Category: Designing

Jeff Modereger on Set Design for I and You

5/3/2016

How does the set of I and You reflect the lives of Caroline and Anthony?
First of all, the set is a bit of a chaotic mess. To the audience, Caroline is a typical teenager and therefore lives in a world of her own sense of "organization". In the design sense, this room is also a metaphor for Caroline's state of mind. The walls are a collection of her life as seen from her bedroom—all the places she wants to travel, people she wants to meet, and the every minutia of the world she wants to explore.

What is your favorite piece of the I and You set, and why?
Of course, my favorite is the walls. I have an idea where it's going to go, but at this moment it will evolve into its own being. I will let it lead me to find Caroline and the universe of her imagination. When you see it, you'll understand.

Did any aspect of the set change from your original plans?
No.

What questions did you ask yourself early on when designing a set?
This really can't be answered because I designed the show backwards from the end. Until you experience the final moments of this production, you really don't know the whats and whys. I can't reveal that to the audience. But again, you'll understand once you've had this impactful experience.

Why do you believe theatre is important?
Theatre is the study of human nature. Why do we do what we do and why it makes a difference. Theatre gives us all relatable scenarios and asks us to get involved and expose our humanness by admitting our character differences, our flaws, and our fears. Asking why theatre and the arts in general are important is better asked "why is air important". If I am to live, I must breathe. Ergo oxygen is important. If I am human, I must express my existence with others. Therefore, art is fundamentally 100% human expression. Theatre is art. Theatre is life. Theatre is like oxygen for us humanity.

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Janine Woods Thoma on Designing the Set for Dancing Lessons

3/15/2016

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How does the set of Dancing Lessons reflect the lives of Ever and Senga?
This set is largely Senga’s world, which Ever inelegantly trips his way into (you can see a bit of his personality in the standing desk he uses at the periphery, though; Ever is definitely the sort of fellow who would take to heart to the health benefits of furniture). Senga's apartment, a standard Manhattan single bedroom, illustrates the layers of her life—it has morphed from a place in which she barely takes time to sleep, into a cocoon of sorts: a filthy den where she can lick her wounds and wallow in the misery of limbo.

What is your favorite piece of the Dancing Lessons set, and why?
I adored getting to plunk a tiny kitchen right into the living room. It’s very Manhattan, and wonderfully unusual to see next to a couch.

Did any aspect of the set change from your original plans?
For a long while we had a bed lofted above the kitchen to make the apartment feel that much more cramped, but ultimately cut it because of the challengingly low ceiling in FlynnSpace.

What questions did you ask yourself early on when designing a set?
I explored two enormous questions:
1. How can we translate Senga into the material world of her apartment? The script holds a lot of answers, but we also, as a group, rooted around into the unspoken depths of her character for answers.
2. How can we situate the set within FlynnSpace to achieve everything we need for staging? Sight lines and poles are always a problem, but we also needed a lot of wall space for doors and windows and the kitchen. None of the standard audience configurations could achieve good sight lines, good blocking, and enough wall space for us.

Why do you believe theatre is important?
Theatre brings us together as a community of humans. It inspires us to explore topics and emotions bigger than just ourselves and to experience a slice of the divine. Together we laugh and cry and marvel, not in the isolation of our living rooms, but seated among friends and strangers, both. Sharing an experience and a story allows us to better understand and empathize with each other.

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Jeffrey Modereger on Designing the Set for Mothers and Sons

2/9/2016

How does the set reflect the lives of the Ogden-Porter family?
In a play like this, it is important not to limit how the audience perceives the characters. Gregory Ramos, the director, and I wanted the audience to look at the space, art work, photographs and books as a part of this family's life as a group not individuals. Where have they been? What is their taste/style? The style is very eclectic and that is deliberate. We wanted to show how their individual personalities have melded to become their statement family.

Did any aspect of the set change from your original plans?
Many things shifted in the process but the final product is very close to my original idea after speaking with the director.

What is your favorite piece of the Mothers and Sons set, and why?
That's a tough one. I don't think I have a favorite piece because it's how it all works together and how it developed over time. The painting over the fireplace is on loan from a gallery in Middlebury and the large poster in the hall is from my husband's office. The chairs and ottoman were purchased but the sofa is from the theatre department. It's not how anything in particular affects the audience, it's how the combination of colors, textures and scale speaks to the characters.

What questions did you ask yourself early on when designing a set?
Because I lived in New York City for about 10 years, I had a strong idea of how this room might work. The biggest question we all had to ask ourselves was where are the windows. The windows had to overlook Central Park but where did it make the most sense for Bud when he talks about Spiderman. When you put a window in a room it impacts the entire use of the space. It's like putting a sofa or bed in a room. Once that happens, it impacts where everything else will go.

How do you know at the end if the design is successful?
When the actors feel as though the space gives their characters "a home" then we have a successful design. The set is as much a character of the show as the actors with lines. The set must ease the audience into the play, compliment the playwright's intent and allow the actors to move freely and with comfort. Like their character, the actor must own the space they are working in. For characters like Katharine, it needs to make a statement not to her liking.

Sue Wade on designing props for The Mountaintop

4/7/2015

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It’s so much fun to be asked to write a blog post for Vermont Stage!

