Kirk Markley's smart set, with its floor that splits apart in surprising ways, is reason enough to see the show.
           -Lee Williams, Houston Press, October 1, 2009.

[An] ingenious collaboration of set designer Kirk Markley, lighting designer Jeremy Choate and properties designer Jodi Bobrovsky.
           -Everett Evans, Houston Chronicle, April 13, 2007.

There's a nifty Pop Art look to Kirk Markley's set design, with Astroturf and bright plastic flowers used to amusing effect in an eye-catching Eden.
           -Joe Leydon, Variety.com, March 5, 2006.

Kirk Markley's faux-tile-and-stone setting in black and white, Rodica Mirea's earth-tone costumes and David Gipson's mood-enhancing lighting provide handsome production values.
           -Everett Evans, Houston Chronicle, October 24, 2005.

Best Designer
Kirk Markley for Orange Flower Water
Kirk Markley's set for Craig Wright's Orange Flower Water was not beautiful -- it was devastating. The script told the tale of badly behaving married folks, most notable for their ordinariness. And Markley's set, with its looming backdrop of to-the-rafters metro shelving, captured the terrible banality of their suburban world. Stacked along the metal shelves were toilet paper, a pair of shoes, a teapot, towels -- the stuff of dull daily life. These details, wrought from the detritus of living a middle-class life, brought Wright's story of infidelity home. They made it real, almost too real for comfort. And at center stage stood a bed, sprawled like a battlefield, where the players fought. It became the central, unforgettable image of Wright's domestic war story.
           -Houston Press, September 29, 2005.

Set designer Kirk Markley's looming backdrop of to-the-rafters metro shelving captures the banality of this world. Stacked along the metal shelves are toilet paper, a pair of shoes, a teapot, towels -- the stuff of dull daily life. These details bring the story home. They make it real, almost too real for comfort.
           -Lee Williams, Houston Press, March 24, 2005.

The production also boasts clever design work by Kirk Markley.
           -Everett Evans, Houston Chronicle, December 9, 2003.

Then there's Kirk Markley's spooky set. Like a dark Miró landscape where the puzzling world is painted into lovely shapes that look vaguely organic and mystical, Markley's set is framed by an oval scrim and filled with curving eggplant-colored furniture. It suggests a preconscious, protoplasmic dream state, where the "mistakes" of the universe all make cosmic sense in the end.
           -Lee Williams, Houston Press, May 8, 2003.

Markley's set promised a jolt of dislocation as soon as the curtain rose. Replete with uneven surfaces resembling agricultural terraces, the stage was covered with a glowing earth-colored fabric that ambiguously suggested sand or fields. Even when the villagers prepared for a feast or gossiped with neighbors, their interactions never undermined the mythic aura. The only visible vegetation took the form of artificial trees mysteriously suspended on pipe stands.
           -Wendy Weisman, American Theatre, January 2003.

Stages' Blood Wedding is visually arresting. Set designer Kirk Markley's configuration of Andalusian buildings has the right sun-baked look, enhanced by his lighting.
           -Everett Evans, Houston Chronicle, 9/23/2002.

Kirk Markley's elegantly spare set and lighting design add great depth to this production. The wood-planked stage is raked, giving the play an added sense of urgency and understated drama. These stories are [...] well suited to Markley's set, with sky-blue scrims, television sets flashing images of long western roads and one enormous telephone pole rising out of center stage like a creosote-covered crucifix.
           -Lee Williams, Houston Press, 1/31/2002.

On Kirk Markley's spare setting of bare hardwood floor, backed by a drop depicting a bright blue Wyoming sky, eight actors play Kaufman and the members of his Tectonic Theatre Project.
           -Everett Evans, Houston Chronicle, 1/21/2002.

The production is further enhanced with an open set and [...] mood lighting designed by Kirk Markley.
           -George Jonte, Houston Voice, 2/1/2002.

Kirk Markley's evocative setting is another major asset: the glass-walled pavilion (which we learn is to be torn down and replaced with a concrete amphitheater after the reunion), seen from the inside in Act 1, then, in a theatrical coup, turned around during intermission so that the second act affords the opposite view, outside looking in.
           -Everett Evans, Houston Chronicle, 10/8/2001.

There is an almost mystical loveliness to Craig Wright's The Pavilion, now playing under Rob Bundy's direction at Stages Repertory Theatre. Kirk Markley's graceful set of curving glass walls and wide wooden porches casts the first spell.
           -Lee Williams, Houston Press, 10/11/2001.

The Pavilion is simply a marvelous play, with a superb cast, def[t] direction by Rob Bundy, and a set (Kirk Markley) that begs you to treat yourself to the scene change by staying in your seat [during intermission].
           -Chuck Perroncel, Texas Triangle, 10/26/2001.

