Sarah Krainin

Sarah Krainin is a scenic designer and object artist who currently resides in Los Angeles. Previously based in New York City, her work has been seen in venues including HERE Arts Center (Present Tense Theater Company's Monster), Office Ops and Clemente Soto Velez/La Tea (both with award-winning director and puppeteer J. Bajir Cannon), and 3-legged Dog Art and Technology Center (Ripe Time's Fire Throws). She resided as props artisan for Richard Foreman's Ontological-Hysteric Theater in 2003 and 2004 (King Cowboy Rufus Rules the Universe, and The Gods Are Pounding My Head AKA Lumberjack Messiah, respectively), and later as props master for Mr. Foreman's opera collaboration with composer Michael Gordon, What to Wear, which premiered at REDCAT in 2006. In Los Angeles, Sarah's scenic design has been seen at venues including Highways Performance Space (Patrick Kennelly's I, Eternal Child) and Son of Semele Ensemble (Wallace Shawn's The Designated Mourner, directed by Matt McCray and Slaughter City, directed by Barbara Kallir, et al.), and she collaborated with Heidi Duckler's Collage Dance Theater to create All About Eve, a site-specific dance piece performed in two Los Angeles houses of worship. Other Los Angeles collaborations include LA Weekly award-nominated productions A Prayer for My Daughter, directed by Albert Alaar, and Hyperbole: Origins, directed by Sean Cawelti of Rogue Artists Ensemble. She has designed at Malibu Stage Company with the Young Actors Project and teaches set design to students of all ages, most recently at Culver City High School as a guest teaching artist sponsored by Center Theatre Group. Sarah was a guest designer at Illinois Wesleyan University in 2010 (Crumble, AKA Lay Me Down, Justin Timberlake by Sheila Callaghan), and recently resided at Duke University as a guest artist developing the original puppet theater production Paper Hat Game, created by Torry Bend. Sarah was the production designer for acclaimed zombie short Alice Jacobs is Dead, starring Jon La Zar and Adrienne Barbeau, and winner of Best Horror award at Comic Con 2009. She has collaborated with Princess Grace award-winning director Maureen Towey (Jess Lacher's The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, A... Is for Aadrvark, and most recently Gruesome Playground Injuries by Rajiv Joseph at Boise Contemporary Theater), and was part of the original creative team for Lin-Manuel Miranda's broadway phenomenon, In the Heights. She recently worked with internationally renowned directors Dominique Serrand (The Moving Company), Phil Soltanoff and designer Jim Findlay on workshop productions for Center Theatre Group, and recently completed working with Anne Bogart’s SITI Company on this summer’s re-imagined production of Trojan Woman at the Getty Villa, where she is currently preparing for a two-week workshop production of The Songs of Bilitis in collaboration with Rogue Artists Ensemble.

Sarah makes short puppet shows in which objects transform in unexpected ways, installations that use objects to explore scale and landscape, and writes graphic scores for object theater. She has a BA in Theater and Classical Civilization from Wesleyan University, and an MFA in Scenic Design from CalArts.

skrainin@wesleyan.edu