Artist Bio

Michael Yeargan

(Bio as of January 2004)

Michael Yeargan most recently collaborated with the Goodman on The Light in the Piazza during the 2003/2004 Season. Previous set designs at the Goodman include The Beard of Avon, The Skin of Our Teeth, Light Up the Sky, Design for Living and Six Characters in Search of an Author. His work in Chicago has also been seen at the Lyric Opera in designs for last season’s Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci, as well as Antony and Cleopatra, Susannah, Attila, Simon Boccanegra and The Great Gatsby in previous seasons. He has also designed the sets for the upcoming Pirates of Penzance at the Lyric. At Steppenwolf, his credits include The Man Who Came to Dinner and The Drawer Boy.  Broadway work includes designs for Terrence McNally’s The Ritz and Bad Habits; Hay Fever with Rosemary Harris; Ah, Wilderness! with Jason Robards and Colleen Dewhurst; and the world premiere of Athol Fugard’s A Lesson From Aloes. Off-Broadway, he designed Dinah Was and the currently running Juvenilia by Wendy MacLeod at Playwrights Horizons. He has designed extensively for resident theaters across the country including Long Wharf, Hartford Stage, American Repertory Theater and the Guthrie Theater.  In London’s West End, he designed the productions of Becket with Derek Jacobi, Cyrano de Bergerac with Robert Lindsay and the musical Napoleon. For the Stratford Festival in Canada, he designed last season’s Present Laughter with Brian Bedford. Internationally known for his work in opera, he has designed for London’s Royal Opera House, Australian Opera, La Scala, the Staatsoper in Vienna and the Metropolitan Opera in New York, where he has designed the new production of Don Giovanni to open in the spring. He is also a professor of stage design at the Yale School of Drama, where he has taught for 31 years.

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