PQ&A - USITT at the 2019 PQ USITT

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.