Directed by Larry Moss and played out on Kirk Markley's stark, gray locker-room set at Stages, the story is filled with fascinating insider info, childlike exuberance, grown-up heartbreak and deeply disturbing revelations about the interior life of a football star.
           -Lee Williams, Houston Press, 3/1/2001.

Kirk Markley's rumpled set, Brooks Ashley's smart costumes, Jodi Bobrovsky's props, David Gipson's lights and Michael Mertz's sound and musical direction come together to create a wonderfully compelling night of theater, at once hugely expansive and quietly intimate.
           -Lee Williams, Houston Press, 2/1/2001.

The set design by Kirk Markley is excellent, complimented by David Gipson's gorgeous lighting design.
           -Joey Berner, Houston's Other, 1/31/2001.

The first thing you notice in Stages Repertory Theatre 's The Turn of the Screw is that designer Kirk Markley has done a bang-up job creating the setting. The geometric platform of dark hardwood flooring, representing a haunted estate, is dominated by an imposing, gracefully curving staircase, backed by tall, Gothic Windows. It's the perfect environment for a thriller. [...] Some may find this Turn of the Screw to be a spine-tingler. [...] The set, however, is an unmitigated triumph.
           -Everett Evans, Houston Chronicle, 10/15/2000.

The story is all devilish innuendo, vapory ghosts, gauzy yellow lights and heavy dark clothes that swish along set Designer Kirk Markley's brooding spiral staircase. It's the best sort of ghost tale: foreboding, mysterious, dangerous and all grown up.
           -Lee Williams, Houston Press, 10/26/2000.

Kirk Markley's set is clean, unobtrusive and gorgeous to look at, capturing the spirit and period of the piece.
           -Joey Berner, Houston's Other, 10/18/2000.

The subtlety and haunting quality of David Gipson's lighting design and Kirk Markley's Victorian conservatory with its arching staircase, immense wall of gothic panes, and blood red columns.
           -D. L. Groover, Houston Voice, 10/20/2000.

Tamalalia 2000, like every previous edition, is all about Cooper. Her dreams, her fears, her Rubenesque ass, her penchant for quirky second-hand-store fashion, her love of bacon, her girlhood crush on Duran Duran and even her honest-to-goodness, real-life high school history teacher end up on designer Kirk Markley's swirling, painted stage.
           -Lee Williams, Houston Press, 7/27/2000.

A set by Kirk Markley that fairly screams middle class England.
           -Chuck Perroncel, Texas Triangle, 4/18/2000.

There is much to praise in the production of The Dying Gual at Stages Repertory Theatre in Houston. For one, great care has been lavished on the set, designed by Kirk Markley and effectively evoking the interiors of 1990s California.
           -Holly Hildebrand, Back Stage West, 10/14/1999.

Kirk Markley's set of rice-paper scrims and blond wood platforms, along with David Gipson's lovely lighting full of dark shadows, develop Lucas' ideas about power and our ability to know ourselves.
           -Lee Williams, Houston Press, 10/28/1999.

Kirk Markley's barren and perfectly functional set allows the characters to come and go as they please in a hollow landscape almost as empty as their lives.
           -Meredith Kovach, Sidewalk Houston, 8/1/1999.

Kirk Markley's setting is also apt, with its upstage wall an abstract collage composed as pieces of furniture painted black. (Chunks of the characters' lives all jumbled together? Supply your own interpretation.)
           -Everett Evans, Houston Chronicle, 7/18/1999.

Set designer Kirk Markley's creation of a black wall resembles a Louise Nevelson sculpture, with the designs made by the dowels and other pieces of ornamental hardware in the wall repeated in the few pieces of simple furniture that complete the set
           -Holly Hildebrand, Back Stage, 7/17/1999.

Kirk Markley's slightly stylized setting proves most effective at suggesting both the literal attic of Evelyn's home and the figurative attic of her life's memories.
           -Everett Evans, Houston Chronicle, 3/8/1999.

The action takes place in an attic. Kirk Markley's somber and simple brown set, with high, narrow windows and boxes upon boxes of old tchotchkes, is the perfect place for a Freudian reckoning.
           -Lee Williams, Houston Press, 3/11/1999.

Excellent lighting by Kirk Markley
           -Monika Meyer, Public News, 6/28/1998.

Adding to the professionalism of the production is Thom Guthrie's set, which captures the claustrophobic ghastliness of the men's surroundings; Kirk Markley's inventive lighting design; and Douglas Robertson's imaginative sound design.
           -Monika Meyer, Public News, 5/1/1998.

