Mary Ellen Stebbins

Assistant Professor of Lighting Design

Mary Ellen Stebbins is a lighting designer working in theater, opera, dance, and music. Based in New York City, collaborations across the country and internationally include work with Shakespeare Theater Company, Opera Philadelphia, MCC Theater, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Sophiensaele as well as Theresa Rebeck, Clare Barron, A$AP Rocky, Adrienne Truscott, and eighth blackbird.

Recent regional credits include Florentine Opera, Northern Stage, and the Peabody Essex Museum, and recent work in New York City includes Talking Band, Monica Bill Barnes, and Prototype.

Mary Ellen is a 2020 Bessie Award Honoree for her work with Monica Bill Barnes’ Days Go By. She received a 2016 Henry Hewes nominee for her design for Clare Barron’s I’ll Never Love Again and is a 2019 Opera America Tobin Director-Designer Prize recipient. She was a 2014 Live Design Young Designer to Watch, the 2011 USITT Barbizon Lighting Design Award winner, and a 2009 Hangar Theater Lab Company Design Fellow. Mary Ellen was a 2019-2020 Art Commissioner with the Queens Council on the Arts and

Mary Ellen holds an AB from Harvard University and received her MFA from Boston University. She is a member of USA 829.