Snezana Pesic

Snežana Pešić is a Serbian-Canadian performance designer and educator.

Her work has been seen across Canada and internationally. In Canada, she collaborated with companies such as the Banff Centre, Soulpepper Theatre, Canadian Stage, Crow’s Theatre, The Confederation Centre of the Arts, Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, Tarragon Theatre, Theatre New Brunswick, Against the Grain, Ghost River, Obsidian, Volcano, Odyssey Theatre, Native Earth, and Cahoots, among others. Internationally, her designs were toured and performed in the US, Norway, and Serbia.  In addition, Pesic’s designs have been presented in numerous international exhibitions, including the Prague Quadrennial (2007 and 2015), World Stage Design in (2009, Seoul and 2013, Cardiff), Innovative Costume of 21st Century; Next Generation and Costume at the Turn of the Century (Moscow, 2019 and 2015). Snežana designed and curated the Canadian Professional Exhibition, Individuality, and Interconnection at the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space in 2019. As part of the exhibit, designer Michael Levine received Canada’s first-ever PQ Award for Excellence in Performance Design.  

Pešić is the recipient of the Betty Mitchell Award for outstanding lighting design and production, the Prix Rideau Award nominee for outstanding set and costume design and was shortlisted for the Pauline McGibbon Award for emerging theatre artists. She is a graduate of the MFA program in Theatre Design at the University of Alberta and the BFA and MFA programs in Costume Design at the University of Belgrade, Serbia.

In 2021, Snežana participated in the Costume Agency research project at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, for which she designed costumes and directed a costume-driven performance titled Modified Bodies. The performance, together with Snežana’s short film Suture, results from ongoing design-based creative research that explores the relationship between flesh and garment and the impact of cosmetic surgery on contemporary fashion silhouettes. Her film Suture received an award for Best Experimental Short Film at the Toronto Independent Film Festival 2022 and Veracruz Short Film Festival 2023. 

As a designer and design educator, Snežana has worked at the University of Alberta, the University of Victoria, Dalhousie University, the University of Toronto Mississauga, Keyano College, George Brown Theatre School, The Banff Centre and The Glenn Gould School. Currently, she is a professor of performance design at the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Toronto.

Pešic is member of Associated Designers of Canada (ADC), IATSE Local ADC659 and OISTAT.