SEASON 2023-2024
OTHER ORBITS w/ Applied Mechanics
SELLING KABUL w/ Northern Stage
PINOCCHIO w/ The Arden Theater
THE CLIMB w/ InterAct Theater
SEASON 2022-2023
FIRE FOR WATER w/ MPA @ Gessnerallee Zurich
PEW FELLOW OF THE WEEK: OCT 5th, 2021
Our PEW FELLOW OF THE WEEK series focuses on the artistic lives of our Pew Fellows: their aspirations, influences, and creative challenges.
Lighting designer Maria Shaplin (2019) spoke to us about the works that shaped her approach to her own practice, what makes Philadelphia’s artistic community distinctive, and how her theater background comes in handy with a new baby.
Shaplin creates immersive theatrical worlds through an experimental and deeply collaborative design process. In addition to her Pew Fellowship, she won a 2018 Barrymore Award for Outstanding Lighting Design for her work on Indecent at Arden Theatre Company, and she was awarded an Independence Foundation Fellowship in the Arts in 2015. Recent work includes lighting design on inFLUX Theatre Collective’s The Choice, which ran as part of this year’s Philadelphia Fringe Festival, and InterAct Theatre Company’s The Chinese Lady, running October 29 to November 21.
PRESS: What I Gained From Punk: Maria Shaplin – Lighting Designer
Skip The Repeat Podcast /// Jan 21, 2020
Maria Shaplin never thought lighting design could be a career. Maria and Kai talk about being part of the punk movement and what she gained from it (6:50), what made her stay in theatre after a humiliating moment (8:40), and the concept of selling ourselves in the performing arts (16:15). They also discuss privilege and realizing class consciousness as a child (33:30) and the hilarious and unfortunate events surrounding a prop dynamite (54:40).