Brooklyn-based designer Luke Cantarella creates scenery and video design for theater, opera, dance and performances across the United States, Europe, and Africa. He has designed scenery for over 140 productions across the United State and Europe, and collaborates frequently with anthropologists to create design-based research engagements. Recent projects include The Plot Against America (HBO), The President is Missing (Showtime), South Pacific (Goodspeed Musicals) and Evita (Repertory Theater of St. Louis). He has been nominated and received Joseph Jefferson Citations®, Barrymore Awards®, St. Louis Critics Circle Awards, Kevin Kline Awards®, Connecticut Critic Circle Awards, and other honors for his design work.
Luke is a co-author of Ethnography by Design: Scenographic Experiments in Field Work. A member of Wingspace Theatrical Design, Luke is committed to creating a more just and sustainable theatrical community in New York City and beyond. Luke is also a founding member of Equity through Design Mentorship, a program that connects students from traditional underserved groups with one-to-one mentorship with professionals in the entertainment design fields.
Luke has been teaching design for fifteen years. He is currently the Chair of Film and Screen Studies at Pace University, where he teaches classes in Production Design, Speculative Thinking, and 3D Modeling. Prior to Pace, he ran the Master of Fine Arts program in Set Design at the University of California – Irvine. He has received grants from the New York Entertainment Workforce Diversity Grant Program, the National Endowment for the Humanities, University of California Institute for Research in the Arts to support his work.
