Marjorie Kellogg was first introduced to theatre in New York City, having moved there from Boston at age 11. During high school, she and her friends mounted home theatricals, and in the summer of her freshman year at Vassar, she took a job with the New York Shakespeare Festival. She spent three summers there, first as a prop builder and finally as a scene painter for the festival's principal designer, Ming Cho Lee. After spending some time designing for summer stock and at UCLA, Kellogg returned to New York in 1968 and went to work for Ming Cho Lee's studio where she stayed until she passed her union exam in 1970.

For her musical comedy designs, Kellogg looks back to the influential members of the New Stagecraft for guidance. These designers -- Lee Simonson, Edward Gordon Craig, Adolphe Appia, and Robert Edmond Jones - created settings that were merely suggestive, as they had been stripped of everything but the essentials.

Arnold Aronson, in American Set Design, described the key to Kellogg's art as being "the interpretive selection of elements from the real world used to create an emotional impact on stage." In that same text, Kellogg is quoted as saying "What I work to do is present the audience with details that make up a large picture, with an emotional reality and focus that is more important than the sum of each of the details."