Award-winning lighting designer, scenic artist join Texas State faculty
Posted by Jayme Blaschke
University News Service
September 16, 2010
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Award-winning Broadway lighting designer Sarah Maines and scenic artist Sara Lee Cely have joined the Department of Theatre and Dance faculty at Texas State University-San Marcos.
Maines and Cely become the newest additions to the rapidly-growing theatre program at Texas State. They join an accomplished design-tech faculty that includes internationally recognized designers Sheila Hargett (Costumes) and Michelle Ney (Scenery). In recent years, multiple design-tech students have advanced to the Kennedy Center as national finalists in the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival.
As a lighting designer, Maines has worked primarily in commercial theatre, excelling in the fast paced atmosphere of Broadway and First National Tours. As assistant lighting designer, Maines worked with Howell Binkley on all seven national productions of Jersey Boys directed by Des McAnuff, which won the Tony Award for Best Lighting Design and Best Musical in 2006. She also worked as associate or assistant lighting designer on projects including the Broadway runs of Sarah Jones’s Bridge and Tunnel and The Pirate Queen. She has also assisted Tony Award-winning lighting designers Chris Parry and Ken Posner.
Cely earned her BFA in costume and lighting design from Texas State, completed a four-year certificate program with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and earned her MFA in painting from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. She has served as studio assistant to Tony Award-winning costume designer Gregg Barnes and as scenic artist for Oliphant Studios in New York. In 2008 she was commissioned by the Texas General Land Office to create a work commemorating the life of Stephen F. Austin and his association with the land office. The fall of 2009 Cely returned to Texas State as guest scenic artist for the university's productions of Bat Boy the Musical and The Servant of Two Masters.
For additional information, contact the Department of Theatre and Dance at (512) 245-3660 or visit www.theatreanddance.txstate.edu.