Pace University

Department of Film and Screen Studies

1 Pace Plaza, New York, NY 10038

lcantarella@pace.edu | 212-346-1885

Studio

102 Monroe Street #2

Brooklyn, NY 11216

lukecantarella@gmail.com | 646-263-4989

Pace Unversity, Professor and Chair of Film and Screen Studies | 2012-2023

University of California, Irvine, Associate Professor of Drama | 2008-2012  

M.F.A. Yale University, Scenic Design 2000

B.S. Northwestern University, Theater 1994

Ethnography by Design: Scenographic Experiments in Fieldwork
co-authored with Christine Hegel and George E. Marcus
Bloomsbury (London/NY)

Ice Time: Transversal Knowledge Production Between Hockey and Art  
co-authored with Christine Hegel and Sari Pietikainen
in American Anthropologist: Multimodals

A Week in Pasadena: Collaborations Toward a Design Modality for Ethnographic  Research 
co-authored with Christine Hegel and George E. Marcus
in Field: A Journal of Socially-Engaged Art Criticism: Issue 1, Spring 2015, pp. 53-94

The Dream of an Original Design: On Appropriation 
in CHANCE: Issue 5 , Spring 2015, pp. 80-86

Jules | Concept Artist
Production Designer: Richard Hoover | Art Director: Randall Richards
Studio: Big Beach

Players | Assistant Art Director
Production Designer: Dina Goldman | Art Director: Jordan Jacobs
Studio: Netflix

Call Jane | Assistant Art Director
Production Designer: Jona Tochet | Art Director: Garrett Lowe
Studio: Vintage Park

Only Murders in the Building, Episode 104 | Assistant Art Director
Production Designer: Curt Beech | Art Director: Jordan Jacobs
Studio: Hulu

The President is Missing, Pilot | Assistant Art Director
Production Designer: John Paino | Art Director: Jordan Jacobs
Studio: Showtime

The Plot Against America, Episodes 1-6 | Assistant Art Director
Production Designers: Richard Hoover, Dina Goldman | Art Director: Jordan Jacobs Studio: HBO, Blown Deadline Productions

Of Mice and Men | Floyd/Steinbeck, directed by Kristine McIntyre, Houston Grand Opera

The Cunning Little Vixen | Janacek, directed by Kristine McIntyre, Des Moines Metro Opera

Fever Dreams (of Animals on the Verge of Extinction) by Jeffrey Lieber, directed by Rob Ruggiero, Theaterworks Hartford

Woman with Eyes Closed | Higdon/Dye, directed by Kristine McIntyre, Pittsburgh Opera

Hedwig and the Angry Inch | Mitchell/Trask, directed by Kirsten Kelly, American Stage

Woody Sez | by David Lutken, directed by Nicholas Corley, TheaterWorks Hartford

Bluebeard’s Castle | Bartok, directed by Kristine McIntyre, Des Moines Metro Opera

Our Home | U.S. National Exhibit for the Prague Quadriennial for Performance Space and Design

Fun Home | Tesori/Kron, directed by Rob Ruggiero, TheaterWorks Hartford

A Thousand Acres | Custer/Campbell, directed by Kristine McIntyre,  Des Moines Metro Opera (scenery & projection design)

Hometown to the Word | Kaminsky/Reed, directed by Kristine McIntyre, Sante Fe Opera (scenery & projection design)

South Pacific | Rogers & Hammerstein, directed by Rob Ruggiero, Goodspeed Musicals (cancelled due to COVID)

1776 | Stone/Edwards, directed by Rob Ruggiero, The MUNY

Il Trittico | Giacomo Puccini, directed by Garnett Bruce, Peabody Opera

Our Town | Thorton Wilder, directed by Abigail Adams, People’s Light

Gypsy | Laurents/Styne/Sondheim, directed by Rob Ruggiero, The MUNY

Evita | Rice/Webber, directed by Rob Ruggiero, Repertory Theater of St. Louis

Hand to God | Robert Askins, directed by Tracy Brigden, Theaterworks (Hartford) (scenery & projection design)

The Diary of Anne Frank | Goodrich/Hackett, directed by David Bradley, People’s Light (scenery & projection design)

Woody Sez | created by David Lutken, directed by Nick Corley, Westport Country Playhouse

