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Vanessa James Brings High-Powered Background, Low-Key Manner to Theatre Design

<<< A "designing" woman--Theatre professor Vanessa James's varied career as an art director and production designer began with an Andy Warhol film and has included work on Hollywood movies, plays for Joseph Papp, operas, and Emmy award-winning television programs. You can see her latest design work here this fall in Cloud 9.

Don't let Vanessa James's gentle voice and low-key manner fool you; she is one high-powered woman. The associate professor of theatre arts has designed sets, costumes, and lights as an art director/production designer on high-profile productions in theatre, film, opera, and television for nearly three decades. Her designs are in museums and she's won an Emmy. James calls her late collaborators Andy Warhol "Andy" and Joseph Papp "Joe." She started theaters in three cities, and was one of the first women in her field. And she shares all this experience with her MHC students.

Although classically trained in theater in England, James's first film job was with Andy Warhol; her last traced the history of the White House. She worked on major motion pictures such as Ragtime, Sophie's Choice, Kramer vs. Kramer, and The King of Comedy, often crossing New York after a full day on the set to design productions for her own stage company. "On the films, thousands of dollars went through my fingers daily; then I'd go to my small theatre and work on productions where the whole budget was maybe $300," James recalls. "It was fascinating to see both what the money bought, and what extraordinary creativity the lack of money produced."

After Warhol's Brand X, she designed the hit stage production of The American Pig: An AntiImperialist Vaudeville, which started a long-term collaboration with the legendary Joseph Papp at New York's Public Theatre. "I wanted to design the whole look of a production--sets, costumes, and lights--not just a piece of it. Joe was wonderful about that," she says. James became especially renowned for her creative costumes, and once made 250 seventeenth- and eighteenth-century-style costumes using only paper and plastic. Her work on television miniseries also demanded knowledge of other time periods. "I guess they thought because I am from an old country I'd know about the period," she says, laughing.

Whatever the medium, James's job is to examine mountains of material about a production's time and place, know the script inside out, and then create a visual look for the production. "It's like making an armature for a sculpture," she explains.

As her reputation grew, James was asked to speak about design at colleges, and found she enjoyed lecturing. She came to Mount Holyoke in 1991 and teaches scenic and costume design, art direction for film and TV, and a women-in-design seminar. James's design work can be seen on campus this fall in Cloud 9.

She still designs professional productions as time allows--such as the Company of Women's Henry V--and involves MHC women as credited contributors whenever possible. James's current projects include designing an opera, working with students on a Web archive about women designers past and present, and writing a book on the opening nights of famous plays.