Beowulf Boritt Design

Beowulf Boritt designed the Tony®, Drama Desk, and Outer Critic's Circle Award winning set for Susan Stroman's production of New York, New York by Kander, Ebb, Miranda, Thompson, and Washington and the Tony Award® winning set for James Lapine's Act One. He has received four additional Tony Award® nominations for his designs for Susan Stroman's production of Kander, Ebb, and Thompson’s The Scottsboro Boys, Ms. Stroman's production of Selina Fillinger's POTUS, Mr. Lapine's production of Kitt, Korie & Lapine's Flying Over Sunset ( for which he won a Drama Desk award), and Evan Cabnet's production of Therese Raquin.

His book about set design, Transforming Space Over Time, is available on Amazon and through Bookshop.org.

He is the founder and manager of The 1/52 Project ,which has raised over $200,000 to date, to provide financial support for early career designers from historically excluded groups with the aim of diversifying and strengthening the Broadway design community.

His thirty one Broadway designs include Harold Prince's final Broadway shows: David Thompson's Prince of Broadway and Alfred Uhry’s LoveMusik. He designed Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Sondheim on Sondheim, and Finn and Sheinkin's The Twenty-Fifth Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, both directed by Mr. Lapine. He designed Steve Martin's Meteor Shower directed by Jerry Zaks and Menken, Slater, and Palminteri's A Bronx Tale co-directed by Robert DeNiro and Mr. Zaks. Other Broadway highlights include Adrienne Kennedy's Ohio State Murders directed by Kenny Leon, August Wilson's The Piano Lesson directed by LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Sankoff & Hein's Come From Away directed by Chris Ashley, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Thomas Kail, and Anthony Veneziale's Freestyle Love Supreme directed by Mr. Kail, Mike Birbiglia's The New One and The Old Man And The Pool directed by Seth Barrish, the New York and Russian productions of Curtis & Meehan's Chaplin for director Warren Carlyle, John Rando's revival of Bernstein, Comden & Green's On The Town, Rob Askins' Hand To God directed by Moritz Von Stuelpnagel, and the long running Broadway and international hit Rock of Ages by Chris d'Arienzo directed by Kristin Hanggi.

He and his work have been called "feverishly inventive" (New York Times), "visionary" (Playbill), "miraculous" (New Yorker), "a scene-stealing master builder" (Architectural Digest), "unapologetically daring" (Town and Country) , "the man behind the Broadway set so realistic someone tried to charge their phone on it." (Vanity Fair) and "a genius guy who does crazy sets." (Mel Brooks).

Off-Broadway, he has designed over one hundred shows, including Kenny Leon's productions of Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing, Saheem Ali and Jocelyn Bioh’s Merry Wives, and Dan Sullivan's Coriolanus for Shakespeare in the Park, Fiddler On The Roof (in Yiddish) directed by Joel Grey, the original production of Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years and Brown & Sherman's The Connector for director Daisy Prince, Mike Birbiglia's The New One, Sleepwalk With Me, My Girlfriend's Boyfriend, and Thank God For Jokes for Seth Barrish, and Strindberg’s Miss Julie for director Scott Schwartz.

He has designed scenery for Lincoln Center Theater, the Roundabout Theatre Company, the Public Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club, Second Stage, the Vineyard Theatre, Manhattan Class Company, Primary Stages, thePearl Theatre, Keen Company, Red Bull, and the New Group.

His work has been seen in Europe, Asia, and Australia. Across the United States he has designed for the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, La Jolla Playhouse and the Old Globe in San Diego, Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, the Kennedy Center, Arena Stage, Ford's Theatre, and the Signature Theatre in Washington, D.C., the McCarter Theatre, the George Street Playhouse, Crossroads Theater Company, and the Papermill Playhouse in New Jersey, the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, the Ahmanson Theater, the Mark Taper Forum, and the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles, the Huntington Theatre and the American Repertory Theatre in Boston, the Alley Theater in Houston, the Fifth Avenue Theatre and the Seattle Repertory Theatre in Seattle, Hartford Stage and the Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut, the Ogunquit Playhouse in Maine, The Pittsburgh Public Theatre, The Philadelphia Theatre Company, the Dallas Theatre Center, the Cleveland Playhouse, Saint Louis Repertory Theatre, the Cincinnati Playhouse, the Delaware Theatre Company, Chicago Shakespeare, the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, the Utah Shakespeare Festival and many others.

He designed Warren Carlyle's 2018 production of Jerome Robbins: Something To Dance About and Lynne Taylor Corbett’s 2011 production of the Brecht/Weill Seven Deadly Sins for the New York City Ballet.

He has twice designed the scenery for The Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus.

His designs are in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Museum of African American History & Culture (Piano from The Piano Lesson), the Smithsonian Museum of American History (set model from The Scottsboro Boys), the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (models from Prince Of Broadway), The University of Texas at Austin (set model from Ohio State Murders), The August Wilson House in Pittsburgh (Scrims from The Piano Lesson and set model for Crossroads' production of Fences), Spellman College (set model from The Piano Lesson) as well as several prominent private collections.

He has appeared in a commercial for Microsoft speaking about Broadway design.

In addition to two Tony Awards he has been honored with an 2007 OBIE Award for Sustained Excellence in Set Design, two Drama Desk Awards, an Outer Critics Circle Award, an Audelco Award, a Barrymore award, a Live Design Award for Innovation in Scenic Design, a Broadway Beacon Award, and a St. Louis Theater Circle Award. He has been nominated for eight Drama Desk Awards, three Lucille Lortel Awards, five NY Outer Critic's Circle Awards, an LA Ovation Award, an LA NAACP Award, a San Francisco Critic's Circle Award and six Henry Hewes Awards.

To contact Beowulf, please call Seth Glewen at the Gersh Agency 212-634-8124 or email him directly at bboritt @ Gmail

Currently running shows:

Come From Away U.S. National Tour

Come From Away in Australia

Resume

This website is not exhaustive, for a complete list with images: Beowulf Boritt Complete CV

Architectural digest Story

Town and Country Story

American Theater Magazine profile of Beowulf Boritt: American_Theatre_Magazine_Profile.pdf

American Theatre Wing's Set Design Segment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXYX5YXjYaA&feature=youtu.be

American Theatre Wing's Director/Designer segment: https://americantheatrewing.org/working-in-the-theatre/working-in-the-theatre-direction-and-design-the-piano-lesson/

Creativity in Captivity Podcast Profile