brutal and surprisingly hilarious story about a writer in a world ruled by a tyrannical government. It can be said that Pillowman is a commentary on the act of censorship or the depths of human depravity, but ultimately, it is a story about storytelling.
Playwright: Martin McDonagh
Director: Fin Boadu
Scenic Design: Kaya Schafer
Costume Design: Ani Sledginowski
