While some students graduate and then spend years working their way to the top of their professions, others have the privileged opportunity of hitting the ground running and living the dream immediately.

Stephen K. Dobay is a scenic designer in his third year of pursuing a master's

degree from UW's School of Drama.

Today, Dobay is in New York working as a design assistant on several national productions. He is also working on his thesis design for She Stoops to Conquer, which is scheduled to open in January 2008 at the UW.

Though it may not come as a surprise that there are a multitude of opportunities out there for students, it is rare to see someone who is still in the process of seeking a master's degree do so incredibly well.

Upon completion of his master's degree, Stephen will be moving to London, where he has accepted a design assistantship with award-winning designer Bob Crowley.

Because the rest of the designers are out of town, Dobay has had to go through this process via e-mail. By the time he and the director are happy with the look of the design, he mails the model and blueprints to the scene shop where it is built and painted.

Next a prop person works with him to get the furniture and prop details that are appropriate to the vision of the show, and that takes them to tech rehearsals, where the actors get used to being on a designed stage. At this point, the lighting designer works to turn his or her vision of how the show should look and flow into the vision.

Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Dobay received his Bachelor of Arts in 2005 from Williams College, where he majored in Drama and Geosciences.

While in the master's program he has designed several productions for the University of Washington, including The Cherry Orchard, And Baby Makes 7, Anton in Show Business and The Bacchae.

Summers have been spent working as a craftsperson for the Santa Fe Opera and The Williamstown Theatre Festival. During the summer of 2007 Dobay was the design assistant for the upcoming Seattle Opera production of I Puritani and The Village Theater production of The King and I.

"I've always really loved architecture and art that involves human interaction and habitation. In college I acted in some student productions, but these shows were low budget, and we had to construct scenery ourselves. These were not unlike UTS (Undergraduate

Theater Society) shows. Actors and directors were passionately involved in all aspects of the show, including the technical." he said. "I guess until then I had always taken for granted the work that went into designing and building sets for the theater, but I remember really getting excited about designing these student shows, and later, the prospect of doing this professionally. I was always the kind of person who would read a book and have a very specific image of what the world of the book looked like, and the same goes for reading a play."

After his freshman year of college, Dobay had a free summer, and on a whim he

applied as a props crafts person at the Williamstown Theatre Festival.

"Summer theater festivals have a reputation for being labor bootcamps, and this was no exception: working 10 or more hour days, seven days a week for little to no pay," he said.

As labor intensive as that summer was, Dobay knew that if he still enjoyed the work by the end of it, he could see himself designing for the theater. Since then, he has worked for a variety of theater companies. Most recently, he's found a great deal of his employment as a design assistant for numerous designers on shows around the country.

"It's all happened very quickly, and I find myself grateful for my success and feel lucky to be at a terrific program at the UW, where I've been able to design realized productions all three years of my graduate education," he said.