In his 20 year career Alan E Muraoka has designed for theatre, opera, television, and film where he has garnering 2 Emmy nominations and 3 Art Director’s Guild Award nominations as a Production Designer and Art Director.
Recent opera project’s include “Owen Wingrave” and “The Magic Flute” for USC Thornton School of Drama and “Oklahoma!” for the Central City Opera. He has created several critically acclaimed productions for the Long Beach Opera including the American premiere of Antonio Vivaldi’s “Motezuma” and “The Cunning Little Vixen” set in the dust bowl during the Great Depression.
For theater he has designed “Wrinkles” and “Mysterious Skin” for the East West Players, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf”, ”Trying” and “Vincent in Brixton” for Old Globe theatre in San Diego. In the past Alan has designed for regional opera including June Opera Festival, Michigan Opera, Palm Beach Opera, Julliard School and Tri-Cities Opera.
Alan started his career as an assistant set designer in New York on the Broadway productions of “On Your Toes”, “The Tap Dance Kid”, ”The Three Musketeers”, “Smile”, “Jerry’s Girls”, and the ballets “Bounenville Variations “and “ Ives Songs” for New York City Ballet.
Based in Los Angeles, where he has a busy career in film, he is currently designing “Dirty Girl” with Juno Temple, Mila Jovavic, Mary Seenburgen, Dwight Yokum and William H. Macy. Other credits include, “BaadAsssss!”, “Weapons”, ”Edmond” and the recently released “A Plumm Summer”. His art direction credits include “Ace Ventura-Pet Detective”, “The Specialist”, “Washington Square”, “Liberty Heights”, “Wrestling Ernest Hemmingway”, the television series “NYPD Blue” and more recently, the miniseries “The Company” and feature film “Little Miss Sunshine”.
He earned his BA in Music and Art History at Yale University and MFA in Theatrical Design from New York University. Alan has also been an adjunct lecturer at USC School of Cinematic Arts and has most recently guest lectured at Montana State University and UCLA and is currently an instructor of Film Production Design at the New York Film Academy.
Reviews:
Doubt - Rubicon Theatre
"The set is simple and requires no scenery changes for the 90-minute show. The priest’s pulpit neighbors Aloysius’ office. Gravel covers a quarter of the stage and creates an outside garden at the stage’s front. A small strip of undecorated stage serves as an intermediate space between these three locales. Limited to these settings, the play creates a sense of a cloistered community, one that is almost too small to permit both Flynn and Aloysius (and their conflicting ideals) to be at the same place at the same time."
-Daniel Boden, Daily Bruin
Cunning Little Vixen - Long Beach Opera
"Alan E. Muraoka's simple, functional sets sketched out a rustic fantasy world."
-Wendy Kikkert, The Beverly Hills Outlook
"Alan E. Muraoka’s forest setting emphasized the opera’s earthiness by banishing trees and focusing the action on two daisy-covered mounds. He also found a simple and effective way to suggest Man’s encroachment on the Natural World."
-Michael Van Duzer, Stage Happenings
"The latter reflects Scenic Designer Alan E. Muraoka’s contribution to the mix. Janacek wrote well before the modern environmental movement, but Muraoka adds that to the mix. As the opera progresses over several years, the forest glade is surveyed, cleared and, finally, a road is paved through it, with the shadow of electrical power lines seen in the background. The forester may see the cycle of life, but it is slowly eroding."
-John Farrell, Press Telegram
ART - EastWest Players
"Alan E. Muraoka's chic white set, minimalist except for a few Top Design-esque pieces of furniture, perfectly captures the pseudo-trendy art world."
-Paul Birchall, LA Weekly
