Nights One Through Eleven
The Creation of William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night
Julia Hayes Welch
Masters of Fine Arts in Scenic Design Thesis
University of Washington School of Drama, Meany Studio Theatre
Submitted February 25th, 2015
Director: Leah Adcock-Starr
Scenic Design: Julia Hayes Welch
Costume Design: Maya Ogasawara
Lighting Designer: Thorn Michaels
Sound Designer: Kristie Dutra
Musical Composer: Jonathan S. Shue
Stage Manager: Meghan Woffinden
Thesis Committee: Thomas Lynch, Sarah Nash Gates, L. Zane & George Mount
Masters of Fine Arts in Scenic Design Thesis
University of Washington School of Drama, Meany Studio Theatre
Submitted February 25th, 2015
Director: Leah Adcock-Starr
Scenic Design: Julia Hayes Welch
Costume Design: Maya Ogasawara
Lighting Designer: Thorn Michaels
Sound Designer: Kristie Dutra
Musical Composer: Jonathan S. Shue
Stage Manager: Meghan Woffinden
Thesis Committee: Thomas Lynch, Sarah Nash Gates, L. Zane & George Mount
The Why and The What
I love Shakespeare. I love how he entwines emotion and dialogue so beautifully. I love being taken away by the changing melodies of text and experiencing heightened worlds. I love poetry. I love that love, heartbreak, regret, courage, cruelty, sincerity, fear, passion, hate, lust, joy, all this and so much more are wrapped up in a single story. This is the brilliance of Twelfth Night.
Twelfth Night is a challenging play because even though it is structurally a comedy there is real cruelty in the story, and our happily-ever-after might not be so perfectly wrapped up. These are the complexities that were interesting to the creative team. My challenge was to create a space where the poetry and the cruelty and the comedy could all exist at once.
Words, Words, Words
The text for Twelfth Night allows designers a large amount of freedom. Scenically, very little is necessary for the dialogue or the action to play out. When first reading the script, I had the feeling that I could set the play on a bare stage and the language would be strong enough to indicate location.
The director, Leah Adcock-Starr, chose to reorder the first two scenes of the play and so that instead of “If music be the food of love…” we begin with:
“What country, friend, is this?”
“This is Illyria, lady.”
Shakespeare then tells us through the Captain about the inner workings of this place. My design needed to support the hierarchy described by the Captain, but the directness of the text gives me freedom instead of confining me to a prescribed design. The question was what did I want to bring to the story? How did the team and I want to craft our world?
As I began to dissect the text and think about the visual picture, I found myself looking at the structure of the Globe Theatre. Twelfth Night was written specifically for that space and I felt that if I could include the elements of the Globe in my design, it would support the multiple elements of the story. Therefore I crafted my version of the Globe’s inner above and below, three framed entrances, and even a nod to the structural columns.
By analyzing both the text and the original space, I feel that I was able to conceive a playing space that supported the action and, in my own way, pay homage to Shakespeare’s stage.
Poetic Rhythm
When I read Shakespeare I cannot help but be moved by the language—by its poetry, beauty, and rhythms of both meter and idea. The sound of these words works in much the way that music does. It touches an emotional part of the soul. While creating a space that can technically support the action of the play, I needed to make sure that I was paying close attention to the emotional terrain of the script.
Shakespeare includes song in Twelfth Night, and live music was a vital part of this conception of Twelfth Night design from the beginning. Leah knew that she wanted a live band on stage. I sometimes forget about the power of music as a research tool when working on a design. It is something I rarely use to explore a world, and that is a shame. When I do initial research I usually focus on the visual. With Twelfth Night we had a composer creating and sending us music that was specific to our production—to the spirit of New Orleans in the 1920’s. The sultriness, vivacity, deep longing, and playfulness of the world were emphasized through jazz, blues, and Dixie swing. This really made the world come alive in a new way. Listening to the spoken text as well as the music helped me create different rhythms in the architecture.
The clearest examples of this are in the different staircases. There is a very different feeling and rhythm to descending a spiral staircase versus a traditional strait one. The sweep and increasing momentum of the spiral combined with the curved series of steps at the base sends the actors spinning out towards center stage. Descending the strait stair has more of a bounce to it and emphasizes each quick step. The tall steps leading up and down the lowest platform require the actor to take two solid steps up, glide for a moment, and then two solid steps down. Thinking about this as orchestration: the spiral would be a long held out note, the strait stairs would be a series of fast staccato notes, and the step units would be loud blasts with a slight pause in the middle. The many rhythms of the set were meant to help explore the different rhythms in the text and the different gaits of the characters.
It was also important to the design team to emphasize the heightened beauty of Shakespeare’s language. We were working with an iron structure as the core of the design and when I first think of wrought iron my mind goes to black metal. There was something intriguing about a black structure disappearing into a black theatre space since it created a world where they only color would come from the actors and their costumes. It suggests that the characters are the extremes and life in their world as well as connect to my impulse that this play can be done without scenery. However, the further down this path I went, the more I felt that I was ignoring the vivacity of the language and the energy of the world.
In our production meetings we spoke about how all the characters in Twelfth Night take everything a little too far. The mourning, the drinking, the fooling, the loving, the scheming-- all are a bit over the top. This is a plot point, but is also feels emphasized in the language. An example of that I am drawn to is in Viola’s speech to Olivia in Act I, Scene V. Olivia asks “Why, what would you” do to woo me, and Viola tells her:
"Make me a willow cabin at your gate,
And call upon my soul within the house;
Write loyal cantons of contemned love
And sing them loud even in the dead of night;
Halloo your name to the reverberate hills
And make the babbling gossip of the air
Cry out 'Olivia!'"
Yet after these passionate words, Viola goes even further:
"O, You should not rest
Between the elements of air and earth,
But you should pity me!"
This language itself is over-full of romance and in nine short lines makes Olivia fall head over heels in love with Cesario. The black wrought iron ideas was not helping to create a world that echoed this level of romantic beauty in the poetry.
In my research I had found a house in New Orleans called the Armstrong Danna House. Its iron façade had been subject to harsh weather for decades and the consequence was a beautiful, weathered patina. I was struck by the colors—the rusted oranges and the pale greens of verdigris. The orange helped me connect to the heat of New Orleans as well as the sexy, sultry nature of this play. For me, the greens cooled things off a bit and brought in the moisture and humidity of New Orleans. The aged quality felt delicate and romantic as well as establishing that this home had been around for a while and perhaps suggesting that Olivia and Orsino’s families have been long-standing powers in this place.
I felt that these ideas and specific research connected directly to the world I was attempting to create. As I moved from research to paint elevations I found that I was interested in a paint treatment that was a little more abstract than the research, with rivers of color flowing through one another instead of obeying the strict laws of physics. I wanted to keep the lyricism, poetry and magic of the language alive in the paint design. When, due to budget and time constraints, I had to abandon any surface texture in the paint treatment, I doubly embraced this approach to the verdigris. This use of color layering was a strong and successful way to create the beautiful, painterly, poetic world.