Lighting designer Kirk Markley manages to focus on the characters with startling directness as their flaws and fears are more fully developed. Neither the audience nor the characters can hide from the emotions that Jack and Jill evokes.
           -Ingrid Allstrom, Daily Cougar, 9/25/1997.

The rustic saloon is neatly realized in set designer Kirk Markley's construction of wooden planks, with shelves and perspective slightly askew. It allows for a final scene that is visually arresting.
           -Everett Evans, Houston Chronicle, November 17, 2006.

Kirk Markley's nifty setting features a proscenium frame, tilted askew like the sets of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Atop the frame, a red bloodshot eye, flanked by bat wings, stares out. Watch for the "tear" it sheds at the close of Act I. Clever.
           -Everett Evans, Houston Chronicle, June 4, 2006.

Adding to the circuslike atmosphere is Kirk Markley's terrific set. The stage has been stripped down to its brick walls. At center stage is a circular platform that rotates. Sometimes, when Pamela and Dulle Griet go walking through Berlin, everyone else in the show will sit at the edge of the platform turning it, so that the ladies can stroll easily along, never getting anywhere. At other times, the rotating platform is used to create clever scene changes. And as the central action happens on the platform, the other actors remain on stage, at the edges, either changing their costumes or simply sitting in chairs, watching what's going on in the circle at center stage. There are so many things to look at that it's often hard to take it all in.
           -Lee Williams, Houston Press, November 24, 2005.

At the opening, foggy stage lights lift over a bleak terrain, a dystopia of black-gravel ground littered with the detritus of postmodern life: a banged-up, rusting metal drum, a useless box of metal grating. To make matters worse -- exponentially worse -- a constant gray rain falls across this landscape, soaking everything unfortunate enough to be stuck here. [...] [Troy Schulze] uses Kirk Markley's astonishing set to create painterly images, standing or walking into places on the stage and creating visual shapes that often underscore Koltes's statement about the disaffected.
           -Lee Williams, Houston Press, June 2, 2005.

Schulze's fine staging is matched by Markley's moody lighting and futuristic set, both of which strike a perfect balance between the aloof chill and the strange intimacy of radio.
           -Lee Williams, Houston Press, October 9, 2003.

The production is technically beautiful. [...] Set designer Kirk Markley's zigzagging stretches of gauzy scrim thread back and forth across the stage like a tiny version of Christo's early-'70s sculpture Running Fence. A creamy, translucent slip of a curtain ends scenes with white silence. Markley's lighting is striking as well: Circles of playing area are chiseled out in golden light, focusing our attention on the smallest detail, such as the way an asthmatic with lush red lips can suck air from an inhaler in the most delicious way.
           -Lee Williams, Houston Press, February 20, 2003.

IBP also does its usual technical magic. Designer Kirk Markley puts us in the middle of Anytown, with black-and-white comic book-style skyscrapers towering over the stage. And he creates a hysterical cartoon bed for the Starmaker's encounter with Norman's wife. Katie Jackson's ever-changing billboard at the back of the stage is a blast. Each song is announced by a new sign that pokes some good fun at our weird cultural obsessions, including retirement communities and Armani suits.
           -Lee Williams, Houston Press, 11/14/2002.

Kirk Markley has done an interesting job on the set design, an expressionistic cityscape that surrounds the band.
           -Everett Evans, Houston Chronicle, 11/12/2002.

Kirk Markley's resourceful set design consists of a row of little chambers -- one of them literally a prison cell, but all of them suggesting drained-of-color confinement. The pieces of the set are cleverly reconfigured for the striking final scene.
           -Everett Evans, Houston Chronicle, 9/21/2002.

Kirk Markley's shadowy, stone-colored set, establishes the lonely, cold world where this royal family lives. The suffocating, cavelike rooms are lined up like jail cells, and each is occupied by an embittered member of the household who's cut off from the others.
           -Lee Williams, Houston Press, 10/3/2002.

Against designer Kirk Markley's terrifically tacky backdrop of blood-red tinsel, Cooper and company strut their stuff.
           -Lee Williams, Houston Press, 7/25/2002.

The spangled Vegas red set by Kirk Markley [is] tacky perfection.
           -D.L. Groover, OutSmart, 9/1/2002.

Aesthetically gorgeous [...] a stunning set. The back wall of the proscenium stage curves into a "u," as though the world were caving in on Winnie. Dead St augustine grass is piled across the floor, and a red velvet curtain frames the scene in elegant folds.
           -Lee Williams, Houston Press, 11/23/2000.

