Creative career began in theatre at age 16 as a
performer in Civic Light Opera productions.
At age 21, produced, directed and designed a summer
workshop production of the musical, Grease,
using talent from the area high schools.
While attending college,
facilitated
teen
theatre workshops
and community theatre productions for the local Arts Council.
Senior directing project at California
State University, Northridge was William Mastrosimone's Extremities.
As career developed, gradually began focusing
on design - over thirty LA area theatrical
stage productions to date.
While
working with Shari Lewis on her television series, was tasked with
bringing Lamb Chop On Broadway to the Richard
Rodgers Theatre in New York.
Most prominent recent local work is the musical, Working,
at the Colony Theatre which won the LA Stage Alliance (formerly
TheatreLA) Ovation Award
in 1994 for best Set Design.
A notable challenge was Identical Twins From Baltimore at
the Tiffany Theatre starring Sheryl Lee Ralph. The madcap musical, about
identical twins -
a beautiful black woman and a not-so beautiful white woman (played by
a man in drag) – who try to make it in New York and Los Angeles,
required over a dozen scene changes including a Hollywood hot-tub party,
a manhole
for the actor to fall in, and a soundstage period epic film shoot - all
on a small pie-shaped stage with no wing space. The pop-up book style
with two small turntables proved to be extremely effective in keeping
the
story moving
at a swift
pace.
Continued to teach summer workshops at community colleges, designing Bye,
Bye, Birdie! in
Lichtenstein pop-art comic style and West Side Story utilizing
a skeletal cityscape of scaffold structures that was choreographed
to dance around the stage with the performers.
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