Olga Maslova /Black Square, a new opera by Demutsky, Maslova, Konyukhov

Olga Maslova was born in Ukraine, received her BFA in directing there, hitchhiked through Perestroika art and theatre scene in Moscow in the 90s and moved to USA two decades ago. Since then she directed, worked as a dramaturg and designed costumes and sets for many prominent directors and choreographers in USA and abroad. Among them are Bill T Jones and Arnie Zane Company, Dan Sullivan, Chris Bayes, Bruce Levitt, Ron Daniels, Pedro Salazar and many others. Her work was praised in New York Times, New Yorker, Village Voice, Boston Globe, Boston Intelligencer, and Art Fuse, as well as international newspapers such as El Nuevo Siblo and Новое  Русское Слово.  Opera Aleko with her designs for costumes and scenery has won the first place in the USA National Opera Competition in 2013, to be followed by another first place for Mozart and Salieri in 2014, both by Commonwealth Lyric Opera Company.  Recent highlights include costumes for the world premiere of a play Long Lost by Pulitzer Prize winning author Donald Margulies, directed by Tony Award winner Dan Sullivan, costumes for Boris Godunov and Iolanta for NewOperaNYC San Francisco tour, costumes for Habrá que cantar en los tiempos difíciles? starring Martha Senna and Laura Garcia, directed by Pedro Salazar for Teatro Colón and Teatro Mayor at Bogota, Colombia, costume design for The Shape of Things by Neil Labute at Teatro Nacional, Bogota, Colombia, and costumes for Kiss me, Kate at Krannert Center, Urbana, Illinois. Upcoming projects include a Kabuki/Elizabethan fusion performance Jago’s plot directed by National Living Treasure of Japan Shozo Sato at Studio Theater, Urbana, Il, and costumes for Verdi’s Macbeth for Panama Opera’s on site performance at the 16th century Convento at Panama Viejo, Panama City.
Olga is an assistant professor of costume design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she developed several innovative courses on devise theatre. Olga received BFA with honors in Directing from the State Academy of Culture, Kharkov, Ukraine. She holds two terminal degrees: an MFA in Dramaturgy with honors from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and MFA in costume and set design from NYU, Tisch School of the Arts, where she studied on Hope Scholarship, Irving Goldman Friars Scholarship and Lifetime Learning Scholarship.