Associate Professor of Design Matt Saunders’ work on the world premiere of the off-Broadway play, Daddy, won Outstanding Set Design for a Play at the Drama Desk Awards earlier this month.

Saunders created the scenic design for the limited off-Broadway engagement of Daddy, a co-production of the Vineyard Theater and The New Group. The set features an infinity pool which places the characters outside of a house in Beverly Hills. The New York Times wrote in their review of the play, “the swimming pool steals the show...[it] ripples with eloquent promises of endless fluidity, hidden depths, and boundary-crossing danger."

Saunders is a scenic designer and a creator of new performance work based in Philadelphia. He is a founding member and associate artistic director of the OBIE Award-winning, experimental theater company New Paradise Laboratories (NPL) and has been involved in the creation of NPL’s work through both scenic design and performance for over 20 years. Other designs of his for theater, opera, and dance have been seen at Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center, Signature Theater, and The Public Theater, among others. Saunders holds an MFA in Design from the Yale School of Drama, is a 2015 Hodder Fellow at Princeton University, and a 2014 Pew Fellow in the Arts.