Curse of the Starving Class

MATT SAUNDERS (SET DESIGNER) is a Barrymore Award Winning performer, scenic designer, and a creator of new performance work proudly based in Philadelphia. Matt is a founding member and Associate Artistic Director of the OBIE Award-Winning, experimental theatre company, New Paradise Laboratories. He has been involved in the creation of all of NPL’s work through both scenic design and performance. This work has included Prom, a co-production with the Tony Award-Winning Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis, and BATCH, at the 2007 Humana Festival for New American Plays at the Actor’s Theatre of Louisville. Matt co-created and designed Fatebook, which was selected for the United States’ professional pavilion at the Prague Quadrennial 2011. Outside of NPL, Matt has designed over eighty shows for such companies as, The Walnut St. Theatre, The Acting Company and The Guthrie Theater, The Arden Theatre Company, InterAct Theatre Company, Theatre Exile, 1812 Productions, Headlong Dance Theatre, Pig Iron Theatre Company, People’s Light and Theater, The Philadelphia Theater Company, Yale Repertory Theatre and Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Under the Whaleback is Matt’s seventh show at the Wilma, which is becoming an artistic home for him. Mr Saunders holds an MFA in Design from the Yale School of Drama, and is the Assistant Professor of Design in the Department of Theater at Swarthmore College. www.mattsaunders.net