Robert Kaplowitz
Five-College Visiting Lecturer in Sound Design

Robert Kaplowitz, who received an Obie Award for Sustained Excellence in Sound Design this past May, will fill a new three-year visiting position created this year with the approval of the Five College Deans. As Five College Visiting Lecturer in Sound Design, he will teach at two campuses a year and design one production a year at one of those campuses. His position will be hosted by UMass Amherst’s Department of Theater but shared among all five departments. During the fall semester of 2007, he will forgo designing a production in order to spend time at each theater department getting to know the faculty and staff as well as the shops and theater spaces. In their proposal to the Deans, the theater chairs had argued for the vital importance of sound design and identified it as an area of common need for all five departments of theater as well as for music and dance. The Five College Theater Departments collaborated extensively on this successful search for the new position. Recent work includes Neil LaBute’s current Off-Broadway work, In a Dark, Dark House at Lucille Lortel and Soho Rep’s production of Adam Rapp’s The Thugs.