VCUarts alum Brian Barker sets the scenes

By Anastasia Mineiro

Brian Barker isn’t where he thought he’d be, but he is exactly where he is supposed to be.

The Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts alum expected to end up amid the lights of Broadway – not on a marquee but behind the scenes, supervising lighting. Barker instead ended up in Richmond, where his company’s expertise in set design, and his support of fellow VCUarts alums, have been reflected less on theatrical stages but in realms ranging from “Sesame Street” to political pageantry.

A backstage theater kid in high school, Barker grew up in Midlothian and said he knew VCU had a “great theatre program with a lot of opportunity.” He planned to pursue lighting design until Ron Keller, then a professor of theatre, encouraged him to explore set design, which is the creation of the physical environment and scenery for a production.

“I don’t really think I had a very clear direction at all when I first started there, right? Who does?” Barker said of enrolling in VCUarts. “If you go to college and you have a clear direction on where you want to go – bravo.”

He earned his bachelor’s degree in technical theatre and theatrical stage design in 2003, which instilled strong fundamentals.

“From an art school perspective, going through all of the art foundations and doing all the sketching classes and having to present your work – as well as take feedback – is a critical thing to learn, because even in a professional setting, you have to be able to do that,” Barker said.

Still, he was at a crossroads upon graduating.

“I had the intent of leaving school and going on tour for Broadway to do their set design,” Barker said. Then the University of Tennessee, Knoxville recruited him to its MFA design program.

He earned his master’s in scenic design in 2007 and finally made it to New York – but not for Broadway. Instead, Barker joined a corporate design company that worked with big-name clients such as MTV.

“I was always doing work where I was a few steps ahead of my boss,” he said. “And by the time that guy left the business, I was just running his company for him, and I was like, ‘Oh, this is just insanity. Why am I doing everything for him and not working for myself?’ It was just an easy transition to go off and do that.”

So Barker returned to Richmond and started his own set design company, Barker Designs. Clients range from the Nickelodeon network and “Sesame Street” to gubernatorial inaugurations and presidential campaign rallies.

Barker Designs has eight full-time employees, but it can employ 20 to 30 people depending on the demands of each project. Many are fellow Rams, and Barker, who for eight years was an adjunct professor at VCUarts, has recruited numerous former students to work alongside him.

“The quality of people coming out of the VCU theatre program is, and always has been, very good,” he said. “Leaving VCU’s theatre department, they have to do so much of everything that it’s not like you don’t know about costumes or lighting or sound or all the other stuff, because you had exposure to all of it. So it just makes it easier to understand everything, to be able to work with all of it once you leave.”

Barker enjoys not only the creative facets of set design but its problem-solving aspects. Complex projects fascinate him, and as an example, he cited this year’s Super Bowl halftime show with Bad Bunny (which a fellow VCUarts alum worked on).

“The thought and storytelling that happens at that scale, where budget is absolutely no concern, is pretty exciting,” Barker said. “The amount of problem-solving it takes: We only have 25 trucks that we can drive on the field. How do we get all this grass on the field? Did you know the grass was all people? Those are challenges that are fun to work with.”

Such challenges never feel like a burdensome job, he said, reflecting the expansive creative range of set design: “As long as we do good work and have fun doing it, then the work just keeps coming.