Collaboration
I feel very lucky have developed strong working relationship with Leah over our time in graduate school. This is our third show together and we’ve already developed a high level of trust and good communication skills. Our conversations always have a way of unlocking a new aspect of the play before us. It is also inspiring that we share a common aesthetic and an interest in the same kind of beauty. Having that kind of relationship with a director has been vital in this design process as it allowed me to move quickly and confidently through the design process.
Her trust allowed me to bring my uninhibited self to the design.
Leah allowed me great freedom to explore different ideas without micromanaging or dictating every detail. Several times I brought her a sketch and we would go over it, pencils in hand, and by the end of the conversation the sketch would be marked up and much better for it. For example, the mid-level platform came out of a scribbling session together and I think it was one of the strongest staging positions on stage. Much of the initial blocking was worked out in these meetings and, though not all of it was kept, I was pleased that some key moments remained and proved to be just as strong as we first imagined.
The design team as a whole was also a great source of inspiration and problem solving. The costumer, Maya Ogasawara, the lighting designer, Thorn Michaels, and I had just worked on a previous production together and had the benefit of having already developed a collaboration system. While the overall design process ended up feeling smooth, it did not start out that way.
The beginning of the Twelfth Night process was rough on the three of us as we were all in technical rehearsals for a different production and had conflicting schedules. We had few group meetings and more one-on-one conversations. These one-on-ones were happening often and thus the design and concepts were changing daily. There were points where I felt ahead of the curve and also days when I felt behind and ill informed.
It became vital to check in with the creative team each day and to send out our most recent research and sketches either via email or by dropping prints on each others’ desks. As we got better at having group meetings and passing on information, the process became smoother. Our meetings were full of ideas, and I felt that we were good about giving and receiving critique at most times. I found that more information I brought to the team (and the more they could bring me) made for more fruitful conversations.
One of my favorite collaborations came in the character design of Sir Andrew. Maya chose a beautiful pale green and pink stripe for his southern suit and I decided to cover his suitcase and sword box with the same fabric. It appeared on his hat and mask as well. We used the same stripe as a border for the challenge letter he writes. The matching luggage and suit was a strong way to represent Sir Andrew and give the audience a clue into his person as well as create an entertaining visually bit (though I don’t think the letter border was as successful as it was difficult to see that detail from the audience). On the metaphoric side of things, the design team talked about how Andrew is looked over and discarded by the other characters. Therefore it was decided that his color should be the same as the architectural structure. We didn’t want him to blend in entirely and disappear, but one can imagine that he is played upon in the way that the scenic unit is played upon.
Trust Your Gut
When Leah told me that she was interested in setting our Twelfth Night in 1920’s New Orleans, I was thrilled. What immediately came to mind were the beautiful balconies of the French quarter. The paradox of both delicacy and strength in wrought iron reminded me of Olivia, in particular, and for a play that takes place mostly at and around her home, this seemed like a good jumping off point for the design.
The very first image the team discussed was Olivia and Cesario/Viola’s first meeting. Cesario is on the ground and Olivia is above. Over the course of their first interaction, Olivia descends and finds herself on the ground level, having arrived there almost without knowing exactly how she came down to earth. As to the question of how she descends, we imagined a wrought iron spiral staircase. Moving around a spiral staircase feels like falling in love: the dizziness, momentum, and tunnel vision. The spin. We were drawn to that metaphor and the staging possibilities. Therefore, this staircase became the core image of the scenic design.
As we began to explore the rest of the play, we wandered away from the clarity of this idea. Walls were added, and rotating platforms, realistic interiors, furniture, and a whole bunch of other stuff. The design got bigger and bigger. We lost the magic of our first impulse.
I feel that this is a struggle I often face as a designer. When reading a play, I usually find myself led to one overarching image or idea. In the case of Twelfth Night it was the wrought iron spiral staircase and the idea of spinning into love. Upon reflection, I think that many of my initial impulses are closely keyed into the heart of the play I want to make. However, as I move into the process of designing and trying to answer all the questions about how the play functions, I sometimes let go of the evocative impulse and instead try to show the audience everything they need to know about the play.
With Twelfth Night, I lost my way when trying to add an entire second location, a realistic interior. We imagined that Orsino is the owner of a speakeasy in 1920’s New Orleans and that this is where we see the majority of his scenes. I looked at some seductive research of speakeasies and was inspired by it—by the wallpaper and the bars and tables and lamps and barrels and glassware and doors. The details and textures were deliciously exciting. And so I tried to wedge this idea of a realistic speakeasy into the other, more metaphoric idea of the staircase.
Needless to say, forcing the two concepts together didn’t work. I had to take a step back and evaluate what I was creating. By trying to put these two very different ideas together, I undercut the power of each one. This was a big revelation.
I sometimes feel that I hold onto ideas that don’t work for longer than is useful. In retrospect, it should have been obvious from pretty early on that this version of a speakeasy was absolutely wrong for our version of Twelfth Night, but I felt committed to it. And so I pushed aside the voice in my head telling me that this wasn’t right for our production. I ignored what I was seeing in my own drawings. Had I been more objective and less precious about my work, I may have been able to move forward sooner. This is something I want to continue to develop—a strong, self-critical eye.
Eventually we cut the full-on speakeasy. As much as I was seduced by the details in the research, they weren’t helping create the lyrical world that the team was interested in. So where do the Orsino scenes take place? This was still a big question. Can he exist in the wrought iron world that I now so associate with Olivia? Can the space be manipulated in other ways? Can the speakeasy appear in a different way?
These were questions that stumped me. I had spent so much time thinking about Orsino in a realistic speakeasy that now I didn’t know what to do with him. I went back to the research. While I did relish all of the details, I think what had attracted me to these images was not the physical things, but the energy of the people in these places. The people were sexy, they were luxurious, they were enjoying themselves. And that sultriness could be created in a world of wrought iron.
Still, the idea wasn’t quite right. I felt strongly that there needed to be something—furniture, props, lighting, costume—to indicate a change in location.
The musicians and their instruments ended up being my solution to the speakeasy. The wooden piano with a few bottles on top was enough to create that environment. This was an important discovery, reinforcing the way I think about a central image or idea of a play. The tricky part is using a metaphoric image in a way that allows for all the action of the play while also leaving space for the audience to imagine the entirety of the world.
When I look back on this part of my process, I realize that I need trust myself a little more. My first impulse of a wrought iron spiral staircase was correct for our production, even though I couldn’t explain every moment of the play with it when first imagined.
I always design with my head. I need to make sure I am also paying attention to my impulses and designing with my heart.
The Nitty-Gritty
One of the greatest changes I have seen in my design process since coming to graduate school is that I now work out ideas as sketches, both as drawings and in rough model, instead of solely in my head. Though plenty of time is spent on analysis, research, and thinking about the visual picture, the idea tends to come to fruition faster if I develop it on paper. This was important during Twelfth Night because I felt rushed for time and needed to be able to see and evaluate my ideas quickly.
I enjoyed drawing Olivia’s house and felt that I had many sketches that were all fairly successful iterations that expanded upon the spiral staircase idea. Leah and I found these drawings compelling and were able to determine early on that wrought iron was going to be a large part of the design. On the other hand, I struggled to draw Orsino’s speakeasy. Not only was the concept unsuccessful, I never felt ay excitement when trying to draw a fully realized interior. As the team looked at the sketches we were able to step back and really look at what we were creating—and ultimately fully embraced the idea that felt strongest while cutting the ideas that were holding us back.
