ABOUT

Charles Murdock Lucas is a scenic and media designer  based in San Diego, CA working for theatre and opera companies across the United States and internationally.  In previous seasons he has been Resident Scene Designer for the Ohio Light Opera, Texas Shakespeare Festival, Luna Stage and Duke City Repertory Theatre.

Recent designs include The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (Cygnet Theatre Company), Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Skylight Music Theatre), Out of Darkness, Into the Fire, The Turn of the Screw (Eastman Opera Theatre), Trying, Gidion's Knot (PCPA), The Light in the Piazza, Peter and the Starcatcher (freeFall theatre), Curtains (Barter Theatre) The Royal Family (The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey), Oliver! (Cabrillo Stage), American Idiot (Children's Musical Theatre of San Jose), Mary Poppins (Children's Musical Theatre of San Jose), Honky Tonk Angels (Virginia Stage Company), La Voix Humaine and The Old Maid and the Thief (Eastman Opera Theatre), Honey Fist, Sans Merci (Flux Theater Ensemble, NYC), Vita and Virginia (as Resident Scene Designer for Luna Stage's 2012-2013 season), and George Frideric Handel's Orlando (Eastman Opera Theatre), among others.

His designs for The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds at Cygnet Theatre Company will appear in the Professional/Transformation Exhibit from the USA for the 2019 Prague Quadrennial. He was awarded the USITT Scene Design Award Sponsored by Rose Brand for 2012. Designs for Il tabarro & Krapp’s Last Tape appeared in the 2011 Prague Quadrennial and he exhibited at the 2011 National Design Portfolio Review at the Bohemian National Hall in New York City, the 2011 Michael Merritt Design Showcase at the Goodman Theatre and at the 2011 USITT Young Designer’s Forum in Charlotte, North Carolina. Select images of his designs are published in Scene Design and Stage Lighting - 10th Edition by R. Craig Wolf and Dick Block. In 2015, his work as a sculptor was featured as a part of Mozawa's Y Portraits: Awakenings in Chicago, IL.  His team's production concept for The Cradle Will Rock was selected for the Robert L.B. Tobin Director-Designer Showcase of OPERA America and presented at the Opera Conference 2015 in Washington, D.C. The work was  featured as part of a rotating six-month exhibition at the National Opera Center.See the full press release here. There is a website dedicated to the project here.

He teaches Scene Design and Projection and Integrated Media Design for the B.A. and M.F.A. programs at San Diego State University. He has has served on faculty at Southern Oregon University, taught courses at  University of North Carolina School of the Arts and has lectured at Temple University, The South Carolina Governor's School for the Arts and Humanities, University of Alabama, the Associated Colleges of the South Conference, the North Carolina Thespian Festival and  Furman University. He received his Master of Fine Arts in Scenic Design at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts where he was the  A. J. Fletcher Opera Fellow in Scene Design. He is a proud member of USA 829.

See the latest work at www.sketchbook.charlesmurdocklucas.com
Opera Conference 2015: Increasing Civic Impact, May 6–9, 2015, at the Washington Marriott Georgetown. Photo by Jati Lindsay, courtesy of OPERA America.