Who is Theatician?

        Michelle Ferrier completed a BA in Theatre (Concentration in Design) and a minor in English Literature from SUNY New Paltz in the spring of 2007, graduating with honors. She studied Lighting Design under John Wade and Scenic Design with Michael Heil. During her last year at SUNY New Paltz, she also served as President of Alpha Psi Omega, the theatrical honor society.

Her KCACTF entry in Scenic Design for the production of "Fefu and Her Friends" in 2006-2007 was one of two Region II award winners, as well as receiving an outstanding achievement award and Certificate of Merit. She has assisted Michael Heil with designs for Capital Rep. Theatre in Albany NY on the shows "You Can't Take It With You" (2006) and "The Crucible" (2007). Her lighting designs for dance and musical concerts have most recently been seen at SUNY New Paltz (2005-2007), UPAC in the spring of 2006 and Eisenhower Theatre where she was invited to design the USMA Band's 2006 Holiday Concert. She is currently enrolled in the Graduate Program in Scenic Design at the University of Texas at Austin.

One of the focuses of her education at New Paltz was in computer rendering. Michelle's artistic process incorporates the traditional work of hand drawing and model building with that of computer graphics, animation and three dimensional rendering. She has worked with programs such as Vectorworks, Shade, Beamwrite, Autocad, Bryce, DAZ, Photoshop, Powerpoint, Carrara, Lightwrite, Poser, Maya, Renderosity, Macromedia Studio and Imovie. In addition to computerized presentation, she does express a love for modelmaking and finds it an essential tool in her process of design. She extended her undergraduate studies an additional year to study studio art as well, stating; "To fully understand where theatrical design came from and where it is going to, a good student always seeks to increase their vocabulary of all art mediums."

Versitile in not only Sceneography and Art, Michelle has studied Musical Theatre, Direction and Stage Combat as an undergraduate at SUNY Rockland and University of Memphis. She has directed "You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown" and "Godspell", winning Outstanding Achievement Awards in the FORSCOM Festival for the Performing Arts in 1996 and 1997. While living in Germany from 1991-1995, she served as Musical Director on several other productions within the military community theatres.

Once she has completed her MFA in design, she sees her future most strongly in teaching. That said, she feels that currently the trend in stage design is spiraling off into new and interesting directions. Projection design is finding a very strong pull in her current studies and she is excited about the exploration into this new territory.

In her non-theatrical life, she is married to a career military man and they have one son, two  cocker spaniels, a cat and two african grey parrots. Of her family, Michelle says," My husband is a saint and my son is my best and most precious work of art. The pets keep us all sane."