The drafting portion of the design was helpful for me because, now that I knew we were interested in this iron structure, I was able to quickly draft up basic, but precise, pieces of the unit that were based on my research. The computer allowed me to mix and match pieces, play with proportion, add and subtract, until I felt that I had a combination I was pleased with. While this could have been done by hand, I found that by working with measurements in Vectorworks, I was able to also take into account standard material sizes and stock units that I knew were available in an incredibly precise manner.
Once I had proportions I liked in Vectorworks, I printed them out and built an eighth inch white model. There were lots more adjustments made at this stage and a lot of time spent with the director, playing through different scenes with model people and adjusting the scenery as desired—that is, tearing up the white model and gluing it back together multiple times. I felt that this was my most productive time of the design process as my focus was on the scenery, yes, but truly on the moments of the play. It was about putting small figures on the model and seeing how Olivia and Viola would look when one of them was twelve feet in the air, or planning how Toby and Andrew would escape being seen by Malvolia, or figuring out how to have the split scene take place so that Andrew and Viola cannot hear one another before their duel.
Once Leah and I had settled on the structure’s design, I built the quarter inch model and painted it. Painting is not always my strong suit, but I have discovered over the last year that I work better with acrylics than watercolor. This discovery has given me confidence in my work and the ability to approach a design boldly. After all, you can always paint over acrylic. I had experimented with a number of full-scale paint details and different kinds of treatment. After talking with Thorn and Maya I had a pretty good idea of where I was headed when I sat down to paint the model. It was magical to see this little piece of balsa and bristol transform into a tiny Illyria.
After meeting with the shop, there were several significant changes to the design and the model had to be rebuilt. While I was sad to cut apart the beautifully panted piece, viewing it as a communication tool instead of a piece of art, helped push me forward. The final model was an accurate representation of the set that was built for the show.
Finally Getting to Do the Play
One of the great pleasures of working on Twelfth Night was finally feeling like I was able to do the play. I entered the UW program having participated in lots of fringe theatre where I was not only the designer, but also the technical director, carpenter and scenic artist as well. Consequently, I had little experience in communicating my ideas to a shop.
While designing my first few shows at UW, I found that I was spending most of my energy developing these communication skills. I was learning how to draft both by hand and with Vectorworks. I was figuring out how to build an accurate model. I was doing numerous paint elevations and struggling with the medium. Each step took so much effort and so many failures. My focus was on learning the skills.
As I approached Twelfth Night, I found that I had developed these skills to a point where I wasn’t worried about how to do the drafting and instead could focus on, well, the play. I felt that I was much more flexible, adapting quicker to design conversations and rehearsal discoveries. Instead of taking a week to rebuild a model, I could do it in two days. This allowed me to dig deeper into the scenes and focus on a stage picture that included the actors, actions and language, not just the scenery.
I think this made for a design that, though static, allowed for the action and movement of the play. It delights me to see that the different movement rhythms I planted in the set (the difference between a spiral staircase, the shallow curved stairs, and the traditional strait stairs) play out with the actors. I love seeing the levels not only work to give a more interesting visual picture, but also reflect the emotional state of the characters or their social status. I am pleased to see moments I fully envisioned (Toby and Andrew sneaking and climbing down the inside of the set during Malvolia’s letter scene) come to life. I am not just designing the set; I am designing the moments of the play.
Communication: Visual, Verbal, and Written
Over the last three years of graduate school, I have been working to hone the different skills that are necessary to explain and explore my ideas as well as foster a good working relationship between the director, the design team, and the shop. Indeed, I have seen growth both in the way that I express my designs and the way in which I am able to understand feedback. When I began at UW, I was shocked to discover just how much of my job as a designer is getting my ideas across. Whether it is responding to emails, completing drafting, participating in design meetings, or expressing ideas through visual means, most of what I have done in my design process could be labeled as communication.
I have probably seen the most growth in my visual communication skills. Upon entering grad school, I felt that my strength lay in my ideas and gestural concepts. I do think I have good instincts in response to text and a willingness to fully explore those instincts. What I did not have were traditional art skills—painting, drawing, and model making. Over the last three years, these skills have grown rapidly. Through focused instruction as well as self-driven experiments, I have found ways to use painting and drawing to my advantage, but even more useful to me has been exploring ideas through model.
When I was little, I always had my hands in everything. As I grew up, this didn’t change much. I have always responded best to physical works and to three-dimensional space. It should come as no surprise that models—either carefully executed or rough—usually help me explore ideas more fully than drawing. The models for Twelfth Night were such fun to build. They were also absolutely the best way to communicate the design ideas to the director. With so many levels, openings, and underpasses, it was important to make sure that Leah and the actors knew exactly how one space led to another so that we could fully explore all the staging opportunities that this design offered.
Drafting is another communication tool that I had little experience in when coming to graduate school. Learning to draft quickly allowed me to be more flexible in my work and to not be afraid of changing ideas. In particular, using Vectorworks program has helped me realize that none of these ideas are precious. The documents I am creating, while sometimes beautiful unto themselves, are first and foremost communication tools, not works of art. This also applies to paint elevations and models. While I want these items to be well composed, I learned to not be afraid to start over. This happened many times on Twelfth Night and, in the end, I feel that working through multiple iterations made the design stronger and gave me a number of chances to work on these visual communication skills.
Participating in the studio class every quarter has allowed me to develop my verbal communication skills. Each week, standing in front of the class, I must present my work clearly and concisely and direct the conversation toward any questions with which I am struggling. For Twelfth Night I also had to present my design at Show and Tell in front of the school of drama. I am not always a particularly good public speaker, but these situations are helping me get over some of my glossophobia and become better at it.
The flip side of this is that I have also been allowed to practice critique. I find that giving feedback can be challenging for me as I sometimes struggle to find the right words to express an abstract idea. In order to help express myself, I have found that sounds and gestures can augment words. This is absolutely something I picked up by emulating my professors. Learning to present one’s work and to critique the work of others has been helpful in design meetings with the Twelfth Night team.
The third form of communication is written communication. There are few opportunities to practice this skill built into the UW curriculum. I certainly prefer to have in-person conversations whenever possible. On Twelfth Night much of the writing I did was to the scene shop. Most things went smoothly, but there were also a few missteps at the time.
It is the digital age and everyone is expected to have their smart phones on them. That said, I do not always immediately check my phone for emails or text messages. There were a few times when the shop sent me emails asking for a decision about railing placement or finial details, but I was too slow at answering and decisions were made before I had responded. In retrospect, I wish I had made it clear that my preferred method of communication is phone calls.
The other mistake I made regarding written communication happened when sending my notes to the shop during technical rehearsals. I had spoken with Andrea Bush, the props master, in regard to the paint that needed to be added to the bench. She followed my verbal explanation precisely, but under the lights I realized that the detail I had asked for was too subtle to be seen. Instead of going to the shop in person or creating a new paint elevation, I sent a note about the new paint treatment. The bench came back with the legs as I had wanted, but the top half looked bland. So I sent off another note. This time the bench came back with the legs overdone, but the top half looked good. So I sent off a third note to have the legs dulled down. It came back perfect. In the end, it worked out, but I wasted the shops time. It would have been smoother if I had gone to the shop in person.
