If theatre is a gateway to distant and exotic lands, then Christopher McCollum may be our top travel agent; his magical sets never fail to transport us. Whether it's Depression-era NYC or Paris during the Great Terror, this Austin native can take a little lumber, some paint, and canvas, and carry us there into what feels like a wonderland. His set for Austin Musical Theatre's Annie made that comic-strip musical's setting a cotton candy-colored Big Apple; his scene work for Zilker Theatre's South Pacific offered luxuriant tropical foliage on traveling boxes, which parted to reveal a three-dimensional Bali Hai rising from a glttering sea. His work reveals not only an expansive sense of scale, perspective, color, and texture, but a great grasp of the dramatic and a thriving sense of wonder.
