Feature article on Cameron Anderson's design process at Opera Saratoga
Complete opening night performance of La Traviata
"Cameron Anderson designs 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' for SCR" - Article from the LA Times
Cameron Anderson’s design for 'A Midsummer Night’s Dream' nominated for a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award
"But the real star is Cameron Anderson’s intense yet functional set, which begins as a huge white expanse before taking us on a whirl down into the center of the Earth, leaving a gorgeous wooded path and, at times, a wooden flying boat out of the imaginary world of Wynken, Blyken and Nod. This stunning set is all the more remarkable as it depends simply on old-fashioned stage rigging rather than show-off hydraulics."
~ LA Weekly
"The production design, mixing and matching time periods in a patchwork aesthetic that has its own marvelous integrity, is a font of surprise. Cameron Anderson’s sets, shifting from a blinding white formality to a feverish outdoor Oz, find contemporary analogies for classical enchantment."
~ Los Angeles Times
"Scenic Designer Cameron Anderson and Costume Designer Nephelie Andonyadis conjure their own creative magic into the mix. Anderson deftly bathes the Royal Palace with white silken drapery and period English furniture, while segueing to the colorful, gigantic forest scenes with ease. In terms of the costuming, Andonyadis provides a classy regal touch to the Royals, but then goes all out with the fairies using patchwork loin cloths and other decorative attire that match the hedonistic atmosphere perfectly. What is fascinating is the arrival of the mechanicals serves as the transition from the reality of the palace to the fantasy of the forest scenes. Although dressed like typical, working class handymen, the mechanicals arrive and leave the stage by way of a “mutant vehicle,” a mode of transportation commonly used at the Burning Man retreat where the entire automobile is literally put together piecemeal by abandoned junk parts and is fully operational. And Anderson’s “Mechanical Mobile” — composed of two motorcycles, a gypsy wagon and a wall/performance stage composed of wine and beer bottles — captures the thematic transformation between reality and fantasy and, eventually, a marriage of both worlds."
~ Splash Magazine
"Anderson’s sets and Andonyadis’ costumes are such feats of imagination that the accompanying production stills must take the place of the thousands of words necessary to describe them."
~ StageSceneLA
"Designer Cameron Anderson hit upon a great idea to underscore Cazan’s approach to Decembers, white windows — a total of 50 — descend upon the stage and then leave it vacant for the final scene, a memorial service for Maddy, that brings about reconciliation and redemption. “The windows,” Cazan explains in a program note, “represent the endless potential for communication — for the speaking and heeding” foreign to these three people. Windows, of course, also close."
~ Opera Today
"The most obvious and inventive aspect of the staging is the striking, abstract set, which he conceived in conjunction with designer Cameron Anderson. It consists of white, glassless windows of varying sizes and shapes hung at irregular heights. These familiar building elements, though they allow people to see in and out, are nonetheless barriers. They serve as telling metaphors for the emotional and psychological walls that exist among these characters and provide a visual structure for the story. What begins with three windows slowly grows to 50 by the work’s climax, as more and more is learned about the three characters. When at last, the long-hidden secret at the core of this family comes to light and the three characters finally bear themselves fully to each other, the windows are removed. Indeed, everything on stage disappears, including the side curtains, revealing everything backstage. The rear of the theater, like the lives of these human beings, is naked — shorn of any decoration or facade."
~ The Denver Post
"What I found completely enchanting was Cameron Anderson's set design. Very simple but quite dashing in its visual appeal, beginning with the Cafe da Ponte at the beginning to the hot pink and almost garish blue for Fiordiligi and Dorabella's house in Naples and the garden of the last act in which the high "bushes," providing handy exits and entrances, resemble a Richard Serra sculpture, in a rococo mood, wrapped a la Christo. All quite delicious and amusing."
~ Seattle Post-Intelligencer
"The touch of exaggeration in Cameron Anderson's sets - from the passionate hot pink and blue of the sisters' house to the oversized, sculptural fabric hedges of the last act's garden - suggested from the opera's opening that this is a fable about love and not a realistic storyline. Anthony Baker's costumes continued the fairytale atmosphere with fanciful brio."
~ Queen Anne News
"Stage director Josemaria Condemi and set designer Cameron Anderson collaborated on a deftly economical presentation, using a few sparse design elements -- chiefly a pair of curving staircases -- to conjure up an entire world of bitter rivalry and forbidden love."
~ San Francisco Chronicle
"Katie Pearl has directed the play with dangerous, exhilarating conviction. Cameron Anderson's scenic design and Olivia Wildz's deliberately exaggerated costume design are a nice combination. Trailer park chic meets "The Waltons."
~ The New York Times
“Conversely, Cameron Anderson's set is a delight. For this production, S&Co. has reconfigured its 3-year-old Founders' Theater to give it a long thrust stage with the audience on three sides. Anderson gives the new stage a creamy-marble look with a rear wall that sports an arched entranceway, windows and two balconies. A silhouetted floral motif adds to the set's light, airy, summery look.”
~ Variety
“Cameron Anderson's set fills the thrust stage beautifully, marking the best use of the Founders' Theatre since Shakespeare & Company moved into it a couple of years ago.”