Communication is a huge part of what I have practiced at UW and much of what I will continue to practice upon graduation. I feel that I have figured out how the School of Drama and its many facets communicate, but it will be a whole other challenge to figure out any new theatre I work with. I can only hope to learn from my missteps and continue to be thorough, accurate, articulate and considerate along the way.
Stretching the Budget
The scenic budget for Twelfth Night was $3,750. It is the largest budget I have worked with and the largest space I’ve had to control. Still, the money disappears quickly. To get the most bang for my buck, I knew I was going to have to repurpose and recycle materials. I was going to have to be flexible and adjust my design based on what was available to me.
Early in the design process all four platforms were different sizes than what was eventually seen on stage. To custom build those platforms to the dimensions I had initially specified would have been a huge cost, but I was able to use several stock platforms and redesign the unit. Overall I think that using the stock platforms did not detract from the look or action of the structure, except for the lower stage right platform. I did feel that the spiral staircase was a bit tight in that space, but it was a small sacrifice for the monetary benefit.
Another piece that was recycled was the spiral staircase itself. This staircase originally came from Hutchinson hall (and was even in a previous production of Twelfth Night here at the UW School of Drama in 2008). The height worked out beautifully, but I had wanted the staircase to spiral in the other direction. I thought it would be stronger if both the upper and lower entrance to the staircase were on the downstage side. While it did bother me that actors had to turn away from the audience at the top of the staircase in order to descend, the reverse in direction meant that the middle of the staircase became a viable playing space. I had not considered having this mid-level location, but found it be a strong staging option, particularly during Sebastian’s monologue:
“For though my soul disputes well with my sense,
That this may be some error, but no madness,
Yet doth this accident and flood of fortune
So far exceed all instance, all discourse,
That I am ready to distrust mine eyes…”
As Sebastian sits on the staircase he is visible to the entire audience and at a height where the front and back row both feel connected to him—helpful for this moment of direct address. The vertical posts also neatly frame him as we listen in to his debate. He is poised between being grounded and rational and being swept away by Olivia and her head-in-the-clouds love.
The railings were also recycled from a previous UW production of Romeo and Juliet, 2006. We did not have enough of one kind of railing to keep everything unified, so I made the decision to go with a mismatch of filigree. It turned out to be a great decision as my favorite views of the structure were the ones where you see the railing detail next to the pierced metal in front of the latticework in front of the stair detail. It makes for a much more interesting picture that reflects the diverse characters in the play.
While budget was a roadblock at points, recycle and reuse helped me stretch my dollar and these monetary decisions greatly improved the design.
Make It Work
Throughout the process I was meeting regularly with the shop in order to keep them up to date on the design as well as use their experience and advice to my benefit while crafting the scenery. The team and I had been through numerous variations of the structure, worked out the kinks, and settled on an arrangement that we all felt worked best for the play. I had sent in my final design package to the shop and had heard positive feedback.
Then I got an email.
Upon further review of the final design package, the shop was unsure if the unit was going to be structurally sound and safe for actors and they asked that I do a redesign. They also mentioned that it might not be possible to do the upper platform. This was a shock to me as I felt that I had been clear and thorough during the design process. It was also a great worry as the upper platform and the spiral staircase were the core of the design. I felt that if we had to lose the upper platform, the wrought iron idea was not going to work and I was going to have to redesign the show with a different concept.
Leah and I spoke prior to the shop meeting and it was clear that our collaboration thus far had been incredibly tight. We had a good understanding of what was most important about the design and some ideas about where we could compromise.
The meeting with the shop ended up being one of the most useful of the design process. By having five very different voices in the room (Leah, Thomas Lynch, myself, the production manager Anne Stewart, and the technical director Justin Roberts) we were able to address many of the problems and find creative solutions that improved the structural integrity of the piece without taking away from the integrity of the design idea. I felt that Leah and I were in control of the conversation and stayed true to our intentions while under pressure.
We cut unnecessary scenery, which made a cleaner, less confusing overall production. We turned half of the upper platform into a skylight thus gaining a new kind of detail in the latticework and a way to get top light onto the porch portion of the structure. We also chose to hang the majority of the lamps instead of putting them on posts, which controlled the volume of the theatre. The colonnade arches were added to hide needed cross bracing and I thought that the curve and the punched metal added not only interest and visual breakup, but a softness and ease to the design. We also chose to (momentarily) cut the curved stairs off the lower stage right platform, but that decision didn’t sit well with me. Consequently, additional finds were found in order to build them.
In conclusion, having to collaborate with the shop resulted in creative solutions that bettered the design artistically and structurally.
It’s All In the Details
When I began the UW program, my design process was fairly linear. I began with the macro—with the gesture of space and light and color—and then moved deeper into the design one layer at a time until, finally, I was working with the smallest details. I have found that this kind of process is not always the most effective or efficient because I can get caught looking only at the gesture instead of the details or I end up getting lost in the details and loosing the big picture. One of the tools I am developing is the ability to zoom from macro to micro throughout the design process.
On Twelfth Night, the design ended up being very skeletal and it was especially important to think about the overall shape as well as the tiny details at the same time. When looking at the structure, I understood the overall shape by observing how light was falling across the unit. My eye followed the edges where light hit and traveled across the platforms, up and down stairs, and over railings. I was able to see how its bulk related to the volume of the Meany Studio and how it provided pathways through the space.
At the same time, it was important to look at the details of exactly how light was hitting each edge. The way that light curved around the spiral staircase was different than the way it glinted off edges of foliage, which was different than the highlight and shadow lines cast by the platform facings. I wanted to make sure that there was a balance between the different rhythms and the overall structure of the unit.
By zooming in and out of the design, I was able to balance the overall uniformity to the structure while creating variations within it.
Tech: Really Looking
Scenically, tech went smoothly due to good planning and early collaboration with Leah and the shop. One great benefit to this design was that it was a unit set where, aside from a few props, nothing moved. This meant that there were no huge scene changes or other shifts to tackle during tech. It was pretty much what-you-see-is-what-you-get. That said, there was a lot to see and evaluate.
Going into tech, my biggest fear was that under stage light the paint color would not look the way I intended. In the past, I have had to entirely repaint a show floor once I saw it under show lights and I was worried I may have a similar problem with Twelfth Night. The colors I had chosen looked great in the model, on the paint elevations, and on the unit while it was still in the shop. Even thought I was able to do a few tests in the shop, I was concerned that I would look at the unit under stage light and that the pale green would wash out, the browns and oranges would be too muddy, and the floor would be too bright.
I had photographed the model under five or six specific different light conditions, which I hoped would be replicated in the show. Indeed, there was a huge range of lighting moments from the initial foggy blue to the amber speakeasy to the gentle morning light, and I needed to look at the paint colors under each set up. It took us four days to tech through the show. I felt relieved on Saturday when finish the last moment and I confirmed that the paint was creating texture, feeling flexible, and responding to the different lights in the way I had hoped.
