In 1992 McCullough was the lighting designer for
drag artist John Epperson's
off-Broadway show
Lypsinka! A Day in the Life at the
New York Theatre Workshop. That same year he designed lights for Austin Hartel and Lisa Dalton's Dalton-Hartel Dance for performances at the Mulberry Street Theater in New York City; and was the light designer for
INTAR Theatre's production of
Ramón del Valle-Inclán's
Words Divine: A Miracle Play (English translation of
Divinas palabras). He designed further productions for Dalton-Hartel Dance which were staged at the
Hudson Guild Theater in 1993. He returned to INTAR in 1996 to design lights for the company's world premiere staging of
Kenneth Lonergan's
This Is Our Youth; a work he designed for again at the
McGinn Cazale Theater in 1998. In 1995 McCullough designed the lights for
Gilbert and Sullivan's
Yeomen of the Guard at the
Glimmerglass Festival (GF); a production which was also staged at the
Welsh National Opera. He went on to design lighting for more than 30 productions for the GF; including the 2011 world premiere of
Jeanine Tesori and
Tony Kushner's opera
A Blizzard on Marblehead Neck. Other designs he did for the GF included productions of
Gaetano Donizetti's
Don Pasquale (1996),
Francesco Cavalli's
La Calisto (1996),
Virgil Thomson's
The Mother of Us All (1998),
John Philip Sousa's
The Glass Blowers (2000),
George Frideric Handel's
Agrippina (2001),
Claudio Monteverdi's ''
L'Orfeo'' (2001),
Richard Wagner's
Das Liebesverbot (2008), Wagner's
The Flying Dutchman (2013),
Rodgers and Hammerstein's
Carousel (2014), and
Leonard Bernstein's
Candide (2015). In 1996 McCullough designed for the
New Zealand Festival of the Arts's production of
Leoš Janáček's
Káťa Kabanová, and
Hartford Stage's production of
Under Milk Wood. In 1997 he was the light designer for the original Off-Broadway production of
Paula Vogel's
How I Learned to Drive which was staged at the
Vineyard Theatre, and designed for the
Chichester Festival Theatre's production of
Ivan Turgenev's ''
Fortune's Fool''. McCullough designed lights for a production of
Albert Innaurato's
Gemini at the
Second Stage Theater in 1999. That same year he was a designer for the
New York Shakespeare Festival's production of
Tartuffe at the
Delacorte Theater in Central Park. In 2000 he returned to the Vineyard Theatre to design for
Craig Lucas's
Stranger which starred
Kyra Sedgwick,
David Strathairn, and
David Harbour. That same year he designed lights for a production of
Wendy Wasserstein’s
Old Money at the
Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater in
Lincoln Center. In 1998 McCullough made his first designs for the
Metropolitan Opera for their new production of Mozart's
The Marriage of Figaro which starred
Bryn Terfel in the title role,
Cecilia Bartoli as Susanna,
Renée Fleming as the Countess, and
Dwayne Croft as the Count. The production was filmed for television broadcast on
PBS's
The Metropolitan Opera Presents, and aired on national television in 1999. ==Broadway and other plays and musicals==