Mornings at Seven | Paul Osborn, directed by Abigail Adams, People’s Light

Rags | Stein/Strouse/Schwartz, directed by Rob Ruggiero, Goodspeed Musicals (projection design)

All Shook Up | book by Joe DiPietro, directed by Dan Knechtges, The MUNY

Woody Sez | created by David Lutken, directed by Nick Corley, Irish Repertory Theater

Sex Tips for Straight Women from a Gay Man | Matt Murphy, directed by Tim Drucker, Paris Las Vegas

Woody Sez | created by David Lutken, directed by Nick Corley, Seattle Repertory

Jane Eyre | Karchin/Osen, directed by Kristine McIntyre, Center for Contemporary Opera

Follies | Sondhiem/Goldman, directed by Rob Ruggiero, Repertory Theater of St. Louis

The Call | Tanya Barfield, directed by Jenn Thompson, TheaterWorks

When I Was a Girl I Used to Scream and Shout | Sharmond MacDonald, directed by John Keating, Fallen Angels Theater Company (Off B’way)

Buyer and Cellar | Jonathan Tollins, directed by Rob Ruggiero, TheaterWorks

Street Scene | Weill/Hughes, directed by Kristine McIntyre, Baltimore Lyric Opera/Peabody

Auctioning the Ainsleys | Laura Schellhardt, directed by Abigail Adams, People’s Light

Ted’s Talk | created and directed by David Strassman, Australian Tour

Good People | David Lindsey-Abaire, directed by Rob Ruggiero, TheaterWorks

Junie B. Jones: Essential Survival Guide to School | Heisler/Goldrich, directed by Peter Flynn, Theaterworks USA Nat’lTour

Woody Sez | created by David Lutken, directed by Nick Corley, Asolo Repertory Theater

Another Tree Dance, choreographed by Karinne Keithley-Syers, Chocolate Factory

Time Stands Still by Donald Marguiles, directed by Rob Ruggiero, TheaterWorks

The Sacre Project, created by John Crawford, Pacific Symphony

Don Giovanni, Mozart/Da Ponte, directed by Roger Brunyate, Lyric Opera Baltimore/Peabody

La Tribu, RedCAT New Original Works Festival

Waterways, choreographed by Melaine Rios, The Wooden Floor

The Rake’s Progress, Stravinksy/Kalman, directed by Garnett Bruce, Lyric Opera Baltimore/Peabody

The Understudy, by Theresa Rebeck, directed by Rob Ruggiero, TheaterWorks

Too, choreographed by Susan Rethorst, The Wooden Floor

This by Melissa James Gibson, directed by Amy Saltz, TheaterWorks

Woody Sez, created by David Lutken, directed by Nick Corley, The Arts Theater (London – West End)

Broke-o-logy by Nathan Louis Jackson, directed by Tazewell Thompson, TheaterWorks

Los Angelitos, choreographed by Mark Haim, The Wooden Floor

The Price by Arthur Miller directed by Tracy Brigden, Pittsburgh Public Theater

Snapshots, music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, book by David Stern, directed by Richard Maltby, Jr., Lyric Theater of Oklahoma

Legends in Concert, On Stage Entertainment, Norwegian Cruise Lines, (co-designed with Joel Moritz)

Berenstain Bears: Family Matters, book, music and lyrics by Michael Borton, directed and choreographed by Devanand Janki, Matt Murphy Productions (Nat’l Tour)

214 Sq. Ft.

2012-2024

Co-created with Christine Hegel

Funders: Project Hope Alliance, UCI Center for Ethnography

214 Sq. Ft. was a full-scale mobile recreation of a motel room embedded with video, audio and textual material. The project, developed with the support of the Project Hope Alliance, advocated awareness of the problems of the functionally homeless families and children of Southern California. Existing at the border between social practice and anthropology, it created a new venue and paradigm for ethnographical data collection. The installation has been sited at Balboa Bay Club (Newport Beach, CA), University of California, Irvine Social Science Quad (Irvine, CA), Saddleback Church Main Campus (Lake Forest, CA), Second Harvest Food Bank of Orange County (Irvine, CA) and Angels Stadium (Anaheim, CA).

