Michael Chybowski

Associate Professor, Lighting Design

Michael Chybowski has received the American Theatre Wing Design Award, an Obie Award for Sustained Excellence, two Lucille Lortel Awards for his work in New York, and a Drama Desk nomination for his work on the original production of Wit, the Pulitzer Prize winning play at the Union Square Theatre in New York. Michael also designed the subsequent US National Tour and its London West End productions.
Equally at home in many disciplines, Michael has designed Four Saints in Three Acts for English National Opera, Parsifal for the Seattle Opera (the opening production at the newly renovated McCaw Hall in 2003), the US premiere of Orazi et Curiazi for Minnesota Opera, A Little Night Music for Opera Theatre of St. Louis (the directorial debut of Isaac Mizrahi), and L’Isola disabitata for Gotham Chamber Opera.
Over the course of a long association with musician/performance artist Laurie Anderson Michael has designed the US and international tours of Moby Dick, The Nerve Bible, Stories From the Nerve Bible, and museum installations at the Guggenheim and in London.
Michael has created the lighting for over forty pieces for the Mark Morris Dance Group, and has also created the lighting for several Morris works set on other companies, including the American Ballet Theatre, The Royal Ballet, White Oak Dance Project, San Francisco Ballet, and the English National Ballet. Recent works for the Dance Group include Socrates (lighting & décor), Petrichor, and Festival Dance. Michael also lit the Dance Group films Dido & Aeneas and Falling Down Stairs, the latter touring internationally with cellist Yo Yo Ma.
Theatrical productions include a long association with the New York Shakespeare Festival, where Michael has lit many productions at the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park, including Hamlet, Hair, Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Twelfth Night. Indoor productions include Compulsion (with Mandy Patenkin) and Hamlet (with Liev Schreiber). Other New York credits include The Lieutenant of Inishmore at the Lyceum Theatre, Endgame at BAM, and the adaptation of The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Pulitzer Prize recipient Rebecca Gilman at New York Theatre Workshop. Michael has worked at most of the major Off-Broadway theatres in New York City as well as the major regional theatres across the United States, including the Goodman, Guthrie, McCarter, Steppenwolf, La Jolla Playhouse, Long Wharf, and Seattle Rep. This work includes Frank Galati’s Oedipus Complex and the premiere of Tracy’s Tiger, the first musical produced at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He was the resident designer at American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge from 1998 through 2000. International theatre credits include Oedipus at Colonus and Antony et Cleopatra at Theatre de Carouge in Geneva, as well as productions at the Theatre de Welt, Vienna, and Milano Oltre festivals with the Squat Theatre.