melicia zaini 符丽霞

melicia zaini 符丽霞

costume designer & artist, they/them

About

costume design + visual art + personal essays

My work is a love letter to colours, finding small joys, community building, and celebrating silliness.

As a costume designer for theatre and film, I am especially passionate about designing for new works and designing through a dramaturgical lens.

Projects

2023
Elf: The Musical (assistant to Christine Reimer)

dir. Steven Drover | Arts Club Theatre Company

2023
A Void (short film)

dir. Mily Mumford | KIDDO Films

2023
Before They Cut Down Our Tree

dir. Leslie Dos Remedios | PTC + Vancouver Fringe Festival

2023
Little Shop of Horrors (assistant to Carmen Alatorre)

dir. Ashlie Corcoran | Arts Club Theatre Company & Citadel Theatre

2023
Sorry For Your Cost (short film)

dir. Rosie Choo Pidcock | BOLDLY

2023
God Said This

dir. Kaitlin Williams | Pacific Theatre

2023
Unexpecting (co-design with Carmen Alatorre)

dir. Cameron Mackenzie | Zee Zee Theatre

2023
The How & The Why

dir. Tanya Mathivanan | Aenigma Theatre

2023
My Little Tomato

dir. Cameron Mackenzie | Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre & Zee Zee Theatre

2023
Forgiveness (assistant to Joanna Yu)

dir. Stafford Arima | Arts Club & Theatre Calgary

2022
King Arthur's Night (feature/documentary; assistant to Christine Reimer)

dir. John Bolton | Opus 59 Films

2022
Courage Now

dir. Amiel Gladstone | Firehall Arts Centre

2022

dir. Andrea Nirmala Widjajanto | Pidgin Productions

2021
A Broadway Holiday

dir. Barbara Tomasic | Gateway Theatre

2021
we the same

dir. Diane Brown | Ruby Slippers Theatre

2021
A Shakespearience (co-design with Melissa McCowell)

dir. Dean Paul Gibson | Bard on the Beach

2021
The Journal of the Plague Year

dir. Colleen Lanki | TomoeArts

2021

dir. Rosie Choo Pidcock & Anaisa Visser | Voices With Impact

2021
TomorrowLove

dir. Lauren Taylor & Shekhar Paleja | Studio 58

2020
Anywhere But Here (assistant to Carmen Alatorre)

dir. Juliette Carrillo | Electric Company Theatre

2019
Ghost Train: Alice in Nightmareland (assistant to Christine Reimer)

dir. Peter Hall | Mortal Coil

2019
Kuroko (assistant to Christine Reimer)

dir. Amiel Gladstone | Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre

2019
Turn of the Screw

dir. Tanya Mathivanan | Aenigma Theatre

2019
Where The Quiet Queers Are

dir. Laura Fukumoto | Amplify Choral Theatre

2019
Fireflies

dir. Tricia Trinh | Killjoy Theatre

2019
The Way You Carry On

dir. Mika Laulainen | Killjoy Theatre

2019
Burqa Boutique

dir. Gavan Cheema & Jamie King | Killjoy Theatre

2019

dir. Michael P. Vidler | Crazy8s

2018
Theory

dir. Mily Mumford | Tremors Festival at Rumble Theatre

2018
House of Arms

dir. Chad Cuthbertson | Affair of Honor

2018
Going Up (short film)

dir. Forman Howes | Lord Byng Media Arts

2018
She Kills Monsters

dir. Keltie Forsyth | Theatre at UBC

2017
Lone Star

dir. Jessica Anne Nelson | Theatre at UBC

Side Projects

Ongoing

A collection of personal essays, published monthly(ish), on finding colours amidst the gloom, capturing fleeting moments, feeling big feelings, and falling in love with the world around me.

Exhibitions

2023
through the landscape at Vines Art Festival

I wanted to create a piece that celebrates and honors the land we are creating in. As an immigrant, I feel infinitely grateful to be able to reside on the ancestral and stolen lands of the Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. The fabric panels I have created contain abstractions of the landscape around us as a way to highlight and complement the beautiful view.

Education

2014 — 2018
Bachelor of Fine Arts at University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC

Theatre Design and Production, specialization in Costume Design and Stage Management