Victor A. Becker

Sanbornville, NH

Victor A. Becker passed away following an accident on February 1, 2023.

He was born on August 8, 1947 and grew up in Pompton Plains, NJ, the son of Vic and Beatrice Becker. He attended college at the University of Rochester and earned a Master’s of Fine Arts Degree from Brandeis, which he used to begin a long and fruitful career as a designer of theatre scenery, museum exhibits, special events, and “theatre-related endeavors,” as he called his many varied projects. His award-winning set designs were seen at regional theaters around the country including Portland Center Stage, the Guthrie Theatre, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Florida Stage, Milwaukee Repertory Theater, Syracuse Stage, Missouri Rep, Cincinnati Playhouse, Indiana Rep, Mad Horse Theatre, National Theatre of the Deaf, and most recently in a production of Twelve Angry Men at Palm Beach Dramaworks that closed in December. He was also proud to have designed performance spaces for Mad Horse Theatre in Portland, ME and Florida Stage.

A gifted educator as well as designer, in the 1970s and early 1980s, he taught scenic design at Holy Cross, the University of Alberta, and Cornell University. He is fondly remembered by many of his former students who he mentored with lessons about life as well as theatre sets. While at Cornell, he was instrumental in the planning and development of the facility now known as the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts, developing professional relationships and collegial friendships with architects James Sterling and Michael Wilford, who invited Victor to serve as a guest critic at the Yale School of Architecture.

After leaving academia for a full-time career as a designer, he partnered with M.J. Herson to form Greater Expectations, a company that specialized in producing and designing special events for university capital campaigns and founded his own company, Talking Spaces, which he ran from his nineteenth-century farmhouse in Sanbornville, NH. The two companies completed projects for Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Amherst College, Bowdoin College, and even designed and produced an address by his Holiness the Dalai Lama at Brandeis.

Victor often collaborated with White Oak Associates, a museum planning firm, to design theatrical experiences in museums ranging from the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh to Exploration Place in Wichita, Kansas.

Though he travelled often for both work and pleasure, he always returned to his New Hampshire farmhouse, which he lovingly and whimsically restored over five decades, often finding true peace carefully assembling dry stone walls by hand around his property or swimming in Horn Pond. He also contributed his creative talents to support important community projects including the restoration of the 1895 Wakefield Opera House, the ongoing renovation of the 1855 Union Hotel for the Greater Wakefield Resource Center, and service on the Board of Directors of the New Hampshire Farm Museum, that he was delighted to learn was also the family homestead of Robert Edmund Jones, one of the most prominent scenic designers of the early twentieth century.

Victor is survived by his mother, Beatrice Becker, his sister, Lynn A Becker, cousins Sharon and Denise Storm, former partner but still dear friend, Hariyo Susetyo, and countless other friends, colleagues, and collaborators, many of whom consider him an irreplaceable mentor.

He's gone too soon. He had so much more to do, so much more fun to have and so much more to give. He was definitely 75 years young.

A Memorial Gathering will be held from 6:00p-7:30pm on Thursday, February 9, 2023, at Peaslee Funeral Home, 2079 Wakefield Road,  Sanbornville, NH.