There were a few things that made me less happy the more I looked at them. The unmasked space didn’t disappear in the way that I hoped it would. The exit sign, silver crash bar, fire extinguisher, florescent light fixtures, and red cable labels were visually frustrating and continued to pull my eye to the walls of the theatre. We were able to address some of this by covering the exit sign and the florescent light fixtures with black fabric and hiding the fire extinguisher behind the up stage left masking flat, but I found myself short on time and never addressed the red tape or crash bar.
I was also surprised to see the back wall of the theatre lit for so much of the show. It had been my understanding that we were not going to light the back wall as my intention was to have the structure hover in a black void. When I saw the color on the back wall during tech, I had a conversation with the director and lighting designer expressing my concerns. I felt that the color pulled focus from the action downstage, it emphasized the horizontal architecture of the back wall, which was in direct opposition with the narrow vertical posts I had designed, and it destroyed any illusion of a void or an infinity behind the set.
The director was greatly in favor of the color on the wall as she thought it gave the scenes a more magical, poetic quality. These color washes were initially kept to scenes in Orsino’s speakeasy, but soon grew to include other moments—the first and final tableau. It was then decided that Olivia’s scenes needed something on the back wall to make them feel as magical as Orsino’s scenes and thus there was also a leaf gobo light added. I had the same concerns about this light as well, but I was overruled in this matter.
I look back at this part of my process with frustration because somewhere along the way there must have been a communication breakdown between the lighting designer any myself. If I had known that Thorn was planning on lighting the back wall I may have been able speak my concerns sooner and the two of us could have found a different way of creating the poetic feeling that the director desired. Moving forward, I will try to spend more time checking in with the lighting designer both about concept and about the specific choices and instruments used to achieve these concepts.
What Now
Graduate school has been a challenging and rewarding experience that has reshaped who I am as a designer. The skills I have learned and the projects I have worked on allowed me to become a proficient technician, collaborator and explorer. Twelfth Night is my best work to date, but I hope to continue to grow and push myself. I feel that I am leaving UW on a high and hope to use that momentum to launch into the next chapter of my career. I do not know where I will land, but I feel prepared to take that leap.
Julia Hayes Welch
University of Washington MFA Scenic Design Candidate
Submitted February 25th, 2015
I love Shakespeare. I love how he entwines emotion and dialogue so beautifully. I love being taken away by the changing melodies of text and experiencing heightened worlds. I love poetry. I love that love, heartbreak, regret, courage, cruelty, sincerity, fear, passion, hate, lust, joy, all this and so much more are wrapped up in a single story. This is the brilliance of Twelfth Night.
Twelfth Night is a challenging play because even though it is structurally a comedy there is real cruelty in the story, and our happily-ever-after might not be so perfectly wrapped up. These are the complexities that were interesting to the creative team. My challenge was to create a space where the poetry and the cruelty and the comedy could all exist at once.
Words, Words, Words
The text for Twelfth Night allows designers a large amount of freedom. Scenically, very little is necessary for the dialogue or the action to play out. When first reading the script, I had the feeling that I could set the play on a bare stage and the language would be strong enough to indicate location.
The director, Leah Adcock-Starr, chose to reorder the first two scenes of the play and so that instead of “If music be the food of love…” we begin with:
“What country, friend, is this?”
“This is Illyria, lady.”
Shakespeare then tells us through the Captain about the inner workings of this place. My design needed to support the hierarchy described by the Captain, but the directness of the text gives me freedom instead of confining me to a prescribed design. The question was what did I want to bring to the story? How did the team and I want to craft our world?
As I began to dissect the text and think about the visual picture, I found myself looking at the structure of the Globe Theatre. Twelfth Night was written specifically for that space and I felt that if I could include the elements of the Globe in my design, it would support the multiple elements of the story. Therefore I crafted my version of the Globe’s inner above and below, three framed entrances, and even a nod to the structural columns.
By analyzing both the text and the original space, I feel that I was able to conceive a playing space that supported the action and, in my own way, pay homage to Shakespeare’s stage.
Poetic Rhythm
When I read Shakespeare I cannot help but be moved by the language—by its poetry, beauty, and rhythms of both meter and idea. The sound of these words works in much the way that music does. It touches an emotional part of the soul. While creating a space that can technically support the action of the play, I needed to make sure that I was paying close attention to the emotional terrain of the script.
Shakespeare includes song in Twelfth Night, and live music was a vital part of this conception of Twelfth Night design from the beginning. Leah knew that she wanted a live band on stage. I sometimes forget about the power of music as a research tool when working on a design. It is something I rarely use to explore a world, and that is a shame. When I do initial research I usually focus on the visual. With Twelfth Night we had a composer creating and sending us music that was specific to our production—to the spirit of New Orleans in the 1920’s. The sultriness, vivacity, deep longing, and playfulness of the world were emphasized through jazz, blues, and Dixie swing. This really made the world come alive in a new way. Listening to the spoken text as well as the music helped me create different rhythms in the architecture.
The clearest examples of this are in the different staircases. There is a very different feeling and rhythm to descending a spiral staircase versus a traditional strait one. The sweep and increasing momentum of the spiral combined with the curved series of steps at the base sends the actors spinning out towards center stage. Descending the strait stair has more of a bounce to it and emphasizes each quick step. The tall steps leading up and down the lowest platform require the actor to take two solid steps up, glide for a moment, and then two solid steps down. Thinking about this as orchestration: the spiral would be a long held out note, the strait stairs would be a series of fast staccato notes, and the step units would be loud blasts with a slight pause in the middle. The many rhythms of the set were meant to help explore the different rhythms in the text and the different gaits of the characters.
It was also important to the design team to emphasize the heightened beauty of Shakespeare’s language. We were working with an iron structure as the core of the design and when I first think of wrought iron my mind goes to black metal. There was something intriguing about a black structure disappearing into a black theatre space since it created a world where they only color would come from the actors and their costumes. It suggests that the characters are the extremes and life in their world as well as connect to my impulse that this play can be done without scenery. However, the further down this path I went, the more I felt that I was ignoring the vivacity of the language and the energy of the world.
In our production meetings we spoke about how all the characters in Twelfth Night take everything a little too far. The mourning, the drinking, the fooling, the loving, the scheming-- all are a bit over the top. This is a plot point, but is also feels emphasized in the language. An example of that I am drawn to is in Viola’s speech to Olivia in Act I, Scene V. Olivia asks “Why, what would you” do to woo me, and Viola tells her:
"Make me a willow cabin at your gate,
And call upon my soul within the house;
Write loyal cantons of contemned love
And sing them loud even in the dead of night;
Halloo your name to the reverberate hills
And make the babbling gossip of the air
Cry out 'Olivia!'"
Yet after these passionate words, Viola goes even further:
"O, You should not rest
Between the elements of air and earth,
But you should pity me!"
This language itself is over-full of romance and in nine short lines makes Olivia fall head over heels in love with Cesario. The black wrought iron ideas was not helping to create a world that echoed this level of romantic beauty in the poetry.
In my research I had found a house in New Orleans called the Armstrong Danna House. Its iron façade had been subject to harsh weather for decades and the consequence was a beautiful, weathered patina. I was struck by the colors—the rusted oranges and the pale greens of verdigris. The orange helped me connect to the heat of New Orleans as well as the sexy, sultry nature of this play. For me, the greens cooled things off a bit and brought in the moisture and humidity of New Orleans. The aged quality felt delicate and romantic as well as establishing that this home had been around for a while and perhaps suggesting that Olivia and Orsino’s families have been long-standing powers in this place.
