Anya Klepikov designs spaces and clothes for a variety of performance events in collaboration with theater artists, musicians, and other performers. Her work includes theater, opera, dance, performance, installation, a web series and a sizzle reel. Anya is interested in character, in communal awe, in the way that space mediates an event, in the joy of a community creating a ritual together, and in the many possible interpretations of one story.

Influenced by teachers Ming Cho Lee and Jean-Guy Lecat, her interest in the spatial relationship and energy between performers as well as between performers and the audience is at the heart of each scenic design. Indebted to mentor costume designer Jane Greenwood for the notion of “clothes”, Anya works towards a vital connection between the performer and their “costume” and treasures the process of creating a character together with an actor.

Starting in the Summer of 2020 when the world of live performance was upended by the pandemic, Anya began her exploration of design driven original work in collaboration with her students. Two projects, Monuments of the Future (2021) and FLAMINGO MURMURATION (2022) were co-produced with the UMass Amherst Theater Department. Her award-winning and interactive “An Instrument of Introspection: the Nun’s Bed” was installed at the I-Park Foundation in 2023. She is currently working on the You-Cube, a tiny alternative performance space which offers accessible empowerment to the performers inside of it and accessible inspiration to the audience outside of it.

Anya’s collaborators have included a wide range of artists from whom she has learned a lot about the performance making craft including Tea Alagic, Laurel Atwell, Tei Blow, Kyle Boatwright, Steven Bogart, Bill Brewer, Liz Carlson, Kathleen Chalfant, Jane Cox, Mike Donahue, Laurelyn Dossett, Lawrence Edelson, Sara Erde, Eric Sean Fogel, Denise Gabriel, Michael Gieleta, Adam Goldman, Spencer Golub, Elisa Gonzales, Jane Greenwood, Wendall Harrington, Ethan Heard, Adam Immerwahr, Preston Lane, Gilbert McCauley, Meg Miroshnik, Kym Moore, Kevin Newbury, Diana Oh, Rene Orth, Amanda $%^ Palmer, Tobias Picker, Rudy Ramirez, Penny Remsen, Ashley Teague, Mei Ann Teo, Tim Vasen, Gene Scheer, Max Vernon, Kate Whoriskey, Robert Wurtzel, and Lauren Yee.

Her love of painting has taken her beyond scenic and costume design. In addition to designing the set for the 2016 world premiere of "Radiunt Abundunt", a collaboration between playwright/director Preston Lane and singer songwriter Laurelyn Dossett at Triad Stage, Anya also created the twenty-one original paintings, representing the work of the main character, an outsider artist. She has also illustrated a children’s book of poetry in collaboration with Boston-based poet Marina Eskina: http://www.anyaproductiondesign.com/book-illustration/

Anya first discovered the creative possibilities of teaching as a Teaching Artist with the Roundabout Theater Company whose Education arm subscribes to a unique pedagogical philosophy. Currently an Assistant Professor of Scenic Design at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Anya has previously lectured on set and costume design at Princeton, Brown and Colgate Universities. In addition to teaching design, she has given a number of lectures at the Yale School of Drama as well as developed semester-long courses at Princeton and UMass on the subject of color practice for designers. Anya presented a workshop called "The Color of Space: A Tool of Spatial Design" at the 2018 International Design Principles and Practices conference in Barcelona to an international group of designers from different disciplines. She holds an MFA from the Yale School of Drama and a BA from the University of Chicago.