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06/16/2026 | News release | Distributed by Public on 06/17/2026 07:52

CFA Students Bring Their Design Talents to World’s Largest Shakespeare Festival

CFA Students Bring Their Design Talents to World's Largest Shakespeare Festival

Under tutelage of School of Theatre's Jon Savage, they created sets, costumes, and more for Craiova International Shakespeare Festival in Romania

Parrabbola's production of Shakespeare's comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream, one of three plays they staged this year at the 2026 Craiova International Shakespeare Festival. Four BU College of Fine Arts students designed the costumes and sets for the productions, all of which had to fit into six suitcases, so they could be easily transported from York, England, to Craiova, Romania. Photos by Jon Savage

Theatre

CFA Students Bring Their Design Talents to World's Largest Shakespeare Festival

Under tutelage of School of Theatre's Jon Savage, they created sets, costumes, and more for Craiova International Shakespeare Festival in Romania

June 16, 2026
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Last month was a whirlwind for four College of Fine Arts School of Theatre students. Just a day after final exams ended on May 8, they arrived in York, England, where they would spend the next 10 days feverishly designing sets and costumes for three Shakespeare plays being presented by the York-based theatre company Parrabbola at the world's largest Shakespeare festival in Romania.

Not only did the four students-Gus Kim (CFA'28), Benny Dietz (CFA'28), Ella Harris (CFA'28), and Kara Zacharewicz (CFA'27)-have to work at breakneck speed, but everything they created also had to fit in just six suitcases, so it could be easily transported by plane from England to Romania for the 2026 Craiova International Shakespeare Festival, which ran from May 21 to 31.

Within hours of landing in York, they found themselves in a rehearsal room where Parrabbola actors were going over scenes from their productions of Romeo and Juliet, Two Gentlemen of Verona, and A Midsummer Night's Dream, all of which the BU team would be working on.

"The very next morning, we were organizing the company's preexisting costume stock, learning which pieces fit which actors, what clothes and fabrics we had access to, and organizing the few bags they had to transport everything in," says Kim. "We started each of the following 10 days with a to-do list, spotting up between sewing and mending clothes, making props, buying fabric and other materials in downtown York, and attending rehearsals to watch runs, get measurements from actors, and fit costume pieces we had finished the previous day."

The BU design team's first meeting with the Parrabbola casts. The students designed sets and costumes for Parrabbola's productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Romeo and Juliet at this year's Craiova International Shakespeare Festival.
Jesters being fitted with costumes designed by the BU students in the tiring house in the Shakespeare Village at the Craiova International Shakespeare Festival. The BU students pictured here are Kara Zacharewicz (CFA'27) (third from left) and Gus Kim (CFA'28) (far right).

The four worked under the tutelage of Jon Savage, CFA School of Theatre assistant professor of scene design, who had arranged the opportunity for them to work with Parrabbola. Savage had met Parrabbola's artistic director, Philip Parr, last year when they were both teaching at the Prague Shakespeare Company's Summer Intensive program. Savage had already developed a relationship with the company, and has been head of design there for the last two summers, bringing a small cohort of CFA students to work on productions. He and Parr began to explore what opportunities there might be for BU design students to engage in and experience a European style of theatre making. The collaboration between BU and Parrabbola grew out of those conversations.

"Each of the students were able to do basic sewing, painting, and building, along with having a solid storytelling approach," says Savage, who hand-selected his cohort for the trip.

The students embraced the chance to move beyond their respective areas of expertise-costume design, scenic design, lighting, and sound-and develop new skills.

For Zacharewicz, who is majoring in scene design, that meant pivoting to making costumes. "It was nice to sew again for a production, since I don't typically do that anymore," she says. "I love giving actors costumes and seeing how they react to them."

"This experience puts you in a position where you have to stretch what you think is possible," Savage says.

In addition to mending, cleaning, and altering existing costumes in Parrabbola's inventory, the students had to create costumes from scratch for the cast and for the six court jesters, who would be entertaining crowds throughout Craiova's Shakespeare Village during the festival. And they also had to recreate and construct three Elizabethan-era games-a version of nine men's morris, quoits, and skittles-each of which is referenced in various Shakespeare plays. Once in Craiova, they were tasked with dressing in period costumes and running the games.

Kara Zacharewicz (CFA'27) (right) demonstrates a version of the Elizabethan-era game skittles to a festival goer.
Gus Kim (CFA'28) (far right) teaches the Elizabethan-era game nine men's morris to festival goers during the Craiova International Shakespeare Festival.

The designing experience required ingenuity and rapid problem-solving-such as figuring out how to make Hippolyta and Theseus' costumes disappear in a matter of seconds, so that the actors playing those roles could rapidly transform into Titania and Oberon, respectively.

"We ended up finding many clever ways to expand our designs while reducing space in the bags we were taking to Craiova, flipping things to be double-sided or finding a set design concept that could be broken down to fit in bags and easily constructed," says Dietz.

"This is largely an opportunity about craft, about working quickly, making fast choices, and working without the luxury of a dedicated workspace or easy access to materials or the luxury of time in planning, and ordering," Parr says. "The work the students have been doing replicates the most common real-life working situations for designers-the nature of compromise and decision-making, the ability to communicate with everyone and to be on top of multiple conversations at the same time."

When they weren't working on productions (there were two shows a day), the student designers got a chance to explore a bit of Craiova and attend some of the hundreds of Shakespeare productions being mounted in other languages, including Japanese, Catalan, Romanian, and Ukrainian.

"The work that went into making sure all audiences could understand what was going on just by movement and facial expressions was at the forefront of every production and revealed how Shakespeare's works transcend cultural barriers," Kim says.

And the students acquired a few new skills as well. Harris and Zacharewicz learned some basic leather-working skills from one of the reenactors in the Shakespeare village, and Kim learned how to juggle from one of the jesters.

The four CFA students relax during a quiet moment on their last day in York, England, before departing for Craiova, Romania. From left: Kara Zacharewicz (CFA'27), Gus Kim (CFA'28), Ella Harris (CFA'28), and Benny Dietz (CFA'28).

Most of the costs of travel were underwritten by a CFA Dean's Research Grant. Some of the students received funding through BU's Yawkey Nonprofit Internship Program, while others were supported with grants from the University's Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) and the 2026 Provost's Scholars Award for Academic Exploration. Additional funding was provided by the School of Theatre. The students received a stipend to cover their housing in Romania from the Craiova International Shakespeare Festival.

With the festival over, Dietz, Harris, and Kim will now head with Savage to Prague, where they'll take part in the Prague Shakespeare Company Summer Intensive program. Over the span of eight weeks, they and several additional BU students will work on more than a dozen productions that will then travel to Venice and Genoa, Italy, before ending up at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Savage says he's working on securing funding to offer several additional international experiences for CFA students in the future. He has already been invited to return to Craiova with Parrabbola in 2028, and he is in the early stages of developing collaborations with the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, University of Gloucestershire in England, Bangkok University in Thailand, and the Armenian National Opera and Ballet Theatre. And he hopes to create an opportunity for CFA performance students to work with the York International Shakespeare Festival as early as next spring.

"These experiences open so many possibilities for students," Savage says. "It puts you in positions where you have to stretch what you think is possible, and it's a tremendous confidence builder in one's skills and ability to produce. We're also working with people that approach theatre differently than in the US, with different storytelling expertise. It can be life-changing."

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