Michael Hooker

Michael Hooker has designed sound and composed music for more than 120 productions across theater, opera, film, television, and themed entertainment. On Broadway, he designed Looped at the Lyceum Theatre, starring Valerie Harper, and later on national tour with Stephanie Powers. His regional credits include Oklahoma! at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival; Quack and Pyrenees at the Kirk Douglas Theatre; Sunday in the Park With George at the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis; Mr. Popper’s Penguins, Peter and the Starcatcher, A Light in the Piazza, Becky Shaw, and world premieres of Goldfish and Our Mother’s Brief Affair at South Coast Repertory; A Doll’s House at Cincinnati Playhouse; Regina and Sweeney Todd at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis; and Julius Caesar at Swine Palace in Baton Rouge.

At UC Irvine, Hooker has designed sound or composed for productions including The Merchant of Venice, Sunday in the Park With George, Rabbit Hole, Pericles, Anything Goes, and West Side Story. His interdisciplinary projects include The Sacre Project, a deconstruction and retelling of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring presented with Pacific Symphony and UCI Dance. He has also collaborated internationally with faculty playwright Bryan Reynolds, composing for productions staged at festivals in Poland, Romania, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and South Korea.

In themed entertainment, Hooker has served as senior media designer for Walt Disney Imagineering, contributing to three major parks—Hong Kong Disneyland, Tokyo DisneySea, and Walt Disney Studios Paris—as well as to attractions such as Aladdin’s Magic Lamp Theatre and Cinemagique. He designed Tarzan: Call of the Jungle at Shanghai Disneyland and composed music for Griffith Park Observatory’s planetarium show First Light. His work has twice received Themed Entertainment Association (Thea) awards.

Hooker previously taught at CalArts, the University of Arizona, and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, where he created M.F.A. and B.F.A. programs in sound design. He has been an active leader in the United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT), serving as sound commissioner and programming national conventions.

He is a member of United Scenic Artists/IATSE Local 829 and BMI. Hooker holds a B.F.A. in interdisciplinary fine arts from the University of Arizona and an M.F.A. in performing arts design and technology from CalArts.