DESIGN SYMPOSIUM BIOS Raquel Davis ’00 Originally from Seattle, Raquel has lived and designed in New York for the last 6 years. Recent NYC credits include: Removable Parts (dir. Emma Griffin), The Dybbuk (dir. Liz Swados), The House of Blue Leaves (dir. Davis McCallum), Ward No. 6 (dir. Jim Calder), and Major Barbara (dir. Susan Fenichell). Raquel spends her summers as the resident designer for the O’Neill Playwrights and Cabaret Festivals in Waterford CT where she works with many of the country’s most talented directors and playwrights. She is a member of the Drama Desk and Obie award winning Keen Company. Raquel started designing while at Middlebury College where she studied Art History, Architecture, Theatre Design and Italian. She spent two summers at the Olney Theatre Center as a design assistant with PTP. She entered the Seattle Repertory Theatre’s professional artist training program in 2000 where she worked with Ken Billington, Chris Perry, TJ Gerckens, ML Geiger, and many other award-winning designers. She received her MFA in 2007 from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She holds the Kennedy Center’s ACTF Award for Lighting Design Excellence (2000) and the J.S. Seidman award for 2007. Sarah LeFeber ’03 Sarah is a recent graduate of UCLA's costume design MFA program. She has been working on numerous film projects which include Chasing Sleep, Fotograf, Werner’s Lost Symphony, The Cabin, Chasing Sleep and The Inconsistencies of Jonathan Finch. Recent theater design work includes Mad Acts and Blogger Project at UCLA. She designed and created the costumes for Love's Labours Lost (cited as The Best of 2006 by The LA Times) at the Actor's Gang. This summer, she designed True West at the Promenade Playhouse in Santa Monica and Twelfth Night at the Muckenthaller Cultural Center in Fullerton. Sarah’s regional credits include work for the Skylight Opera Theatre and the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival. She is delighted to be back at Middlebury College where she first fell in love with costume design. Laura J. Eckelman ’05 Laura is a New York City-based lighting designer and technician. Her design credits include Arts Nouveaux, Twelfth Night of the Living Dead, The Last Night of Ballyhoo, Angels in America: Millennium Approaches, The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek, and Proof. She has received regional and national design awards from the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, as well as a fellowship to the O'Neill Playwright's Conference. As a technician, she has worked at theaters throughout the northeast, including the Public Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club, the American Repertory Theatre, the Weston Playhouse, and Shakespeare & Company. Randy Houston Mercer Randy has designed make-up and hair internationally for theatre, film, fashion, and television where he has refined his talent for design and collaboration. Randy understands the power of make-up and hair. Film and Television credits include Lipstick Jungle, The Sentinel, Little Children, Spiderman 2, Bad Company, Hearts in Atlantis, Runaway Bride, Oceans 11, Meet Joe Black, Mickey Blue Eyes and The Mirror has Two Faces. Broadway and Theatre designs include Hairspray, Fiddler on the Roof, The Producers, Chicago, Flower Drum Song, Sunset Boulevard, Contact, Crazy for You and Sam Mendes’ Cabaret worldwide. With such a diverse background and the driving theme of individual beauty to inform his designs, Randy has built an impressive client list including Barbra Streisand, Lauren Bacall, Glenn Close, Brooke Shields, Juliette Binoche, Marcia Gay-Harden, Natasha Richardson, Sarah Jessica Parker, Claire Forlani, Vanessa Williams, Sigourney Weaver, Hope Davis, Joan Cusack, Patti LaBelle, to name a few. His vast experience in a variety of mediums, his understanding and application of concept, design, product and formula has made Randy Houston Mercer an articulate voice and much sought after talent in the world of make-up and hair. Tom Meyer ’90 (production designer) Tom began his motion picture career as an art director on the films: John
