Zane Pihlstrom

Zane Pihlstrom

Zane is a costume and set designer for theatre, opera and dance. Since 2007, he has been a close collaborator with international avant-garde theater and opera director Yana Ross.  Work with Ross includes scenery and costumes for a Eurydice at The Finish National Theater (Helsinki); scenery and costumes for Macbeth at the Volksbühne Am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz (Berlin); costumes for Bambiland (National Theater of Lithuania; Oskaras Korsunovas Theater) and scenery and costumes for Sleeping Beauty (Seoul Performing Arts Festival, South Korea).

 

Upcoming international work in 2013 includes The King Stag (dir. Dmitry Troyanovsky) The Shanghai Theater Academy; You, We, Us, All (dir. Andrew Ondrejcak) Hamburg, Antwerp; Our Class (dir. Yana Ross) with The National Theater of Lithuania.

 

In New York City Zane frequently collaborates with Beth Morrison Projects.  BMP’s focus is to develop new operas and music pieces with today’s emerging and established composers.  Zane has designed scenery and/or costumes for Sumeida’s Song (Here Arts Center); Song of the Uproar, and Binibon (The Kitchen Theater) and Kocho (Galapagos Art Space). 

 

Since 2008 Zane has been the resident designer for Company XIV, a Brooklyn based neo-baroque dance company. He continues to collaborate with visual director and choreographer Austin McCormick on his intensely physical productions that fuse opera, dance, burlesque, circus and fashion. These productions are inherently dark, sensual re-imagined versions of classic operas and fairy tales.  Zane has designed costumes and/or scenery for multiple productions with Mr. McCormick thus creating a decadent company aesthetic that is often intentionally visually self-referencing. In 2012, Zane and Austin won the Opera America Director/Designer Competition. Their fully designed proposal for John Adams’s A Flowering Tree was presented at Boston’s conference and will subsequently premier in New York City in 2014.

 

In New York Zane designed the costumes for the premier production of  Tarrell Alvin McCraneys’ The Brothers Size by (dir. Tea Alagic, The Public Theater) with subsequent tours to The Studio Theater (Washington, D.C.) and The Abbey (Dublin, Ireland).  He has also designed productions with Gotham Chamber Opera, Steppenwolf Theater and Yale Rep.

 

Awards: New York Innovative Theater Award (2011), Bessie Nomination (2012), Donald and Zorka Oenslager Travel Fellowship (2006), The Donald and Zorka Oenslager Award in Stage Design ’05 & ’06, and the 2004 Michael Merritt Scholarship Award in Stage Design.  Zane’s work was exhibited at the Prague Quadrennial in 2007.

 

Education: BFA, DePaul University.  MFA, Yale School of Drama.

 

 

 

 

When Zane was fourteen years old he created his first fully designed production in the barn of his parents lonely Oregon farm.  This production of The Phantom of the Opera had no audience or cast save a snow white pony he had dyed yellow, then blue, then pink and finally green.  He has not removed the emerald glasses since. 

 

 

Eurydice

by Sarah Ruhl

The Finnish National Theater

Helsinki, Finland

February 2013

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Sumeida's Song

created and composed by Mohammed Fairouz

 

Co-produced between Beth Morrison Projects and Here in a Prototype Festival Presentation

HERE Mainstage

New York, NY

January 2013

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chairs
Editorial Photography

Company XIV's Le Fete, 2012

Company XIV's Cirque Feerique 2010

October 2012

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glowing flowers
Orientale

by Montevdi, Rameau, Lully, Szymanowski, Delibes, Schumann, Bizet, and MAYA.

 

Produced by Gotham Chamber Opera

Le Poisson Rouge

New York, NY USA

October 2012

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Song From The Uproar: The Lives and Deaths Of Isabelle Eberhardt

libretto by Missy Mazzoli

Beth Morrison Projects

 

The Kitchen Theater

New York City, USA

February 2012

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kocho neck
Kocho

Music by Garrett Fisher

Produced by Beth Morrison Projects

 

The Galapagos Art Space

Brooklyn, New York

September 2011

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jeff ringleader
Pinocchio

Promotional Video

2011 Edinburgh Fringe Festival

August 2011

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Lover. Muse. Mockingbird. Whore.
Lover, Muse, Mockingbird, Whore
editorial photography and promotional video
April 2011

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balloon with sill.
La Ronde

by Aurthur Schnitzler

 

The Richard B. Fisher Center at Bard College

Annandale-on-Hudson, New York

April 2011

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poster
Nutcracker Rouge

Conceived by Austin McCormick

written by Jeff Takacs

 

 

Bond Street Theater

Brooklyn NY, USA

December 2010

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filament
Act Curtain

Filament Festival

EMPAC Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Troy, NY

October 2010

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godmother and yeva
Le Cirque Feerique

Conceived by Austin McCormick and Zane Pihlstrom

Written by Austin McCormick and Jeff Takacs

 

Company XIV

Bond St. Theater

Brooklyn, NY, USA

May 2010

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video thumbnail
Le Cirque Feerique, promotional video
Company XIV
February 2010

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preveiw image
Or

By Liz Duffy Adams

 

The Women's Project

New York, NY USA

November 2009

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Le Serpent Rouge
Le Serpent Rouge

by Austin McCormick

 

Company XIV

Bond St. Theater

Brooklyn, NY, USA

May 2009

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Binibon
Binibon

by Jack Womack

 

Beth Morrison Projects

The Kitchen

New York, NY, USA

May 2009

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Baal
Baal

by Bertolt Brecht

 

Columbia University
Theater of The Riverside Church
New York, NY USA

October 2008

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Macbeth
Macbeth

Adapted by Katrin Wächter and Katrin Beushausen

 

Volksbühner Am Rosa Luxemburg-Platz
Berlin, Germany

September 2008

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Don�t Look Back
Don't Look Back

by The Class of Project O

 

World Performance Project
Whitney Humanities Center
New Haven, CT

April 2008

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full set
La Boheme

By Giacomo Puccini

 

Yale Opera

The Shubert Theater

New Haven, CT, USA

 

 

February 2008

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The Brother�s Size
The Brother's Size

by Tarell Alvin McCraney



The Public Theater
New York City
The Foundry Theater: The Studio Theater, DC;

The Peacock Theater, Dublin

November 2007

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Marat-Sade
Marat-Sade

by Peter Weiss    

Bard College, The Fisher Center for Performing Arts
Annandale-on-Hudson, NY

October 2007

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Bambiland
Bambiland

by Elfrida Yelnik

 

The Oskaras Korsunovas Theater and The National Drama Theater Of Lithuania
The National Drama Theater of Lithuania
Vilnius, LT

May 2007

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preview
All's Well That Ends Well

By William Shakespeare

 

Yale Repertory Theater

New Haven, CT, USA

April 2006

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Piano Plays
Piano Plays

by Frederike Roth

 

Ensemble Company for the Performing Arts
New Haven, CT

July 2005

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