I felt that these ideas and specific research connected directly to the world I was attempting to create. As I moved from research to paint elevations I found that I was interested in a paint treatment that was a little more abstract than the research, with rivers of color flowing through one another instead of obeying the strict laws of physics. I wanted to keep the lyricism, poetry and magic of the language alive in the paint design. When, due to budget and time constraints, I had to abandon any surface texture in the paint treatment, I doubly embraced this approach to the verdigris. This use of color layering was a strong and successful way to create the beautiful, painterly, poetic world.
Collaboration
I feel very lucky have developed strong working relationship with Leah over our time in graduate school. This is our third show together and we’ve already developed a high level of trust and good communication skills. Our conversations always have a way of unlocking a new aspect of the play before us. It is also inspiring that we share a common aesthetic and an interest in the same kind of beauty. Having that kind of relationship with a director has been vital in this design process as it allowed me to move quickly and confidently through the design process.
Her trust allowed me to bring my uninhibited self to the design.
Leah allowed me great freedom to explore different ideas without micromanaging or dictating every detail. Several times I brought her a sketch and we would go over it, pencils in hand, and by the end of the conversation the sketch would be marked up and much better for it. For example, the mid-level platform came out of a scribbling session together and I think it was one of the strongest staging positions on stage. Much of the initial blocking was worked out in these meetings and, though not all of it was kept, I was pleased that some key moments remained and proved to be just as strong as we first imagined.
The design team as a whole was also a great source of inspiration and problem solving. The costumer, Maya Ogasawara, the lighting designer, Thorn Michaels, and I had just worked on a previous production together and had the benefit of having already developed a collaboration system. While the overall design process ended up feeling smooth, it did not start out that way.
The beginning of the Twelfth Night process was rough on the three of us as we were all in technical rehearsals for a different production and had conflicting schedules. We had few group meetings and more one-on-one conversations. These one-on-ones were happening often and thus the design and concepts were changing daily. There were points where I felt ahead of the curve and also days when I felt behind and ill informed.
It became vital to check in with the creative team each day and to send out our most recent research and sketches either via email or by dropping prints on each others’ desks. As we got better at having group meetings and passing on information, the process became smoother. Our meetings were full of ideas, and I felt that we were good about giving and receiving critique at most times. I found that more information I brought to the team (and the more they could bring me) made for more fruitful conversations.
One of my favorite collaborations came in the character design of Sir Andrew. Maya chose a beautiful pale green and pink stripe for his southern suit and I decided to cover his suitcase and sword box with the same fabric. It appeared on his hat and mask as well. We used the same stripe as a border for the challenge letter he writes. The matching luggage and suit was a strong way to represent Sir Andrew and give the audience a clue into his person as well as create an entertaining visually bit (though I don’t think the letter border was as successful as it was difficult to see that detail from the audience). On the metaphoric side of things, the design team talked about how Andrew is looked over and discarded by the other characters. Therefore it was decided that his color should be the same as the architectural structure. We didn’t want him to blend in entirely and disappear, but one can imagine that he is played upon in the way that the scenic unit is played upon.
Trust Your Gut
When Leah told me that she was interested in setting our Twelfth Night in 1920’s New Orleans, I was thrilled. What immediately came to mind were the beautiful balconies of the French quarter. The paradox of both delicacy and strength in wrought iron reminded me of Olivia, in particular, and for a play that takes place mostly at and around her home, this seemed like a good jumping off point for the design.
The very first image the team discussed was Olivia and Cesario/Viola’s first meeting. Cesario is on the ground and Olivia is above. Over the course of their first interaction, Olivia descends and finds herself on the ground level, having arrived there almost without knowing exactly how she came down to earth. As to the question of how she descends, we imagined a wrought iron spiral staircase. Moving around a spiral staircase feels like falling in love: the dizziness, momentum, and tunnel vision. The spin. We were drawn to that metaphor and the staging possibilities. Therefore, this staircase became the core image of the scenic design.
As we began to explore the rest of the play, we wandered away from the clarity of this idea. Walls were added, and rotating platforms, realistic interiors, furniture, and a whole bunch of other stuff. The design got bigger and bigger. We lost the magic of our first impulse.
I feel that this is a struggle I often face as a designer. When reading a play, I usually find myself led to one overarching image or idea. In the case of Twelfth Night it was the wrought iron spiral staircase and the idea of spinning into love. Upon reflection, I think that many of my initial impulses are closely keyed into the heart of the play I want to make. However, as I move into the process of designing and trying to answer all the questions about how the play functions, I sometimes let go of the evocative impulse and instead try to show the audience everything they need to know about the play.
With Twelfth Night, I lost my way when trying to add an entire second location, a realistic interior. We imagined that Orsino is the owner of a speakeasy in 1920’s New Orleans and that this is where we see the majority of his scenes. I looked at some seductive research of speakeasies and was inspired by it—by the wallpaper and the bars and tables and lamps and barrels and glassware and doors. The details and textures were deliciously exciting. And so I tried to wedge this idea of a realistic speakeasy into the other, more metaphoric idea of the staircase.
Needless to say, forcing the two concepts together didn’t work. I had to take a step back and evaluate what I was creating. By trying to put these two very different ideas together, I undercut the power of each one. This was a big revelation.
I sometimes feel that I hold onto ideas that don’t work for longer than is useful. In retrospect, it should have been obvious from pretty early on that this version of a speakeasy was absolutely wrong for our version of Twelfth Night, but I felt committed to it. And so I pushed aside the voice in my head telling me that this wasn’t right for our production. I ignored what I was seeing in my own drawings. Had I been more objective and less precious about my work, I may have been able to move forward sooner. This is something I want to continue to develop—a strong, self-critical eye.
Eventually we cut the full-on speakeasy. As much as I was seduced by the details in the research, they weren’t helping create the lyrical world that the team was interested in. So where do the Orsino scenes take place? This was still a big question. Can he exist in the wrought iron world that I now so associate with Olivia? Can the space be manipulated in other ways? Can the speakeasy appear in a different way?
These were questions that stumped me. I had spent so much time thinking about Orsino in a realistic speakeasy that now I didn’t know what to do with him. I went back to the research. While I did relish all of the details, I think what had attracted me to these images was not the physical things, but the energy of the people in these places. The people were sexy, they were luxurious, they were enjoying themselves. And that sultriness could be created in a world of wrought iron.
Still, the idea wasn’t quite right. I felt strongly that there needed to be something—furniture, props, lighting, costume—to indicate a change in location.
The musicians and their instruments ended up being my solution to the speakeasy. The wooden piano with a few bottles on top was enough to create that environment. This was an important discovery, reinforcing the way I think about a central image or idea of a play. The tricky part is using a metaphoric image in a way that allows for all the action of the play while also leaving space for the audience to imagine the entirety of the world.
When I look back on this part of my process, I realize that I need trust myself a little more. My first impulse of a wrought iron spiral staircase was correct for our production, even though I couldn’t explain every moment of the play with it when first imagined.
