"Adam is so talented:" MU community proud of alumnus Adam Stockhausen, who won Oscar for set design

MILWAUKEE (WITI) -- Production designer Adam Stockhausen took home an Oscar Sunday, February 22nd for his work on The Grand Budapest Hotel, and Stockhausen is a Marquette University alumnus!

The scene shop at Marquette's Helfaer Theatre is always in flux. Sets are either going up, or they're coming down.

It has been Chester Loeffler-Bell's job to bring out the artist in all of Marquette's theater students, but some 15 years ago, when Loeffler-Bell worked with Stockhausen at the Milwaukee Chamber Theatre, he could tell the MU grad was well on his way to being the award-winning production designer he is today.

"Adam is so talented he is able to handle all these different locations, periods, all that other stuff that has to go into a movie set, movie sets rather.  I mean sets and sets and sets and sets!" Loeffler-Bell said.

Stockhausen graduated from Marquette University in 1995, and his imprint is all over MU's Theatre Department.

"I'm the last -- one of the last faculty standing that actually to have taught Adam Stockhausen. He has that ability to wrap his mind around stuff and to get so engrossed in things that it really turns out some wonderful stuff," Marquette Theatre Artist Director Debra Krajec said.

Krajec says Stockhausen's success is not merely encapsulated by the awards he wins, but by the confidence he inspires in future designers like Katie Shanahan, who not only is building sets in the same shop Stockhausen did, but like him, hails from Brookfield.

"It's just really great to see a technical be able to get his own fame. It's really great to see that. Everyone that I knew was going crazy over the fact our alum had won," Shanahan said.

Stockhausen is sharing his award with fellow designer Anna Pinnock. He has already worked on two other films since putting his Oscar-winning mark on The Grand Budapest Hotel.

CLICK HERE to learn more about Adam Stockhausen's work via IMDB.com.

CLICK HERE to learn more about Theatre Arts at Marquette University.