Professor, School of Theatre
Email: mcuster@utk.edu

Marianne Custer (Costume Designer) is the head of the MFA design program and resident designer for the Clarence Brown Theatre for more than twenty-five years. Her design credits include Broadway, regional theatre, the Municipal Theatre of Istanbul and the National Theatres of Germany and Hungary. Some of her recent designs include The Brontë Cycle, Ghosts, Mein Kampf and scenery for The Seagull. Since 1982, her students have won 35 awards in recognition of their design excellence. Her former students are working in regional theatres and operas, in New York andat universities across the country. Since 1997 Professor Custer has received numerous grants and traveled extensively researching costume designers in Central and Eastern Europe. She has publishedarticles based on this research in the German magazine Bühnentechnische Rundschau and in Theatre Design and Technology (TD&T). She is working on a book that profiles Central and Eastern Europe's most important costume designers. In 1998 she was recognized with a Thomas Jefferson Award for her research and creative accomplishments.