03
Guest designers & mentors
2019/2020 season
LIGHTING DESIGN
scenic DESIGN
sound DESIGN
LESLIE SMITH
LESLIE SMITH
Recent LIU Post designs include: Iphigenia and Other Daughters, Ubu Roi, Peter/Piper, A Comedy of Errors, Spring Awakening. Other recent designs include: The Comedian’s Tragedy (Access Theatre); The Emperor’s Nightingale, No-No Boy, The Acquittal, Lost in Shanghai (Pan Asian Repertory); This is Sadie (co-design, NYCCT); POUND (Triumverate Artists); Breitwisch Farm (Esperance Theatre Company); Art of the Hijab (Polybe & Seats); Ami and Tami: An Immersive Musical Fable (Floating Tower); Eternal Spring (Gelsey Kirkland Ballet); The Trojan Women, A Chorus Line, How to Succeed . . ., The Nether (UNH); Ralph Lauren Flagship Windows; Homo Sapiens Interruptus (NYC Fringe Festival); Puppet Titus Andronicus (Puppet Shakespeare Players). B.A. Lewis and Clark College; M.F.A. NYU Tisch Design for Stage & Film. Adjunct Faculty Juilliard School of Dance.
LUCRECIA BRICENO
Lucrecia Briceno is a Peruvian artist currently based in Brooklyn. Much of her work has been in association with artists developing innovative and original pieces. Her work includes theatre, opera, puppetry & dance, as well as collaborations in several non-performance projects.Her designs have been presented at such venues as Oxford Playhouse (UK), The Public Theater, Arena Stage, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Dallas Theatre Center, BAM (Fischer), Kennedy Center, Atlas Performing Arts, Berlind Theatre, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, La Mama ETC, Birmingham Repertory (UK), Culture Project, Pregones Theatre, Intar, HERE Arts Center, Soho Rep, Ohio Theatre, Irondale Center, ArtsEmerson, among many others. MFA: Tisch. Member of 829.
LUCRECIA BRICENO
Lucrecia Briceno is a Peruvian artist currently based in Brooklyn. Much of her work has been in association with artists developing innovative and original pieces. Her work includes theatre, opera, puppetry & dance, as well as collaborations in several non-performance projects.Her designs have been presented at such venues as Oxford Playhouse (UK), The Public Theater, Arena Stage, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Dallas Theatre Center, BAM (Fischer), Kennedy Center, Atlas Performing Arts, Berlind Theatre, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, La Mama ETC, Birmingham Repertory (UK), Culture Project, Pregones Theatre, Intar, HERE Arts Center, Soho Rep, Ohio Theatre, Irondale Center, ArtsEmerson, among many others. MFA: Tisch. Member of 829.
JOE BURKARD
Joe Burkard has designed Measure for Measure, Spring Awakening , and Comedy of Errors for Post Theatre Company. Joe has done a large number of theatrical designs and technical direction On and Off Broadway in his career but at the moment he works at Momentum World Wide as the 3D Experience Technical Designer where he and his team design and execute large scale events for brand’s such as: American Express, Verizon, Facebook, NBA, and Walmart and at events like The Coachella Music Festival, The US Open Tennis, The SXSW Festival, and The Super Bowl.
DREW WEINSTEIN
Drew is a New York based theatre and sound artist who's work explores the integration electroacoustic sound and music within the context of theatrical performance. He has created original works which have been presented at venues including HERE Arts Center, JACK, The Brick, The Hive, Jersey City Theatre Center, and LEIMAY’s SOAK. Drew has also directed works at The New Ohio Theatre, The Wild Project, Vital Joint, The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, and Dixon Place among others. As a sound designer, Drew’s work has recently been heard at venues including Under the Radar at the Public Theatre, Abrons Arts Center, HERE, Signature Theatre Center, BRIC, the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, Corkscrew Theatre Festival, Triskelion Arts, Long Island University, Anacostia Arts Center (DC), Plays and Players (Philadelphia), and the Performing Garage.
