Jan Chambers
Professor of Dramatic Art, Resident Set and Costume Designer for PlayMakers Repertory Company
CDA #218
Jan Chambers is a professor in the Department of Dramatic Art at UNC and a resident set and costume designer for PlayMakers Repertory Company. She has taught set, costume, and makeup design courses, as well as First Year Seminars related to theatre design and production. She is particularly interested in the incorporation of sensory immersion, intuitive thinking, and collaboration in teaching the design process. Digital technology and UNC BeAM makerspaces are often used in her class projects and are the focus of her graduate level course in digital technology for costume production.
Work for PlayMakers includes They Do Not Know Harlem, Yoga Play, The Skin of our Teeth, As You Like It, Julius Caesar, Dairyland, How I Learned to Drive, Skeleton Crew, Leaving Eden, A Christmas Carol, The Cake, The May Queen, Sweeney Todd, 4000 Miles, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, The Making of a King: Henry IV & V, A Raisin in the Sun, Red, Metamorphosis, The Tempest, Angels in America and Nicholas Nickleby, among others. Regional designs include Hamlet, Cyrano de Bergerac, Sunday in the Park with George, Pericles (Guthrie Theatre); Asylum (Only Child Aerial Theatre at Circus Now International Contemporary Circus Exposure); Pericles, Hamlet (Folger Theatre); Pericles, Henry V (Oregon Shakespeare Festival); North: A Love Letter, The Reckoning, It Had Wings, The Narrowing, Out of the Blue (Archipelago Theatre/ Cine). She is a member of the United States Institute for Theatre Technology and United Scenic Artists, Local 829.
In addition to her teaching and theater work, Jan is a painter and sculptor. She holds a BFA in Studio Art from the University of Tennessee and an MFA in Theater Design from the University of Illinois. See more about her on her website.