Professor
Scene Designer
Scene Design and Theatre Production
Theatre Department Chair 1990-93, 96-99
Theatre Department Co-Chair 2001-Present
Personal Page
charris@willamette.edu

Chris is currently Professor of Theatre and Resident Scene Designer at Willamette University, where he has been teaching for twenty-three years. Prior to that he taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Former President of the Oak Park Festival Theatre in Chicago, Chris Harris has designed over two hundred productions and his work has been seen in London, Toronto, New York, St. Louis, Chicago, and Portland, OR. Included in these are the American Professional Premieres of The Rover, Barnaby Sweet, The Sickness of Youth in Chicago, Father Dreams in St. Louis, and Picasso In The Back Seat in Portland. His design and production work has received recognition in design competitions, Jeff Award nominations in Chicago, and Meritorious Achievement Awards for design from the Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival. In Portland he has designed for New Rose productions of Never In My Lifetime, and Death And The King's Horseman, the Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center production of When Will I Dance?, the Artists Repertory Theatre production of Picasso In The Back Seat, and the Oregon Stage Company production of Cobb. Chris has also done some work on local films; he was Assistant Art director on Gathering Evidence, and Set Decorator on A Life In Twelve Words.

He received a Bachelor of Education degree from the University of Leeds in England. He was selected as an English Speaking Union scholar for theatre study in the U.S.A., receiving an M.F.A. in scene and costume design from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Chris is especially interested in designing and creating for performances in non-traditional theatre spaces. He has designed for performances which have been seen in several parks, prison and school gymnasia, churches, exposition halls, a parking ramp, train stations and other "found" spaces. He has also designed several art installations - most recently Protection... Entrapment a presentation/installation of recent sculpture at the Arena Theatre at Willamette University, and The Dybbuk Project seen as part of the 1997 Portland International Performance Festival, at Gallery 114, and later at Willamette University. Recently, with friend and colleague Michael Griggs, he co-wrote and designed a new work for figures and actors called Mysteries of the Heart which was staged with Hand2Mouth Theatre in 2005.