I always design with my head. I need to make sure I am also paying attention to my impulses and designing with my heart.
The Nitty-Gritty
One of the greatest changes I have seen in my design process since coming to graduate school is that I now work out ideas as sketches, both as drawings and in rough model, instead of solely in my head. Though plenty of time is spent on analysis, research, and thinking about the visual picture, the idea tends to come to fruition faster if I develop it on paper. This was important during Twelfth Night because I felt rushed for time and needed to be able to see and evaluate my ideas quickly.
I enjoyed drawing Olivia’s house and felt that I had many sketches that were all fairly successful iterations that expanded upon the spiral staircase idea. Leah and I found these drawings compelling and were able to determine early on that wrought iron was going to be a large part of the design. On the other hand, I struggled to draw Orsino’s speakeasy. Not only was the concept unsuccessful, I never felt ay excitement when trying to draw a fully realized interior. As the team looked at the sketches we were able to step back and really look at what we were creating—and ultimately fully embraced the idea that felt strongest while cutting the ideas that were holding us back.
The drafting portion of the design was helpful for me because, now that I knew we were interested in this iron structure, I was able to quickly draft up basic, but precise, pieces of the unit that were based on my research. The computer allowed me to mix and match pieces, play with proportion, add and subtract, until I felt that I had a combination I was pleased with. While this could have been done by hand, I found that by working with measurements in Vectorworks, I was able to also take into account standard material sizes and stock units that I knew were available in an incredibly precise manner.
Once I had proportions I liked in Vectorworks, I printed them out and built an eighth inch white model. There were lots more adjustments made at this stage and a lot of time spent with the director, playing through different scenes with model people and adjusting the scenery as desired—that is, tearing up the white model and gluing it back together multiple times. I felt that this was my most productive time of the design process as my focus was on the scenery, yes, but truly on the moments of the play. It was about putting small figures on the model and seeing how Olivia and Viola would look when one of them was twelve feet in the air, or planning how Toby and Andrew would escape being seen by Malvolia, or figuring out how to have the split scene take place so that Andrew and Viola cannot hear one another before their duel.
Once Leah and I had settled on the structure’s design, I built the quarter inch model and painted it. Painting is not always my strong suit, but I have discovered over the last year that I work better with acrylics than watercolor. This discovery has given me confidence in my work and the ability to approach a design boldly. After all, you can always paint over acrylic. I had experimented with a number of full-scale paint details and different kinds of treatment. After talking with Thorn and Maya I had a pretty good idea of where I was headed when I sat down to paint the model. It was magical to see this little piece of balsa and bristol transform into a tiny Illyria.
After meeting with the shop, there were several significant changes to the design and the model had to be rebuilt. While I was sad to cut apart the beautifully panted piece, viewing it as a communication tool instead of a piece of art, helped push me forward. The final model was an accurate representation of the set that was built for the show.
Finally Getting to Do the Play
One of the great pleasures of working on Twelfth Night was finally feeling like I was able to do the play. I entered the UW program having participated in lots of fringe theatre where I was not only the designer, but also the technical director, carpenter and scenic artist as well. Consequently, I had little experience in communicating my ideas to a shop.
While designing my first few shows at UW, I found that I was spending most of my energy developing these communication skills. I was learning how to draft both by hand and with Vectorworks. I was figuring out how to build an accurate model. I was doing numerous paint elevations and struggling with the medium. Each step took so much effort and so many failures. My focus was on learning the skills.
As I approached Twelfth Night, I found that I had developed these skills to a point where I wasn’t worried about how to do the drafting and instead could focus on, well, the play. I felt that I was much more flexible, adapting quicker to design conversations and rehearsal discoveries. Instead of taking a week to rebuild a model, I could do it in two days. This allowed me to dig deeper into the scenes and focus on a stage picture that included the actors, actions and language, not just the scenery.
I think this made for a design that, though static, allowed for the action and movement of the play. It delights me to see that the different movement rhythms I planted in the set (the difference between a spiral staircase, the shallow curved stairs, and the traditional strait stairs) play out with the actors. I love seeing the levels not only work to give a more interesting visual picture, but also reflect the emotional state of the characters or their social status. I am pleased to see moments I fully envisioned (Toby and Andrew sneaking and climbing down the inside of the set during Malvolia’s letter scene) come to life. I am not just designing the set; I am designing the moments of the play.
Communication: Visual, Verbal, and Written
Over the last three years of graduate school, I have been working to hone the different skills that are necessary to explain and explore my ideas as well as foster a good working relationship between the director, the design team, and the shop. Indeed, I have seen growth both in the way that I express my designs and the way in which I am able to understand feedback. When I began at UW, I was shocked to discover just how much of my job as a designer is getting my ideas across. Whether it is responding to emails, completing drafting, participating in design meetings, or expressing ideas through visual means, most of what I have done in my design process could be labeled as communication.
I have probably seen the most growth in my visual communication skills. Upon entering grad school, I felt that my strength lay in my ideas and gestural concepts. I do think I have good instincts in response to text and a willingness to fully explore those instincts. What I did not have were traditional art skills—painting, drawing, and model making. Over the last three years, these skills have grown rapidly. Through focused instruction as well as self-driven experiments, I have found ways to use painting and drawing to my advantage, but even more useful to me has been exploring ideas through model.
When I was little, I always had my hands in everything. As I grew up, this didn’t change much. I have always responded best to physical works and to three-dimensional space. It should come as no surprise that models—either carefully executed or rough—usually help me explore ideas more fully than drawing. The models for Twelfth Night were such fun to build. They were also absolutely the best way to communicate the design ideas to the director. With so many levels, openings, and underpasses, it was important to make sure that Leah and the actors knew exactly how one space led to another so that we could fully explore all the staging opportunities that this design offered.
Drafting is another communication tool that I had little experience in when coming to graduate school. Learning to draft quickly allowed me to be more flexible in my work and to not be afraid of changing ideas. In particular, using Vectorworks program has helped me realize that none of these ideas are precious. The documents I am creating, while sometimes beautiful unto themselves, are first and foremost communication tools, not works of art. This also applies to paint elevations and models. While I want these items to be well composed, I learned to not be afraid to start over. This happened many times on Twelfth Night and, in the end, I feel that working through multiple iterations made the design stronger and gave me a number of chances to work on these visual communication skills.
Participating in the studio class every quarter has allowed me to develop my verbal communication skills. Each week, standing in front of the class, I must present my work clearly and concisely and direct the conversation toward any questions with which I am struggling. For Twelfth Night I also had to present my design at Show and Tell in front of the school of drama. I am not always a particularly good public speaker, but these situations are helping me get over some of my glossophobia and become better at it.
The flip side of this is that I have also been allowed to practice critique. I find that giving feedback can be challenging for me as I sometimes struggle to find the right words to express an abstract idea. In order to help express myself, I have found that sounds and gestures can augment words. This is absolutely something I picked up by emulating my professors. Learning to present one’s work and to critique the work of others has been helpful in design meetings with the Twelfth Night team.
