Susan Hilferty

Arts Professor

B.F.A., Syracuse; M.F.A., Yale. Designs sets and costumes for theatre; costumes for opera, dance, film, live music events and circus. Broadway credits include Wicked (Tony Award, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards); Present Laughter (Tony nomination, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle award nominations); AnnieSpring Awakening (Tony nomination); Hands On A Hardbody; WonderlandLestat (Tony nomination); August Wilson's Radio Golf; AssassinsInto the Woods (Tony and Drama Desk nominations and Hewes Award); Laurie Anderson’s Moby Dick; and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Hilferty's opera credits include La Traviata and Rigoletto for the Metropolitan Opera; Manon for Berlin Staatsoper and LA Opera. Her Ballet designs include works for Eliot Feld, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, and Jennifer Muller. Other designs include Taylor Swift SPEAK NOW World Tour and Ringling Brothers & Barnum and Bailey Circus. In New York City, she designs at the major off-Broadway theatres including the Public Theater, New York Shakespeare Festival, Manhattan Theatre Club, Second Stage, New York Theatre Workshop, the New Group, Lincoln Center Theater, Playwrights Horizons, Classic Stage Company, Roundabout Theatre Company, and Theatre for a New Audience.  Hilferty has worked extensively with Resident Theaters across the Unites States including the Guthrie Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, Goodman Theatre, Berkeley Rep, Yale Rep, McCarter Theatre, Alliance Theatre, Indiana Rep, Long Wharf Theatre, Kennedy Center, Williamstown Theatre Festival, ACT Seattle, Center Stage, and ACT San Francisco. Internationally, her work has been produced in London, Ireland, South Africa, Canada, Mexico, Singapore, Germany, Australia, Austria, Korea and Japan.  Hilferty has received many awards including the Irene Sharaff Awards for Lifetime Achievement, the OBIE for Sustained Excellence in Design, the Michael Merritt Award for Excellence in Design and Collaboration, Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Set Design and  Costume Society of America for CSA Costume Design Award (both for Salomé) and the Ruth Morley Design Award. Recent work includes: Set and Costumes for Hamlet (St Ann’s Warehouse, Brooklyn and Gate Theatre, Dublin, Ireland; nomination for Irish Times Theatre Awards for Best Set Design), Salomé (National Theatre London and NT LIVE); Costumes for Sam Shepard’s Buried Child (London and New York); A Bright Room Called Day (Public Theater); Richard Nelson’s The Michaels (Public Theater) and What Happened? The Michaels Abroad (Frederick Lowe Theatre, Hunter College). Additionally, Hilferty designed set and costumes for the Signature Theatre’s production of Athol Fugard’s Boesman and Lena, directed by Yaël Farber and costumes for Master Harold…and the Boys directed by Fugardwith whom she has designed and/or co-directed 44 productions across the world.