Costume sketches by Arthur Oliver

Arthur Oliver
Costume Designer

Arthur Oliver is the consummate Shakespearean theatrical costume designer, joining Moscow Ballet in 2011. He has created for such notable institutions as The Atlanta Opera, The Connecticut Opera, Berkshire Theatre Festival, Shakespeare & Company, Mixed Company, The Stratford Shakespearean Festival, The Yard, NYU/Tisch School of the Arts, Trinity College, and The Boston Conservatory. A chapter on his professional views of designing for Shakespeare was published in “Shakespeare Festivals Around the World.” He designed a series of short films for The Tropicana Film Festival in Sydney, Australia; worked on the worldwide broadcast of “Evening at Pops/Brush Up Your Shakespeare,” and on a live ESPN broadcast of a 1900′s period baseball game. Oliver's Broadway debut was “Broadway Bares XVII-Myth Behavior.” And in 2005, he collaborated with musician and Grammy Award recipient Carly Simon and Artistic Director Wendy Taucher of The Yard on “Created by Carly Simon: Dances at the Yard.”

Oliver created a complete new wardrobe of costumes in recognition of the 20th Anniversary year of the Great Russian Nutcracker—notably, the Rat King and Mice costumes are inspired by the surreal, dark, and fantastic art of Bosch and Brueghel. Oliver designed costumes for Moscow Ballet’s full-length Romeo and Juliet which premiered in 2011.

Oliver’s work is consistently recognized by top publications... the Boston Globe says, “sumptuous costumes;” Wall Street Journal raves, “richly wrought and resplendent costumes;” CurtainUp writer Elyse Sommer calls Oliver's work, “spectacularly stunning;” and the NY Times raves, “a resplendent tableau of the…royal court, in sumptuous costumes.”