Christopher Barreca was the Scenic Designer for the CalArts Center for New Performance’s production of King Lear, both in its world premiere at the Brewery in Los Angeles in 2002 and in France at the Frictions Festival, sponsored by Theatre Dijon Bourgogne.
Mr. Barreca has designed over 150 productions internationally including the following premiers: On Broadway; The musicals Rocky (2014 Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics awards for Best Scenic Design), Marie Christine and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Chronicle of a Death Fortold (American Theater Wing Award) for Lincoln Center Theater, Our Country’s Good (Prague Quadrennial), and Search and Destroy(Drama-logue Award). Off-Broadway; Athol Fugard’s Train Driver and Painted Rocks, Richard Greenberg’s Three Days of Rain (Drama Desk Nomination) and Everett Beekin at Lincoln Center Theater, Bernard-Marie Koltes’s Roberto Zucco, Skarmeta’s Burning Patience, Eric Overmeyer’s In Perpetuity throughout the Universe. Regional; Tony Kushner’s Intelligent Homosexuals guide... (TBA Award), Culture Clash’s The Birds, The Karamazof Bros. and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Labs L’universe, Eric Overmeyer’s Dark Rapture and The Heliotrope Bouquet, Charles Ludlum’s Hedda Gabler, Eric Ehn’s Wolf at the Door and William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, Anna Deavere-Smith in the tour of her Twilight: Los Angeles. Opera; Munchener Biaennale Germany, Wole Soyenka’s Scourge of Hyacinths (BMW award nomination) and the recent opera productions of Semiromide and The Pearl Fishers directed by Travis Preston. Dance; at the Joyce, Susan Marshall’s Solo, Roman Oller’s Good night Paradise and Tears for Violeta.
In addition he has designed over 200 productions at major theaters throughout the US and internationally including; The Gutherie, Hartford Stage, ACT in San Francisco and Seattle, Baltimore Center Stage, The Ford Theater in Washington, DC., The Mark Taper Forum, Seattle Repertory Theater, Berkeley Repertory Theater, The Dallas Theater Center, The Yale Repertory Theater, The Roundabout and Lincoln Center in NYC. In 1990 he was awarded an NEA visiting artist grant to work with artists in Calcutta, India.
He has recently been the design consultant on several major theater design projects, including the REDCAT theater in the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex designed by Frank Gehry, and Berkeley Repertory Theater’s 650 seat proscenium theater that opened in 2001. Mr. Barreca has been teaching design since 1985 and is currently the Head of Scene Design at the CalArts School of Theater.