~ Boston Globe
“Jonathan Epstein makes his first entrance as Dogberry emerging from a manhole, one of three that have cleverly been built into the floor of Cameron Anderson's simple but elegant thrust stage set for Daniela Varon's graceful production of "Much Ado About Nothing" at Shakespeare & Company's Founders Theatre.”
~ Berkshire Eagle
“The new configuration of the space at the Founders, thrusting the stage much deeper into the pit and making for even more audience surround space works well and the setting by Cameron Anderson is radiant. The white floor and skillfully lit façade background seem marble, dappled with sunlight. And the scrims behind the windows of yellow flowers provide marvelous shadow sites for eaves-droppers or villains when back-lit.”
~ New Berkshire.com
“Varon turns this crew of homespun police into clowns out of Beckett who pop up out of manholes in set designer Cameron Anderson’s glimmering-white thrust-stage villa courtyard.”
~ The Phoenix.com
“Cameron Anderson's spare sets use a few cannily chosen elements -- a bank of cattails, a gate, a pump -- to conjure up the world of Tennessee's New Hope Valley.”
~ San Francisco Chronicle
“Josemaria Condemi's production, abetted by Cameron Anderson's imaginatively spare set, built on Floyd's taut pacing.”
~ San Francisco Classical Voice
“Set designer Cameron Anderson and lighting designer James Aitken have created simple settings that glowingly expand the scenes.”
~ The Oakland Tribune
"Cameron Anderson's sumptuous set and Michael Murnane's lovely lighting combine to create a surrealistic dream, a medieval castle adorned with empty picture frames and great wooden cages, with walls that dissolve into towering shafts of bright blue emptiness. Maria Padilla may be rarely performed, but it's equally rare to have a creative team bring its vision to life with such success as this."
~ Minneapolis/St. Paul Pioneer Press
"Cameron Anderson's simple set, which featured cages and empty gold picture frames (signifying the royal station for which Maria yearns), Gail Bakkom's dignified costumes, and Michael Murnane's golden lighting beautifully suggested the wealth and severity of the Spanish Court."
~ Wallstreet Journal
"Cameron Anderson's intriguing designs for the show add a touch of mannerist distortion to an essentially realistic approach. Her chief symbols are cages and picture frames: images of confinement suggesting that each of our main characters -- Maria; her father, Don Ruiz, and her husband-to-be, Don Pedro -- is trapped by conflicting desires."
~ Minneapolis Startribune
"Add Cameron Anderson's eye-catching scenic design -- a visual riff on William Morris and the English Arts and Crafts Movement -- and Michael McAleer's lavish costumes evoking the foppish society, and you have the makings of an enchanting production."
~ The New York Times
"In its opening scenes, "Heddatron," which runs through Feb. 25 and is directed by Mr. Timbers, appears to be an easy if enthusiastic amalgam of these previous works, albeit with enriched production values. (The artful sets and lighting are by Cameron Anderson and Tyler Micholeau, respectively; Jake Pinholster is the video designer.)"
~ Ben Brantley of The New York Times
"Scribe Elizabeth Meriwether ("Nicky Goes Goth") and helmer Alex Timbers, who directs all work done by Les Freres Corbusier, artfully communicate the fun they had in deconstructing Ibsen's seminal 1890 drama and applying their modern sensibility to it. Working on a garishly lighted (by Tyler Micoleau) stage that designer Cameron Anderson has carved up into domestic settings of surreal contempo ugliness, creatives assign principal roles, plot elements and Ibsen's own backstory to modern-day characters (human and humanoid) for zany enactment and comment."
~ Variety
"Just as soon as you catch your breath from one bit, the next is there for you to savor. A very fashionable-yet-functional set by Cameron Anderson allows for the explosions from one world to the next and back again."
~ New York Theater.com
"The complex set by Cameron Anderson is pretty impressive for such an intimate space."
~ Broadway.com
"The look of Underground is handsome, with video projections across the set designed by Cameron Anderson, smoky lighting by Jane Cox and ready-for-action street wear designed by Heather McArdle. The piece is expertly put together. But the greatest interest of the piece is the strange sense that it offers, perhaps intentionally, a view into the mind-set of young Middle Eastern terrorists today."
~ New York Times
"The luxurious drapery that designer Cameron Anderson uses to cover the back wall for Martha Mitchell's apartment stays up, minus the pink-and-gilt furniture, as a backdrop for this piece as well. At first, like the black evening gown and diamonds that Noel wears, it seems incongruous for Penny's tales of missing arms and screaming burn victims. But ultimately the incongruity works, and not just because Daniel Kotlowitz's skillful lighting transforms Martha's meringue-like curtain to Penny's creeping jungles and muddy rivers. It works because this is a civilized woman, talking to other civilized people in a civilized place, about the completely barbaric and appalling acts that civilized people can commit."
~ Boston Globe
"Cameron Anderson's stunning scenic design is among the best of local work this year: two weathered porches, the beach (with real sand) with the backdrop of a tall painting of a wing to represent the title's mythical dreamer and a staircase ascending to the sky."
~ Star-Telegram
"Josh Epstein's stylish lighting nicely complements Cameron Anderson's fluid set, dominated by three rotating walls and a huge screen that provides a cinematic background, complete with images of subways, high-rise buildings and taxi cabs."
~ New York Times
Charlie Puth live at Radio City Music Hall. Sets by Cameron Anderson. Creative Direction by JaQuel Knight.