Colleen Muscha
Costume Designer
Colleen has designed costumes professionally at numerous regional theatres including the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, the Utah, Dallas, Alabama and Texas Shakespeare Festivals, Cleveland Playhouse, Penn Centre Stage, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, People's Light and Theatre Company and the Asolo Theatre Company.
Her New York City design credits include work at the Ensemble Studio Theatre, Equity Library Theatre and Broadway’s Longacre Theatre. Among the many shows she has designed, include King Lear, Tempest, Brighton Beach Memoirs, Werther, The Importance of Being Earnest, Antigone, The Pirates of Penzance, The Physicists, Sweeney Todd, Othello, Twelfth Night, Cosi Fan Tutte, Dividing the Estate and Man of La Mancha.
She has designed costumes for the original productions of David Mamet's Lakeboat, Larry Shue's The Nerd, Amlin Gray’s Kingdom Come and Deborah Pryer’s The Love Talker. Some noted actors she has designed for include Morgan Freeman, Harold Gould, Lili Taylor, Joe Morton, CCH Pounder, Reg E Cathey, Patricia Kalember, Michael Rooker, Montego Glover, Larry Shue and James Naughton
Costume design renderings for The Love Talker, which was produced for the Actor's Theatre of Louisville—Humana Festival were displayed in the USITT Design Exposition 1988. Her work for A Doll’s House, produced at Florida State University, and was also cited during the 1998 USITT Design Expo.
She received the First-Time Entrant Award for the costume, Glistening Gothic Tracery for the World of WearableArt 2022 competition in Wellington, New Zealand. This garment was also included in the Theatre Design and Technology publication Spring 2023.
The art to wear garment, Elizabethan Cartwheel Color Wheel, was published in the Fall 2022 Surface Design Journal--The Fusion of Fiber Arts, Fashion and Design.
Her costume designs, renderings and photos are published in both the Costume Designer's Handbook and Costumer Technician's Handbook by Rosemary Ingham and Elizabeth Covey. Her computer renderings are published in Annie O. Cleveland's text, Digital Costume Design and Rendering.
She has presented her design, technology and research at various conferences and symposia in the US.
Colleen Muscha is Professor Emeritus of the MFA Costume Design program at Florida State University, in which she was the director of the program for over thirty years.
Her awards include the 2018 Florida Theatre Conference Career Achievement Award and 1994 and 1997 she received the Teaching Incentive Award from Florida State for outstanding teaching. In 2008, she co-lead a three-week costume research trip to Europe for students and professors.
She is a member of United Scenic Artists 829.