An-lin Dauber (she/her) is a New York based set and costume designer. Notable set and costume designs include Paul Swan is Dead and Gone; What You Are Now (The Civilians), Common Ground Revisited (Huntington Theatre Company), The Song of Summer (Mixed Blood Theatre), The Kind Ones (Magic Theater), A Christmas Carol: The Live Radio Play; The Incredible Book Eating Boy (Alliance Theatre), It’s A Wonderful Life; Lost in Yonkers (Hartford Stage), Seven Guitars (Yale Repertory Theatre), Into the Woods (Arkansas Repertory Theater), And Then They Came For Me (Alabama Shakespeare Festival), The Thanksgiving Play (Virginia Stage Company), Macbeth (Theater Alaska), The Seagull (Serenbe Playhouse), Letters That You Will Not Get (The American Opera Project), Marisol; Blood Wedding; The Bar Plays: Small Craft Warnings and The Time of Your Life; A Bright Room Called Day (The Williams Project). She is a company member of The Williams Project, a Seattle based living wage theater company committed to radical hospitality. MFA Yale School of Drama. Member local USA 829.
I am a visual storyteller: a set, costume, production designer. I envision and fabricate immersive environments that invite the performers and the audience to be collaborators in the space. I create sculptural environments and clothes that are intensely visceral, playful, and transformative.
A long-term question for me is how to make theater sustainable. I am interested in reused and salvaged materials, particularly “trash.” The materials and objects that we throw away tell stories about who we are as individuals and a society. Additionally, the majority of materials used in theater are sourced new and thrown out when no longer needed. I collaborate with shops to source re-used materials where possible and to explore processes of working so that materials can be stored and repurposed at the end of a show. My goal is to develop broader methods of sustainable theater making so that we can work towards a zero waste model.
Over the past 10 years of designing, and throughout my MFA at Yale, I have gravitated towards collaborative and non-hierarchical working relationships, where design becomes an integral vehicle for storytelling and meaning-making. This is in contrast to a default (and still dominant) process in the theater world, where the design is finalized before rehearsals start and is often limited to a solely illustrative rather than functional role. I employ this working method in my collaborations with The Williams Project, a living-wage radical hospitality theater company based in Seattle, where I design the production in conjunction and collaboration with the rehearsal process during a working retreat.
I create theater based on radical inclusion and radical hospitality. I believe that we start with gathering diverse voices—particularly those that have been historically marginalized and erased from the stage—and allow the voices in the room to shape the narrative. Whether our text is a Western canonical play or a devised performance piece, the experiences and cultural backgrounds of those in the room are the stories that shape the performance. Similarly, we need to curate spaces that welcome a diverse audience—focusing on communities that historically have not felt welcome in theater spaces—and embrace different ways of engaging with the art. This begins with low to no cost admissions, open and inviting spaces, disability programming, and continues with questioning our assumptions of how theater “should be” experienced.
As my artistic path unfolds, I make work that celebrates our differences and creates opportunities for more voices to be heard. I cultivate and grow a core group of directors and other collaborators that I work with regularly. I pursue opportunities that encourage me to create live magic and transformation in spaces. Please feel free to contact me if you are interested in working together. www.anlindauber.com
Sara Walsh is a New York based artist, designer and teacher. Her work investigates boundaries and rules, transformation and surprise, and the shifting expectations of audience and performer. Sara’s designs have been presented in Germany, Ireland, Scotland and France, and she recently designed and co-directed the North American tour of Emily's D+Evolution for the Grammy Award winning musician Esperanza Spalding. She helped create the production of Honestly Sincere with Theatre in quarantine that was named a New York Times Best Theatre of 2021. Her design work has been presented in New York at Lincoln Center, St Ann’s Warehouse, PS122, the Ontological-Hysteria Theatre, The Kitchen, New York Live Arts, Women’s Project, and Classic Stage Company; as well as across the country including A.R.T., The Wexner Center, The San Diego Museum of Art and the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston.
She helped create Queen of the Night (as Head of Design), a large scale immersive theatre/circus/food experience built in the Diamond Horseshoe, the club in the basement of the Paramount Hotel in Times Square. New York Magazine called it “New York’s hottest nightlife event”. She won a New York Dance and Performance award (“Bessie”) for 837 Venice Blvd. with Faye Driscoll Group Her work with choreographer Faye Driscoll has toured to the Wexner Center for the Arts, UCLA, the ICA/Boston, CounterPULSE, the American Dance Festival, and The Yard. Her design for Get Mad at Sin! (directed by Jeff Larson, conceived and performed by Andrew Dinwiddie) was a NY Times Critic's Pick and toured to the TBA Festival in Portland OR, The Fusebox Festival in Austin, TX and took over the parking lot of the San Diego Museum of Art with a revival tent. She designed the Obie award winning Great Lakes for Lee Sunday Evans, and an immersive house party musical called The Bad Years for Stephen Brackett. She has worked with comedians Jerry Seinfeld, Colin Quinn, and Hasan Minaj, and was Associate Designer on a new ballet with Basil Twist, Dorothy and the Prince of Oz.
Sara is a member of Wolf 359 in NY and Resident Designer at Wellfleet’s Harbor Stage Theatre on Cape Cod. Her designs have been presented at the Prague Quadrennial and she has designed books, bookstores, and zoo exhibits. B.A. Loyola University Chicago. M.F.A. New York University