SUSAN ZEEMAN ROGERS
Susan Zeeman Rogers is an award-winning visual artist, scenic and object designer based in New York. Susan's mixed-media artwork has been exhibited across the United States and is included in many private and public collections. The core of her artistic identity is based on the expression of impermanence and the constant flux of the world. Working as a performance designer has added the elements of time, movement and transformation to her work. Her scenic design often employs objects that can be integrated with an actor's movements. She has designed over 75 productions of theatre, opera, film and dance.
In New York, Susan has worked with BAM Next Wave Festival (Sleep), New York Theater Workshop (Nat Turner in Jerusalem), The Prototype Festival (the critically acclaimed Thumbprint), New Georges, Red Bull Theater, INTAR, Mint Theater, Susan Marshall and Company, MCC Theatre, Flea Theatre, Hook & Eye Theatre, Ice Factory, IRT, One-Eighth Theatre (Teach, Teacher, Teachest), Repertorio Español and Mabou Mines Artists Residency. She is an associate artist with Ripe Time and has collaborated with director Rachel Dickstein on numerous adaptations including Sleep, Septimus and Clarissa, Innocents, Betrothed and Fire Throws.
Regionally, Susan has designed for Los Angeles Opera, Annenberg Center, Yale Repertory Theatre, Trinity Repertory Theatre, Shakespeare and Company, Two River Theatre Company, Actors Shakespeare Project, SpeakEasy Stage Company, Opera Boston (the critically acclaimed Nixon in China), Merrimack Repertory Theatre, Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, Curtis Opera, Opera North, Underground Railway Theatre, ART Institute, Contemporary American Theatre Company and Moscow Art Theatre School.
Awards include a Drama League Nomination for Distinguished Production for Septimus and Clarissa (Ripe Time); Best Design, First Irish Festival for Is Life Worth Living (Mint Theatre); 2010 Elliot Norton Outstanding Set Design Award for Adding Machine, A Musical (SpeakEasy Stage Co); 2018 Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Production for Constellations(Underground Railway Theater); 1997, 2008 and 2010 IRNE Outstanding Set Design Awards; Best Design, Opera Online for The Pearl Fishers (Opera Boston), HOLA and ACE Awards for Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter and the 2000-2002 NEA/TCG Career Development Program for Designers.
The USA Exhibit Committee has selected Sleep as a Featured Production Design for the Prague Quadrennial of World Scenography in June, 2019. Susan's design for Septimus and Clarissa was also selected for the USA Exhibit at the Prague Quadrennial in June, 2015. She was a 2014/2015 Audrey Resident Artist and is an Affiliated Artist with New Georges.
DREW WEINSTEIN
Drew is a New York based theatre and sound artist who's work explores the integration electroacoustic sound and music within the context of theatrical performance. He has created original works which have been presented at venues including HERE Arts Center, JACK, The Brick, The Hive, Jersey City Theatre Center, and LEIMAY’s SOAK. Drew has also directed works at The New Ohio Theatre, The Wild Project, Vital Joint, The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, and Dixon Place among others. As a sound designer, Drew’s work has recently been heard at venues including Under the Radar at the Public Theatre, Abrons Arts Center, HERE, Signature Theatre Center, BRIC, the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, Corkscrew Theatre Festival, Triskelion Arts, Long Island University, Anacostia Arts Center (DC), Plays and Players (Philadelphia), and the Performing Garage.
JACK J. NIESI
Jack Niesi (Sound Designer) recently completed a run doing sound for the off-Broadway show Dropping Gumballs on Luke Wilson, with The Working Theater. Other off-Broadway includes Alternating Currents and On This Side of the World. Last fall, he was sound designer for American Idiot at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center, and is designer/mixer for Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol, now in its 11th year.
As musical director, Jack has conducted many shows, including Gypsy, Funny Girl, Fiddler, My One and Only, Follies, A Chorus Line and many others, all performed with full 24+ piece orchestras. He has produced and conducted several cast albums of shows he has been MD for, and is planning for a future concert version of a popular musical to be performed with a 40 piece concert orchestra.