Alison Heryer

L'Orfeo & The Fall of the House of Usher: Costume Designer

Alison Heryer is an interdisciplinary artist whose work combines costume, installation, performance, and community engagement. As a costume designer, she is a member of United Scenic Artists, Local 829. Her design credits include productions at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, 59E59 Theaters, La MaMa, The New Victory Theater, Portland Center Stage, Portland Opera, Kansas City Repertory Theatre, Indiana Repertory Theatre, Artists Repertory Theatre, ZACH Theatre, The Hypocrites, and Redmoon. Her work has been featured in exhibitions at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, World Stage Design, and The Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space. Awards include a Drammy Award, the Austin Critics Table Award for Costume Design, and the ArtsKC Inspiration Grant. Heryer is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Texas at Austin. She is a faculty member in the School of Art + Design at Portland State University where she was recently granted the Sue Horn-Caskey & Charles F. Caskey Professorship of Textile Arts & Costume Design.

Events featuring Alison Heryer

The Fall of the House of Usher

Based on the story by Edgar Allan Poe
Libretto by Arthur Yorinks

August 25 – 28, 2022

When a man visits his ill childhood friend Roderick Usher after many years apart, he is shaken to his core by the foreboding atmosphere and sense of evil that pervades the household and its inhabitants. His attempts to understand and address the literal and figurative "illness" that permeates Usher's house fail at every turn, and he is unable to deter Usher, his sister Madeline, and the house itself from their swift descent into the abyss. The hauntingly beautiful and strange music of Philip Glass perfectly captures every nuance and inner nerve of this powerful story by Edgar Allan Poe.

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L’Orfeo

Libretto by Alessandro Striggio

August 4 – 7, 2022

When the musician Orfeo loses his beloved Euridice on their wedding day, he is determined to reunite with her at all costs, even if it means a trip to hell and back. Armed with only his lyre and beautiful voice, he begins the journey of his life - a life that is meaningless without Euridice. Celebrating the power of music and a fathomless love that refuses to abide by "Till Death Do Us Part", this story of love and loss transcends all time, and is made even more beautiful and moving by Monteverdi’s elegant score.

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