Courtney Manning Watson

Court Watson (he/they) is firmly committed to advocating for safe, respectful, inclusive, diverse spaces where we can take creative risks together without harassment or abuse. He currently serves United Scenic Artists, Local 829 membership on the Respectful Workplace Committee, the Costume Designers United Best Practices Committee, and acts as Chair for the Costume Design Exam Committee. He serves on the Boards of the Behind the Scenes Foundation and the Irene Sharaff Awards.

Design credits include King for a Day, Annie Get Your Gun, and Blizzard at Marblehead Neck (Glimmerglass Festival), Les Contes d'Hoffmann (National Center for the Performing Arts, Beijing), La bohème and Rigoletto (Wolf Trap Opera), Baden-Baden 1927 (Gotham Chamber Opera), Die Walküre, Siegfried, Samson et Dalila, La bohème, and Three Decembers (Virginia Opera), La Chauve-Souris (Opéra Nice Côte d'Azur), Jekyll & Hyde and West Side Story (Magdeburg, Germany), Man of La Mancha (Central City Opera and Utah Opera), Hänsel & Gretel, Spamalot, Annie, The Sound of Music, The Nutcracker, Jonny spielt auf, Die Fledermaus, Der Himmel über Berlin, Wir gründen eine Bank, and Frau Luna (Salzburger Landestheater), Rockville and AIDA (Amstetten, Austria), Hairspray (Deutschestheater Munich), All's Well That Ends Well (Shakespeare Theatre Company), Guys & Dolls, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Liberty Smith, and Little Shop of Horrors (Ford's Theatre), Good News!, Meet John Doe (Goodspeed), Kiss Me, Kate (Barter Theatre), Gospel at Colonus, One Man, Two Guv'nors, and EVITA (ZACH Theatre), Jahreszeiten, Appalachian Spring, and The Sleeping Beauty (Richmond Ballet), Harlequinade, Don Quixote (Gelsey Kirkland Academy of Classical Ballet), Roll Out the Barrel, London Rocks, Illuminights (Busch Gardens, Williamsburg), Sea Lion High, O Wondrous Night, Clyde & Seamore's Christmas Countdown, SeaWorld Celebrates Christmas - Sea of Trees,  Azul (SeaWorld), Cabaret, Lend Me a Tenor, Fiddler on the Roof, The Foreigner, Little Shop of Horrors, and Other People's Money (Engeman Theatre), Jungle Books (CityDance Ensemble), It Must Be Him (Off-Broadway), Dear Edwina (Daryl Roth Theatre 2 – Off-Broadway), The Stagedoor Canteen (National World War II Museum), Olympia Dukakis' Another Side of the Island (Alpine Theatre Project), Birthday Sax (Ars Nova and Joes' Pub), and The Last Days of Judas Iscariot (Actor’s Studio & La Mama, directed by Estelle Parsons).

He has been an Assistant Designer on numerous Broadway and West End shows, including Guys & Dolls, Grease!, Lestat, Little Women, The Coast of Utopia, Cry*Baby, South Pacific, Mauritius, High Fidelity, Imagine This, and Prince of Egypt working with Paul Tazewell, Derek McLane, Catherine Zuber, Anna Louizos, and Ann Hould-Ward. He was a Guest Designer on ABC's All My Children and One Life to Live.

In addition to his design work, he is proud to be a queer artist with work in private collections throughout the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland and has exhibited in numerous shows at New York's Leslie-Lohman Gay and Lesbian Art Museum, the Fire Island Pines Biennial, as well as Side Tracks Gallery, and the Atlantic Gallery.

He holds an MFA from New York University and a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University with a minor in Art History.