English theatre designer Christopher Oram was BOTD in 1966. Born in London, he studied at the West Sussex College of Art and Design. After graduating, he worked as a set and costume designer in fringe theatre productions around England. In 1995, while working at the Mercury Theatre in Colchester, he met director Michael Grandage, forming a romantic and professional partnership. Together, they became the star couple of London’s theatre scene, with successful productions of Tennessee Williams‘ A Streetcar Named Desire, Terrence McNally‘s Passion Play, Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along and Christopher Marlowe‘s Edward II. In 2002, Grandage became artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse, starting a ten-year residency with Oram as the company’s lead designer. Their 2003 production of Nick Deal’s play Power, about the life of French King Louis XIV, won Oram an Olivier Award for costume design. Oram achieved international success when the Donmar’s production of John Logan‘s play Red transferred to Broadway, winning six Tony Awards including for Oram’s scenic design. In 2013, Oram won a second Olivier Award for his costume design for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s stage adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, recounting the relationship between Thomas Cromwell and King Henry VIII. The play’s 2015 Broadway transfer earned Oram a Tony Award for costume design and a nomination for set design. His work has extended into opera productions for the New York Metropolitan Opera, Glyndebourne Opera, Houston Grand Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the San Francisco Opera, and a successful stage adaptation of the animated film Frozen. His latest production, a musical version of John Berendt‘s non-fiction book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, was produced by the Goodman Theatre Chicago in 2025. Oram and Grandage entered into a civil partnership in 2010.