Camellia Koo

Camellia is a Toronto-based set and costume designer for theater, opera, dance and site-specific performance installations. 

Recent designs for opera include Marilyn Forever (Aventa Ensemble), Les contes d’Hoffmann (Edmonton Opera), Maria Stuarda (Pacific Opera Victoria), The Lighthouse (Boston Lyric Opera), The Turn of the Screw and La bohéme (Against the Grain), Dido and Aeneas (Opera on the Avalon), Don Giovanni (University of Toronto), Giiwedin (Native Earth) and The Shadow (Tapestry New Opera). She was associate designer on productions of The Magic Flute (Budapest State Opera) and Candide (ENO/Châtelet/Hyogo PAC, Japan) for designer Michael Levine.

Recent designs for theater include collaborations with numerous midsize to regional theater companies including Tarragon Theater, Young People’s Theater, The Second City (Toronto and Chicago), Soulpepper Theatre Company, and six seasons at The Shaw Festival. 

She is a graduate of Ryerson University and completed her M.A. in Scenography at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design (UK) and the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten (Utrecht, The Netherlands). She is also an alumni of the Lincoln Center Theater’s Director’s Lab.

She has received five Dora Mavor Moore Awards (Toronto), a Sterling Award (Edmonton), a Chalmers Award Grant, shared the 2006 Siminovitch Protégé Prize awarded to her by designer Dany Lyne; and was a member of the Third Prize Team with Joel Ivany and Jason Hand at the 2011 European Opera Directing Prize. Most recently, she was named to the Top Ten Theater Artists of the Year list for a third time by Toronto’s arts weekly Now Magazine. 

Upcoming plans include designs for Albert Herring (University of Toronto), Pelléas et Mélisande (Against the Grain), The Sea (The Shaw Festival), and A God in Need of Help (Tarragon Theater).