As the properties manager, I always think of myself as the smallest cog in the theater machine: set design, costumes, lighting, sound - all seem more important than whether I can find the perfect flashlight or an authentic looking dead seagull, and I often wonder how much difference my agonizing over which plastic glass Martin Luther King Jr. would use, or if the family in Other Desert Cities owns a gold flecked Christmas tree or a white one, makes.

When I read the plays, or see them in rehearsal, I almost immediately get a clear picture of the objects a character owns or uses, and how these objects shape not only the personality of the character, but sometimes the plot as well.

This particular play, The Mountaintop, has unique challenges. Since it is based on a real person, and takes place in a real motel, there isn’t as much room for interpretation. Because the motel room still exists, we want our set to be as close as possible to how things looked and felt in 1968. That means looking for the proper worn carpet, the seedy motel wall art, matching mid-century headboards, and, most difficult, an old black and white TV.

There is also the detail of the newspaper. Normally, I would just make a mock-up, with the proper masthead, with the “news” my own creation. But The Commercial Appeal (the Memphis, Tennessee newspaper) from April 4, 1968 is a historical artifact, and should be reproduced accurately. So, this time I will use a service that makes props for movies, and have the front page done with headlines and stories exactly as printed.

So when you look at the dirty dishes, full ashtrays, and rumpled sheets in this set, you can think of me artistically daubing old food, stubbing out half-burned cigarettes and ironing wrinkles into sheets, all for accuracy’s sake!

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Blair Mielnik on designing the set for SLOWGIRL

3/17/2015

Slowgirl was an exciting design to create; it provided a great opportunity to transport the audience to an unfamiliar location. As we got further along in the design process, and I spent more time with the script, it became clear how much the location has profound affects on the characters from beginning to end. The Costa Rican setting initiates much of the action and scenarios in Slowgirl that would not have been possible in other more ordinary environments. The environment is continually acting upon the characters: insects, birds and creatures are all around and commonly come into the house. Sterling has planned his home to be completely open air which makes his jungle home even more of a vulnerable environment. The open air home is popular in Costa Rica to both native citizens and ex-patriots; I studied both and selected on a more modern style design using traditional materials.

The set design focuses on the world that Sterling has sculpted for himself; the roof is corrugated metal, the supporting structure is rough cut timber draped in bamboo. For our design it was very important to use real materials to get the true transporting effect of them. The bamboo shows Sterling's low-impact conservationist mindset and harmony with his surroundings. Sterling spends every day keeping himself occupied with projects to keep his mind busy and distract himself from pondering his self imposed exile. We have added small personal touches throughout the home that show his use of time; improvements such as rope railings, recycled coffee can lights, and bits of found natural elements that he has collected and nurtured.

Sterling's Labyrinth was also one of these projects, he refers to it as “the greatest thing I've done since I came down here”. His creation of the labyrinth is a great spiritual mediation for him, for me it is physical proof of his wandering and searching for a path in his life. With the labyrinth being such a crucial element I wanted to give it paramount importance in the set design. For this production we have stayed true to the original and created an expansive design that includes the same 11 concentric routes as the Chartres Labyrinth that Sterling bases his upon. Within the theater, the route of our labyrinth is approximately 200' long as it wraps around on itself and also stays true to the 40ft width of the original.

I set a contradicting goal on my set design for this production to create a space that is simultaneously confining and expansive. The labyrinth is as wide as possible and extends all the way over to the FlynnSpace cafe, yet at the same time the central action is confined to boxes within boxes: the house platform sits in a wide jungle and the cement slabs on Sterling's property further confine the actors to a close proximity alone with each other. This confinement provides an essential crucible for the characters to confront each other and initiate their emotional journeys.

We all find many ways to distract ourselves from our own suppressed issues, and while most of us are free of serious strife in our lives such as Becky and Sterling face, their ability to square off with the situation is enviable.

Further Reading:
http://www.labyrinthos.net/chartresfaq.html

Jeffrey E. Salzberg on Lighting SLOWGIRL

3/10/2015

There's more to "vision" than what we see with our eyes. Vision also resides in the brain. The eye sees things as they are, but the brain sees things the way they might be. In theatre, playwrights have a particular sort of vision; directors have another, and designers another yet, and they all interconnect to form an image, like a jigsaw puzzle... And, as with any jigsaw, we usually start at the outside and work our way in, to find the truth in the middle. It's hard, though, to express that vision in words – theatre people sometimes say that if we could describe it in words, we wouldn't need to do the show.

Theatre is a collaboration, in absolutely the finest, broadest sense of the word. The actors collaborate with each other to relate the story. The designers collaborate with each other – and with the actors – to create a visual and aural environment, in a manner which supports, sometimes in an imperceptible way, the themes of the play... and that brings up another important collaboration: our collaboration with the playwright. Even when the author is not in the room – even when the play is a classic whose author died years or even decades earlier – our work is a collaboration with the words and thoughts put upon the page in the initial creation.

Any well-written play can, and usually is, about several things at once. To me, Slowgirl is about running from one's responsibilities... and returning to confront them. You might agree with me, or you might not. You might see the theme as something completely different. That's fair enough, and while I am, of course, right... so are you... Because our most important collaborator is the audience.

"When the best leader's work is done the people say, 'We did it ourselves!'” ~ Lao-Tzu