Sara Brown

Sara Brown is an Associate Professor of Set Design in the Music and Theater Arts program at MIT. Her professional work includes set designs for major productions such as The Lehman Trilogy (Huntington Theater), The Mother of Us All (Metropolitan Museum of Art), and Fat Ham (Wilma Theater), as well as the VR performance The Other Shore (Jacob’s Pillow).

Her research centers on environmental design for performance, spanning theater, opera, and dance. She investigates how stage environments shape action and narrative, with recent innovations in virtual reality. Her teaching develops students' skills in traditional techniques (drawing, painting, model making) and digital tools (3D CAD, image manipulation).

Brown actively mentors students, guiding them in independent projects and departmental productions. She led the Unbound Mural project (2019) with MIT students and incarcerated artists, and taught a remote course in 2021 on dramatic imagination.