Camille Assaf is a Franco-American designer, who designs costumes and sets for theater, dance and opera.
Since receiving her MFA in 2004, Camille has lived in New York City, and worked both in and outside the United States.
Her costume designs have been seen all over. In New York, she recently designed Dixie's Tupperware Party, directed by Alex Timbers at Ars Nova, along with Catherine Filloux's new play Lemkin's House, directed by Jean Randich, first at the 78th st. Theater Lab, and then remounted at the Mc Ginn/Cazale space by Vital theater company. Her work was also seen at the Joyce Theater in three new ballets by Eliot Feld (Rumors, Backchat and Patootie), and in the New York City Ballet's reprise of Mr. Feld's Backchat.
Camille has been a company member of Moving Theater since 2004. With this New York based company that focuses on interdisciplinary experiments, she participated in the creation of Without -- which was presented at the Morriss Center in Bridgehampton, in the "works and progress" series at the Guggenheim Museum, and then at Dance New Amsterdam--, Mass Particle #1 (Mass entertainement) at the Harry Dejur Playhouse; and on their most recent opus at the Greenwich Music festival: It's my party, based on Handel's Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne. She is currently working with them on their ongoing project Mass, scheduled to be performed at the Seventh Regiment Armory in 2008.
Other New York costume design credits include, among many others, Ellen Stuart's Perseus at la Mama ETC; the new opera Don Imbroglio presented at the New York Music Theater Festival by Beth Morrison Projects.
Camille's international work includes The Brighter Side, directed by Grethe B. Holby at the 2005 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and last fall's touring production of director Alec Tok's Three Children at the Shanghai Performing Arts Academy and the Hong-Kong Fringe Club, a production for which she also designed the lighting. More recently, she designed sets and costumes for the New York Opera Society's production of Don Giovanni, directed by Pat Diamond for the Théâtre Municipal de Castres, France.
Regionally, Camille recently designed costumes for the premiere of Tim McCracken's play Composition, a production of Jeffrey Hatcher's Murderers, and Caryl Churchill's A Number, all directed by artistic director Steve Campo at Theaterworks, Hartford. Her designs were also seen in director Alec Wild's production of Richard II at Milwaukee Shakespeare, and director Evan Yionoulis' The King Stag at the Yale Repertory Theater. Her work for this production was nominated for a Connecticut Critic Circle award for best costume design. She is currently designing costumes for the upcoming premiere of Elmer Gantry, a new opera by Robert Aldridge and Herschel Garfein, to be performed in the fall of 2007 at Nashville Opera, then the following winter at the Montclair State University Perfomring Arts Center.
Camille has also worked as an assistant to various senior costume designers. She assisted Jane Greenwood on the recent Broadway revival of Craig Lucas' Prelude to a Kiss, an upcoming production of Richard Strauss' Daphne, directed by Mark Lamos at the Santa Fe Opera, and Doug Varone's Orpheo and Euridice for the Lincoln Center's Great Performers series. With designer Constance Hoffman, she worked on productions of Salome (National Opera of Lithuania), Tannhauser (Paris National Opera), Grendel (Los Angeles Opera and New York City Opera). Most recently, she has worked in close relationship with designer Anita Yavich, on various projects, including a puppet production of The Sound of Music, for the Salzburg Marionette Theatre, Austria.
In 2001, Camille graduated Magna cum Laude from the Sorbonne University in Paris, with a BA in Philosophy for a thesis on "The Body in French Baroque Opera". She holds an additional BA in English Literature, also from the Sorbonne.
She then received her design training at the Yale School of Drama, where she studied under the patronage of Ming Cho Lee, Michael Yeargan, Jane Greenwood, Jesse Goldstein, Jennifer Tipton and Stephen Strawbridge. She received her MFA in 2004, and was awarded the Leo Lerman Fellowship award in costume design.
Very recently, she was chosen as a recipient of the prestigious National Endowment for the Arts/Theatre Communications Group Career Develop¬ment Program (2007). She intends to use this opportunity to expand probe the relationship between body and space, and the connectivity of dance and theater, by observing the working process of American companies with a mission to create interdisciplinary, collaborative and unconventional work. She also intends to develop her skills as a scenic designer.
