Mellie has been a freelance scenic designer for over 30 years, combining the art of storytelling with a compelling environment, collaborative processes, and the dynamics between collaborators. She works predominately in Philadelphia, NYC, and San Francisco, having designed over 100 productions, many of which were world premieres. Her designs have been seen on a variety of stages including La Jolla Playhouse, Arden Theatre Company, Dallas Theater Center, San Francisco Mime Troupe, California Shakespeare Theatre, Cornerstone Theatre, and InterAct Theatre. In NYC, she has designed off-Broadway at the Clurman, ART/NY, HERE Arts Center, La Mama, 45th Street Theatre, and the Triad. Her designs and devised works have been performed at the Beijing International Fringe and the Singapore International Fringe. She served as the director of the New Play Design Lab at the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, and is a co-founder of San-Francisco-based Crowded Fire Theater Company, which has been producing and commissioning new works for over 25 years. She has the honor of having her work chosen to represent the United States at the 2019 Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space, the largest performance design event in the world. Among her many nominations and awards are two San Diego Playbill Awards (Eurydice and Marat/Sade), two Bay Area Critics Circle nominations (Woody Guthrie's American Song and My Name is Asher Lev), two Barrymore nominations (The Great Leap and Caught), and was named Best Set Designer of the Year by The East Bay Express.
Mellie is a Professor of Theatre and department Chairperson at Lehigh University where she has been teaching since 2011. She received the Christian & Mary Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching in 2025, was appointed the Class of 1961 Professor in 2018, is the Artist-in-Residence at Lehigh@NASDAQ Center, and was the Mentor to the Posse Foundation’s Cohort 4 Scholars. She has served as the leader of the Arts Entrepreneurship Track for the Baker Institute’s LehighSiliconValley program and has been the Creative Inquiry Program’s Silicon Valley Arts & Social Impact Advisor.
She has served as an adjudicator for KCACTF (Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival) Region 7 Scenic Design awards, a senior design portfolio adjudicator for Philadelphia’s University of the Arts, and has been invited as a guest lecturer to many campuses including Temple’s Theatre MFA program, Humboldt State’s Theatre Design MFA program, and University of the Arts’ Theatre program. She is a proud member of United Scenic Artists, and has previously taught at UC Berkeley and Sonoma State. She received her BFA in Theatrical Production Arts, Concentration in Design from Ithaca College, and her MFA in Scenic Design from UC San Diego.