Camellia Koo
ThisGen 2020 Masterclass Teacher
Camellia Koo is a Toronto based set and costume designer for theatre, opera, dance and site-specific performance installations.
Recent designs for theatre include Man and Superman, Henry V, Baroness and the Pig, The Orchard, Middletown, Adventures of a Black Girl in Her Search for God, Lady From the Sea, The Sea, When the Rain Stops Falling, Topdog Underdog, Peace in Our Time, In Good King Charles’ Golden Days, and The Stepmother (The Shaw Festival); Innocence Lost and August Osage County (Soulpepper Theatre Company), Oedipus Rex, The Changeling (The Stratford Festival), Wormwood, A God in Need of Help, Mimi, This is War, East of Berlin (Tarragon Theatre), The Wanderers, Bombay Black, The Sheep and the Whale (Cahoots Theatre Projects), The Ugly One (Theatre Smash), Sultans of the Street (Young People’s Theatre).
Recent designs for opera and ballet include new costume designs for Jacqueline (Tapestry New Music), La Bohème (Santa Fe Opera); sets and costume designs for Turandot (Helikon Opera, Moscow), Shawnadithit, Rocking Horse Winner, and The Shadow (Tapestry New Opera), Macbeth (Minnesota Opera), Hansel and Gretel, Carmen and The Tales of Hoffman (Edmonton Opera), Simon Boccanegra and Maria Stuarda (Pacific Opera Victoria), The Lighthouse (Boston Lyric Opera), Bremen Town Musicians, Second Nature, The Magic Victrola (Canadian Opera Company- Opera for Young Audiences), Marilyn Forever (Aventa Ensemble), Pélleas et Mélisande, Turn of the Screw, La Bohéme (Against the Grain), and sets and costumes for Sleeping Beauty (Ballet Jörgen).
She is a graduate of Ryerson Theatre School (technical production), and completed her M.A. in Scenography at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design (U.K.) and the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten (Utrecht, the Netherlands).
Camellia has received six Dora Mavor Moor Awards (Toronto), a Sterling Award (Edmonton), a Chalmers Award Grant, shared the 2006 Siminovitch Protégé Prize, and most recently received the 2016 Virginia and Myrtle Cooper Award for Costume Design. In 2018, she was shortlisted for the Siminovitch Prize for Excellence in Theatre.