Tamalalia 2000, like every previous edition, is all about Cooper. Her dreams, her fears, her Rubenesque ass, her penchant for quirky second-hand-store fashion, her love of bacon, her girlhood crush on Duran Duran and even her honest-to-goodness, real-life high school history teacher end up on designer Kirk Markley's swirling, painted stage.
           -Lee Williams, Houston Press, 7/27/2000.

Set designer Kirk Markley and costumer Danielle Wilton place the action within a physical reality that looks hard, rough-hewn and real.
           -Everett Evans, Houston Chronicle, 2/25/2000.

From our first look at Kirk Markley's set, we realize all is not well in the home of "Dolly Madison" (not the heroine's real name, but what she's chosen to call herself) -- despite Dolly's professions to the contrary. [Markley's] expressionist set shows an average American household by way of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: furniture broken and askew, mirror frame bent into a weird, asymmetrical shape, floorboards buckled or torn up to reveal gravel beneath. It's a lopsided world with no firm foundation -- reflecting Dolly's emotional state.
           -Everett Evans, Houston Chronicle, January 28, 2005.

Kirk Markley's richly textured set is the first indication that all is not right in the home of the seemingly doting mother at the center of Delaney's story, a woman who calls herself Dolly Madison. The walls are literally coming down. The upstage wall is split down the center by an enormous cartoonlike crack zigzagging from ceiling to floor. The furniture is all cattywompus, too: The couch is held up by brick, and the chairs at the kitchen table have been taken apart and put back together all wrong. A strange, hellish red light is coming up through the floorboards. Even the fireplace mantel is melting on one side. In this surreal world, a lamp clings to the downward-sloping shelf.
           -Lee Williams, Houston Press, January 17, 2005.

A low-keyed yet well-paced rendition on Kirk Markley's spare set of cool, gray, faux stone. There's a neat touch in Markley's upstage fountain, water forever gently flowing -- all water under the bridge, one imagines, given the trio's love life.
           -Everett Evans, Houston Chronicle, 9/7/2001.

This black tale is played out on Kirk Markley's gracefully fragmented set of charcoal-colored floors and mahogany coffee tables. It's a rarified world of good manners, graceful dinners and the sort of betrayals that rot the soul.
           -Lee Williams, Houston Press, 9/27/2001.

Equally important is the subtle direction of Patti Bean, the moody lighting by Kirk Markley and the evocative sound effects, without which it would be difficult to propel a Houston audience in midsummer into a chill, misty marsh.
           -Leslie Burleson, Houston Press, 7/3/1997.

At the opening, foggy stage lights lift over a bleak terrain, a dystopia of black-gravel ground littered with the detritus of postmodern life: a banged-up, rusting metal drum, a useless box of metal grating. To make matters worse -- exponentially worse -- a constant gray rain falls across this landscape, soaking everything unfortunate enough to be stuck here. [...] [Troy Schulze] uses Kirk Markley's astonishing set to create painterly images, standing or walking into places on the stage and creating visual shapes that often underscore Koltes's statement about the disaffected.
           -Lee Williams, Houston Press, June 2, 2005.

Set designer Kirk Markley and costumer Danielle Wilton place the action within a physical reality that looks hard, rough-hewn and real.
           -Everett Evans, Houston Chronicle, 2/25/2000.

Kirk Markley's elegantly spare set and lighting design add great depth to this production. The wood-planked stage is raked, giving the play an added sense of urgency and understated drama. These stories are [...] well suited to Markley's set, with sky-blue scrims, television sets flashing images of long western roads and one enormous telephone pole rising out of center stage like a creosote-covered crucifix.
           -Lee Williams, Houston Press, 1/31/2002.

On Kirk Markley's spare setting of bare hardwood floor, backed by a drop depicting a bright blue Wyoming sky, eight actors play Kaufman and the members of his Tectonic Theatre Project.
           -Everett Evans, Houston Chronicle, 1/21/2002.

The production is further enhanced with an open set and [...] mood lighting designed by Kirk Markley.
           -George Jonte, Houston Voice, 2/1/2002.

Kirk Markley's barren and perfectly functional set allows the characters to come and go as they please in a hollow landscape almost as empty as their lives.
           -Meredith Kovach, Sidewalk Houston, 8/1/1999.

Kirk Markley's setting is also apt, with its upstage wall an abstract collage composed as pieces of furniture painted black. (Chunks of the characters' lives all jumbled together? Supply your own interpretation.)
           -Everett Evans, Houston Chronicle, 7/18/1999.

Set designer Kirk Markley's creation of a black wall resembles a Louise Nevelson sculpture, with the designs made by the dowels and other pieces of ornamental hardware in the wall repeated in the few pieces of simple furniture that complete the set
           -Holly Hildebrand, Back Stage, 7/17/1999.