Stockwell’s crazy/beautiful, Christopher McQuarrie’s The Way of the Gun, The Crow: Salvation and No Vacancy. His production design debut was on the Russo brothers’ Welcome to Collinwood produced by George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh. Other films include Blue Crush, A Lot Like Love, Catch That Kid, Alpha Dog , and the short film Whatever We Do (a 2003 Sundance Film Festival entry produced by actor Tobey Maguire) He most recently recreated the period (1970) setting for the tragic circumstances surrounding the loss of a West Virginia college football team in the real-life sports drama, We Are Marshall directed by McG. His upcoming release will be this falls PU-239 for HBO also produced by Steven Soderbergh. He is slated to begin production on McQuarrie’s new film The Standford Prison Experiment this January. Meyer studied theater design at Middlebury College in Vermont before commencing his profession as the charge scenic artist at the Shakespeare Theatre Folger (1990-1993) He cocurrently designed for many regional theatres including Woolly Mammoth, Empty Space, Powerhouse, Albany Repertory and was the company designer 1991-93 for the Liz Lehrman Dance Exchange developing projects at Jacob’s Pillow and premiering at Lincoln Center. Meyer was a resident design associate at the Seattle Repertory Theatre from 1993-96, where he designed such main stage productions as the world premier of Arthur Laurents’ Jolson Sings Again and Charlayne Woodard’s Pretty Fire both directed by Daniel Sullivan and co-designed Pericles directed by Douglas Hughes. For the New Play series he designed the premiers of Jon Robie Baitz’s A Fair Country and Wendy Wasserstein’s An American Daughter, Bill Irwin’s Experiments, Peter Parnell’s Cider House Rules directed by Tom Hulce, and Tim Blake Nelson’s Grey Zone directed by Douglas Hughes. Alexandra Sargent Capps ’89 Alex is a Senior Lecturer in Costume Design at Vanderbilt University. She teaches Costume Design, Costume History, Costume Technology, designs the theatre season for the University, and manages the University costume shop. She received her MFA from Northwestern University. In addition to Vanderbilt, Alex has been on the faculty at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, the International Academy of Design and Technology Nashville, and Middlebury College. Her design credits include shows at the Tennessee Repertory Theatre, the Southwest Repertory Theatre, the Cape Fear Shakespeare Festival, Vanderbilt University, the University of North Carolina Wilmington, Middlebury College, and Victory Gardens Theatre. She served as the resident costume designer for the Chicago based dance company Jump Rhythm Jazz, which performs throughout the United States and Europe. She has worked as the Costume Design Assistant at the Spoletto Festival USA, the Goodman Theatre, and the Steppenwolf Theatre, and has done costuming for Middlebury's Bread Loaf School of English, the Woody Allen Production Company, the New York Shakespeare Festival, and Troma (or “Trauma”!) Film Company. Many thanks to Middlebury College and to everyone in Middlebury’s Theatre department for giving me so many interesting, exciting, and fun artistic and academic opportunities over the years! Debra Kim Sivigny '99.5 Deb has been designing in the greater DC Metro area since graduating in 1999. She is a resident company member of Rorschach Theatre, run by her husband Randy Baker, and his co-founder Jenny McConnell Frederick. She is also a member/design dramaturge of The Inkwell, run by Jessica Burgess ('00.) She has designed for various DC/Baltimore companies--most notably: The Kennedy Center Theatre for Young Audiences, Shakespeare Theatre Company Academy of Classical Acting, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Theater J, Studio Theatre Secondstage, Olney Theatre, National Players, Everyman Theatre, Baltimore Shakespeare Festival and Imagination Stage. She has also worked for several summers at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival as both a designer and design assistant. She has an MFA in costume and scenic design from the University of Maryland. She is the production artisan and the costume designer in residence for Fall 2007 at Georgetown University. Hallie Zieselman
(Resident Scenic & Lighting Designer/Associate Technical Director) In addition to designing for the Middlebury College Theatre Department, Hallie's other recent design credits include collaborations with PTP (both locations), Peter Wexler Studios (Big Apple Circus, Boston Symphony Hall, NextStage Entertainment) Illinois Wesleyan University, Proving Ground, Vermont Stage Company, Olney Theatre Center, The Blue Hill Troupe, Ltd., Clubbed Thumb, Inc., Brown University, The Late Show with David Letterman, Yale University, Tom Schwinn Studios and the College Light Opera Company. In January, she received a Kennedy Center Medallion for continued excellence in service to the American College Theatre Festival. Hallie holds a double BA from Brown University, and an MFA from Northwestern University. She is also a member of United Scenic Artists Local 829.