Rosaria Sinisi
Rosaria Sinisi was fortunate enough to study set design with Oliver Smith at NYU’s School of the Arts. After earning her MFA, she assisted him for five years, working on Broadway, in Hollywood and in Europe before embarking on her own design career. She designed the original sets for Shining Time Station, art directed five Tony Award ceremonies, and served as art director and visual consultant for all eight seasons of The Cosby Show. Her design work also includes film, television commercials and soap operas. While working on The Cosby Show, Rosaria earned a law degree at NYU, and subsequently practiced copyright law and served for five years as Vice President for Business Affairs and General Counsel of a company producing websites for celebrity clients, with a focus on content creation and licensing. At his death in 1994, Mr Smith bequeathed his copyrights to Ms Sinisi and entrusted her with the management and supervision of stage revivals of his design works. Since that time, she has supervised productions using Smith’s ballet and theatre designs (including West Side Story, Fancy Free, Fall River Legend and West Side Story Suite) around the world, working with (among others) the Jerome Robbins Rights Trust and the estate of Agnes DeMille, the New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, the National Ballet of Canada and the Royal Danish Ballet. She also works with theatre and dance historians researching the thousands of pieces of theatrical artwork and drafting created by Oliver Smith, which are now in the Music Division of the Library of Congress. Rosaria lives in Brooklyn, NY, and is a member of United Scenic Artists Local 829.