"Lots of families go to the beach for vacations, but my family went to New York or Toronto to see the shows," says Carolyn Mraz, a senior honor's candidate from Latrobe, Pennsylvania,  "I liked theater long before I knew I wanted to do theater."

But not as an actor or director. Carolyn's passion is scenic design. A studio art minor and theater major, she has been drawing and painting since childhood, twin talents that eventually led to her first design experience—her high school's production of Romeo and Juliet. 

"The director gave me this giant cityscape to paint. I was so excited I came in every weekend to work. I thought, ‘This is really cool. I can do this!'" 

At Oberlin, Carolyn has built an impressive list of production credits, creating sets for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, The Man Outside, The Black Monk, The Vagina Monologues, and Tales from Ovid.

"Theater students do shows at Oberlin all the time. There's considerable interest in theater and many more opportunities to mount plays than you would find at bigger schools.  Each time I design a set for a new show, I learn something more."

She's taken virtually every course in theater design and related areas, and Carolyn says the tutelage of the theater program's technical staff has been invaluable.

"They are really awesome. They're always there to answer questions, and if you have the passion and the desire to do great things, they're behind you 100 percent. I'm not sure you'd find that in a lot of schools."

One of the people who's been there for Carolyn is Michael Grube, managing director and associate professor of theater. "Michael always thought that I could do it even, I think, before I thought I could."

Pivotal for Carolyn was a private reading she took with Grube: "It was pretty intense. I did designs for two hypothetical productions, built the models, and did all the drawings. It was the first time I had done anything on that big of a scale."

"Carolyn is an excellent student, and though she's still in school, she's been moving up professionally in summer theater," Grube says. "She's going to go far."

Carolyn's summer stints include working as a scene painter and scenic carpenter for Macbeth at the Pittsburgh Public Theater, as a technical staff member for nine musicals at the College Light Opera Company in Falmouth, Massachusetts, and as scenic artist for 16 shows during two seasons at the Berkshire Theater Festival (BTF) in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. She was also the scenic designer for BFT's currently touring children's show Strange Waves.

"What I like is the process," she says, "starting out at one place with an idea; hashing it out with the director, the other designers, and the actors; seeing the play and the design evolve; then all of us arriving together in the same place at the end."

Carolyn's most recent project was the set design was for Dancing at Lughnasa, the theater and dance program's 2005 winter main-stage production; it was also her senior honors project.

To convey her visual ideas for the Tony-award winning drama, she made a fully painted quarter-inch scale model of the set, as well as a number of sketches and technical drawings for construction. 

"It's a pretty exciting set, with good solid design," said Grube when he first saw Carolyn's model.

"Watching my ideas take shape and come to life was great," she recalls. "I know that was what was supposed to happen, but it was still astonishing.  The design was really tricky, but the lighting designer, senior Rebecca Ball, was able to do completely different things with lighting than I was able to do with the set. On opening night when the lights came up, and everything came together it was just amazing!"

This semester Carolyn is writing her honors paper for Dancing at Lughnasa, taking a lighting design class, looking forward to graduation, and trying to secure an assistant apprenticeship with a scenic designer on Broadway before taking on graduate school.  

As Grube pointed out, Carolyn will go far.

Theater and Dance Program at Oberlin Course Catalog: Theater and Dance Program