Anya Klepikov
Associate Professor of Scenic Design
Anya Klepikov has designed spaces and clothes for theater, opera, dance, performance, web series, and a sizzle reel. Having just designed the scenery for Kyle Boatwright’s production of John Proctor is the Villain at UMass Amherst Theater, she is now working on the costumes for the premiere production of Ben W. Heineman Jr’s timely play about the French Revolution, Terror is the Reign of the Day directed by Tea Alagic at the Flea Theater in NYC.
In addition to working on traditional plays regionally and Off Broadway, including with frequent collaborators Tim Vasen (Troy: After and Before, Alice: A New Play, Der Bourgeois Bigwig, Eugene Onegin, Eyes Up High in the Redwood Tree, and Great Expectations), Preston Lane (The Glass Menagerie, Kingdom of Earth, Dial M for Murder, A Doll’s House, Radiunt Abundunt, Midsummer Night’s Dream and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at Triad Stage, NC), and Mike Donahue (Bakkhai, Moscow, Cheryomushki!, Uncle Vanya, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, The Who’s Tommy, Recess, God is a DJ, Electronic City, Brandt, and As You Like It), Anya has collaborated on devised projects with theater makers Tei Blow and Laurel Atwell on Entry at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in NYC, with Diana Oh on My H8 Letter to the Gr8 American Theatre at Smith College, with the Strike Anywhere Performance Ensemble on Pop Up at the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth, and with other devisers including Tea Alagic, Anna Jones, Steven Bogart, Rudy Ramirez, and Amanda Palmer.
Her work in ballet and opera includes The Firebird (Miami City Ballet,) An American Tragedy (Glimmerglass,) Mourning Becomes Elektra (Florida Grand Opera,) The Cradle Will Rock (Saratoga Opera) as well as opera productions in non-traditional spaces and configurations: Hydrogen Jukebox (Fort Worth Opera,) Empty The House (Curtis Music School,) and Orpheus & Euridice (Vermont Marble Museum, National Gallery of Art.)
With the disciplinary and formal reshuffling that transpired during the pandemic, Anya expanded her artistic practice to creating installations and original design-driven performance pieces, often in collaboration with students, such as Monuments of the Future (2021) and FLAMINGO MURMURATION (2022) at UMass Amherst.
When it comes to teaching, Anya’s approach is indebted to her training with Ming Cho Lee and to the practice of great mentors Jane Greenwood, Wendall Harrington, and Jean-Guy Lecat. Inspired by her time as a teaching artist with the Roundabout Theater Company and their philosophy of interactive and creative pedagogy, as well as by the teachings of Josef Albers, Anya has developed an approach to teaching Color Practice to theater and other design practitioners. Pedagogy of color as a tool of design as well as performance space are currently at the heart of her academic research.
Before coming to UMass in 2017, Anya had lectured on scenic and costume design as well as on color practice at Princeton, Brown, and Colgate Universities and at the Yale School of Drama.
Read reviews of The Firebird:
Click to view designs by Anya's current UMass Theater graduate and undergraduate design students.
Click to read a feature on Anya’s set design for The Glass Menagerie in American Theater Magazine