Scenic Designer for PROBLEM PLAY
Jenna McFarland Lord is a professional scenic designer and artist in the greater Boston area. Over the past 22 years Ms. McFarland Lord has designed for several professional companies in Boston such as; BLKS (Outstanding Design 2022 Elliot Norton Award), Men On Boats, Shakespeare In Love (IRNE award nomination for Best Set Design), Grand Concourse, Bootycandy, Big Fish, The Color Purple, In The Heights, The Drowsy Chaperone (IRNE award nomination for Best Set Design), The Great American Trailer Park Musical, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Theatre District, and Moonlight Room (SpeakEasy Stage Company) Grand Horizon, Between the Sheets, Gloucester Blue, New Electric Ballroom, North Shore Fish, Spring Awakening, Living Together, Table Manners, Trying, Breath of Life, Sins of the Mother, Doubt: A Parable, The Widow’s Blind Date, The Belle of Amherst, My Old Lady, Dinner with Friends, LifeX3, Spinning into Butter, The Loman Family Picnic. (Gloucester Stage Co.); Calendar Girls, Something’s Afoot, Distant Music (both IRNE award nominations for Best Set Design), Steel Magnolias, The Porch, Guys on Ice, The Mousetrap (Greater Boston Stage); Paradise, The Convert (Elliot Norton for Best Production 2016) (Central SquareTheatre); In The Heights (Elliot Norton Nomination for Outstanding Design 2017) (Wheelock Family Theatre)Collected Stories, Cherry Docs (both IRNE award nominations for Best Set Design) (New Repertory Theatre); Fabulation, Last 5 Years, The Roommate, Warrior Class, Groundswell, November (Lyric Stage Company of Boston); Twelfth Night, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Macbeth(Actors Shakespeare Project); Urinetown, Middletown, Vinegar Tom (Northeastern University) The Machinal, The Frogs, Cabaret, Three Penny Opera, The Full Monty, Twelfth Night, Cosi Fan Tutte (The Boston Conservatory )Don Giovanni (New England Conservatory); A View from the Bridge, Escape From Happiness (Brandeis University). Off-Broadway: The Secret of Mme. Bonnard’s Bath (New York Playwrights’ Lab) Man in Snow (La Mama).
Ms. McFarland Lord has also worked as a designer outside of the Theatre world. She created the interior industrial design for Station1, a program where exceptional undergraduate students carried out exciting socially-directed STEM research projects. She was the production coordinator for the scenic elements for the Boston Winter Festival in The Government Center Plaza in 2017. Jenna McFarland Lord was the production designer on the upcoming movie YE!, written and directed by John ADEkoje.
As a professional scenic artist, Ms. Lord has painted for just about every theatre company in town, and painted on many movies, but her work with WHDH Channel 7 stands out, as it earned a local Emmy Award for best local news set.
In addition to her professional set design career, Jenna was a professor and assistant technical director at Stonehill College in the theatre department for 6 years. This is Jenna’s 15th year as the set design, carpentry, and scenic painting teacher at the Boston Arts Academy, Boston’s only public high school for the arts. She loves the opportunity to work with the youth in Boston, engaging them in an exciting curriculum that develops their ability to be visual storytellers.
Jenna received her BFA at Emerson College in Acting in 1997 and stayed at Emerson to do her graduate work in Set Design until 1999. When she is not working, Jenna enjoys spending time with her children Elliott Lord and Drew Lord.