Bettina John is an international and award-winning freelance set and costume designer and artist. She has worked with a wide range of theatres, theatre makers, artists, dance artists, choreographers, musicians, acrobats, circus performers and actors.
She studied fashion and photography in Germany, then did her masters degree in new media art at Goldsmiths University in London and completed a second master degree in Theatre Design at Wimbledon College of Art in 2018. She had assisted fashion designers and worked in photography studios before she started to shift her focus on designing for the performing arts in 2010. This varied background makes her approach to design and art uniquely interdisciplinary and boundary-pushing.
Bettina John worked with a wide range of exciting choreographers at the start of her career before focussing on opera and theatre. She collaborated with dance artists and coreographers such as Arthur Pita, Ben Duke (Lost Dog), Tony Adigun (AvantGarde Dance), Tom Roden (New Art Club), Hagit Yakira and Shane Shombu (Complicité). Since 2018 she has worked with exciting new voices such as Julia Burbach, Greg Eldridge, Noa Naamat, Lysanne van Overbeek and Franciska Éry on opera productions including works such as The Ring Cycle, Manon Lescaut, Onegin, The Barber of Seville, Orfeo by Gluck and recently Verdi’s Traviata, Un Ballo in maschera and Aida.
She has been commissioned to write a book on costume design, which has been published by Crowood Press in 2021 and a second commission will be published in 2027.
Bettina John’s design approach is experimental and innovative, drawing inspiration from fashion, painting, textile art, graphic design, and the study of human behavior. Supported by funding from the German Arts Council, she undertook an art residency at the ISCP in New York in 2012 and in Rio de Janeiro in 2013, allowing her to further develop her practice as a performance and installation artist, heavily informaing her work as a stage designer today. Her interdisciplinary approach has led to exhibitions and scholarships across London, New York, Rio de Janeiro, Berlin, and her hometown of Halle, bridging the worlds of visual and performing arts.