Feel the Thunder

2018

Co-created with Christine Hegel and Sari Pietikäinen from the University of Jyväskylä, Finland

Funders: Academy of Finland 

www.artofhockey.fi

Feel the Thunder was an interactive design fiction and exhibition of hockey memorabilia for an imagined team named Ukkonen. The objects on display are familiar and typical – trading cards, jerseys, patches – yet also speculative. They play with the memorabilia form to suggest both alternate pasts and possible futures. The objects are designed to invite visitors to reflect on the nature of hockey work in the Finnish national league and, by extension, the global hockey market. This includes the work of managers and coaches, of physiotherapists and administrators, and of fans and volunteers, all of whom are invested in their team every day of every season.

The exhibition is the product of a two-year collaboration between design, discourse, sports, and anthropology as a multi-modal form of social analysis and knowledge design. Our aim was to find and develop an alternative way to tell about the key findings of four-year ethnography research on professional hockey as work in Finland. In this knowledge design process, we draw on insights from design, Deleuzian insights of assemblage, and critical ethnography. With the help of feedback from our key participants, we developed together each object in response to particular insights evolving from the ethnography of hockey as work. We also worked together with professional photographer, Pekka Rötkönen, who followed everyday hockey work in the fall of 2018 and took nearly 3000 pictures of work behind the scenes. For more details on the design process see the article “Ice Time” in the American Anthropologist.

Trade is Sublime

2013

Co-created with Christine Hegel

Funders: World Trade Organization, UCI Center for Ethnography, University of California Institute for Research in the Arts (UCIRA)

Following on modalities explored in 214 Sq. Ft., Trade is Sublime was a series of improvisationally created dance films designed for installation at the World Trade Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. Working with Christine Hegel, and George Marcus, the project functioned as both a follow-up to an extensive international research project on the World Trade Organization initiated by former General Director Pascal Lamy and a means to explore the embedded values of a large multi-national bureaucratic institution. Results from the project were presented at the 2013 Annual Meetings of the American Anthropology Association and the 2014 Troubled Field Conference at the New School for Social Research

New Swan Theater

2012

Lead Designer with Sara Pisheh

Funders: New Swan Shakespeare Festival / UCIrivne

newswanshakespeare.com

The New Swan Theater is a modular performance space modeled on the dynamics of an early modern Elizabethan Stage. I designed the structure in collaboration with director Eli Simon, actor Phil Thompson, lighting designer Lonnie Alcaraz, and sound designer Mike Hooker. The theater is a temporary structure designed to be assembled in multiple sites both indoors and outside made from 12 steel tower structures. Utilizing an innovative spiral-shaped thrust, it is currently the home of the New Swan Shakespeare Festival. Plays produced on the New Swan stage include The Merchant of Venice, The Comedy of Errors, King Lear, Romeo & Juliet, Twelfth Night, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It is in continuing use each summer.

The Flocktree

2006

Co-design with Jason Cantarella (Professor of Mathematics, University of Georgia)

Funders: Ideas for Creative Exploration, Athens GA

The Flocktree was a spatial visualization of a mathematical grouping algorithm created in collaboration with topologist Jason Cantarella in 2006. Installed in the courtyard space of an old cotton-processing factory, the Flocktree recreated the frozen flight path of a flock of pigeons observed from the window of my studio space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. This flock was then bounded with a series of diminishing aluminum cubes based on Cantarella’s mathematical model of minimal spaces.

NEH Infrastructure and Capacity Building Challenge Grant

Co-PI with Kelly Kreitz, Wayne Petro and Gary Laermer

St. Louis Critics Circle Award for Set Design

Evita | The Repertory Theater of St. Louis

Barrymore Award for Outstanding Set Design

Mornings at Seven | People’s Light

Connecticut’s Critics Circle Award for Projection Design

Rags | Goodspeed Musicals (nominee)

St. Louis Critics Circle Award for Set Design

Follies| The Repertory Theater of St. Louis

University of California Institute for Research in the Arts (UCIRA) Major Project
Implementation Grant

Trade is Sublime

Art Directors Guild Award, Excellence for Production Design for a Period Film

Julie & Julia | Assistant Art Director (nominee)

Kevin Kline Award: Outstanding Scenic Design

The Bomb-itty of Errors | The Repertory Theater of St. Louis (nominee)

Ideas of Creative Exploration Grant

The Flocktree | Co-PI with Jason Cantarella

Joseph Jefferson Citation for Excellence in Set Design

Stalag 17 | American Blues Theater

Joseph Jefferson Citation for Excellence in Set Design

The Lights | Roadworks Productions (nominee)