The third form of communication is written communication. There are few opportunities to practice this skill built into the UW curriculum. I certainly prefer to have in-person conversations whenever possible. On Twelfth Night much of the writing I did was to the scene shop. Most things went smoothly, but there were also a few missteps at the time.
It is the digital age and everyone is expected to have their smart phones on them. That said, I do not always immediately check my phone for emails or text messages. There were a few times when the shop sent me emails asking for a decision about railing placement or finial details, but I was too slow at answering and decisions were made before I had responded. In retrospect, I wish I had made it clear that my preferred method of communication is phone calls.
The other mistake I made regarding written communication happened when sending my notes to the shop during technical rehearsals. I had spoken with Andrea Bush, the props master, in regard to the paint that needed to be added to the bench. She followed my verbal explanation precisely, but under the lights I realized that the detail I had asked for was too subtle to be seen. Instead of going to the shop in person or creating a new paint elevation, I sent a note about the new paint treatment. The bench came back with the legs as I had wanted, but the top half looked bland. So I sent off another note. This time the bench came back with the legs overdone, but the top half looked good. So I sent off a third note to have the legs dulled down. It came back perfect. In the end, it worked out, but I wasted the shops time. It would have been smoother if I had gone to the shop in person.
Communication is a huge part of what I have practiced at UW and much of what I will continue to practice upon graduation. I feel that I have figured out how the School of Drama and its many facets communicate, but it will be a whole other challenge to figure out any new theatre I work with. I can only hope to learn from my missteps and continue to be thorough, accurate, articulate and considerate along the way.
Stretching the Budget
The scenic budget for Twelfth Night was $3,750. It is the largest budget I have worked with and the largest space I’ve had to control. Still, the money disappears quickly. To get the most bang for my buck, I knew I was going to have to repurpose and recycle materials. I was going to have to be flexible and adjust my design based on what was available to me.
Early in the design process all four platforms were different sizes than what was eventually seen on stage. To custom build those platforms to the dimensions I had initially specified would have been a huge cost, but I was able to use several stock platforms and redesign the unit. Overall I think that using the stock platforms did not detract from the look or action of the structure, except for the lower stage right platform. I did feel that the spiral staircase was a bit tight in that space, but it was a small sacrifice for the monetary benefit.
Another piece that was recycled was the spiral staircase itself. This staircase originally came from Hutchinson hall (and was even in a previous production of Twelfth Night here at the UW School of Drama in 2008). The height worked out beautifully, but I had wanted the staircase to spiral in the other direction. I thought it would be stronger if both the upper and lower entrance to the staircase were on the downstage side. While it did bother me that actors had to turn away from the audience at the top of the staircase in order to descend, the reverse in direction meant that the middle of the staircase became a viable playing space. I had not considered having this mid-level location, but found it be a strong staging option, particularly during Sebastian’s monologue:
“For though my soul disputes well with my sense,
That this may be some error, but no madness,
Yet doth this accident and flood of fortune
So far exceed all instance, all discourse,
That I am ready to distrust mine eyes…”
As Sebastian sits on the staircase he is visible to the entire audience and at a height where the front and back row both feel connected to him—helpful for this moment of direct address. The vertical posts also neatly frame him as we listen in to his debate. He is poised between being grounded and rational and being swept away by Olivia and her head-in-the-clouds love.
The railings were also recycled from a previous UW production of Romeo and Juliet, 2006. We did not have enough of one kind of railing to keep everything unified, so I made the decision to go with a mismatch of filigree. It turned out to be a great decision as my favorite views of the structure were the ones where you see the railing detail next to the pierced metal in front of the latticework in front of the stair detail. It makes for a much more interesting picture that reflects the diverse characters in the play.
While budget was a roadblock at points, recycle and reuse helped me stretch my dollar and these monetary decisions greatly improved the design.
Make It Work
Throughout the process I was meeting regularly with the shop in order to keep them up to date on the design as well as use their experience and advice to my benefit while crafting the scenery. The team and I had been through numerous variations of the structure, worked out the kinks, and settled on an arrangement that we all felt worked best for the play. I had sent in my final design package to the shop and had heard positive feedback.
Then I got an email.
Upon further review of the final design package, the shop was unsure if the unit was going to be structurally sound and safe for actors and they asked that I do a redesign. They also mentioned that it might not be possible to do the upper platform. This was a shock to me as I felt that I had been clear and thorough during the design process. It was also a great worry as the upper platform and the spiral staircase were the core of the design. I felt that if we had to lose the upper platform, the wrought iron idea was not going to work and I was going to have to redesign the show with a different concept.
Leah and I spoke prior to the shop meeting and it was clear that our collaboration thus far had been incredibly tight. We had a good understanding of what was most important about the design and some ideas about where we could compromise.
The meeting with the shop ended up being one of the most useful of the design process. By having five very different voices in the room (Leah, Thomas Lynch, myself, the production manager Anne Stewart, and the technical director Justin Roberts) we were able to address many of the problems and find creative solutions that improved the structural integrity of the piece without taking away from the integrity of the design idea. I felt that Leah and I were in control of the conversation and stayed true to our intentions while under pressure.
We cut unnecessary scenery, which made a cleaner, less confusing overall production. We turned half of the upper platform into a skylight thus gaining a new kind of detail in the latticework and a way to get top light onto the porch portion of the structure. We also chose to hang the majority of the lamps instead of putting them on posts, which controlled the volume of the theatre. The colonnade arches were added to hide needed cross bracing and I thought that the curve and the punched metal added not only interest and visual breakup, but a softness and ease to the design. We also chose to (momentarily) cut the curved stairs off the lower stage right platform, but that decision didn’t sit well with me. Consequently, additional finds were found in order to build them.
In conclusion, having to collaborate with the shop resulted in creative solutions that bettered the design artistically and structurally.
It’s All In the Details
When I began the UW program, my design process was fairly linear. I began with the macro—with the gesture of space and light and color—and then moved deeper into the design one layer at a time until, finally, I was working with the smallest details. I have found that this kind of process is not always the most effective or efficient because I can get caught looking only at the gesture instead of the details or I end up getting lost in the details and loosing the big picture. One of the tools I am developing is the ability to zoom from macro to micro throughout the design process.
On Twelfth Night, the design ended up being very skeletal and it was especially important to think about the overall shape as well as the tiny details at the same time. When looking at the structure, I understood the overall shape by observing how light was falling across the unit. My eye followed the edges where light hit and traveled across the platforms, up and down stairs, and over railings. I was able to see how its bulk related to the volume of the Meany Studio and how it provided pathways through the space.
At the same time, it was important to look at the details of exactly how light was hitting each edge. The way that light curved around the spiral staircase was different than the way it glinted off edges of foliage, which was different than the highlight and shadow lines cast by the platform facings. I wanted to make sure that there was a balance between the different rhythms and the overall structure of the unit.
By zooming in and out of the design, I was able to balance the overall uniformity to the structure while creating variations within it.
Tech: Really Looking
Scenically, tech went smoothly due to good planning and early collaboration with Leah and the shop. One great benefit to this design was that it was a unit set where, aside from a few props, nothing moved. This meant that there were no huge scene changes or other shifts to tackle during tech. It was pretty much what-you-see-is-what-you-get. That said, there was a lot to see and evaluate.
Going into tech, my biggest fear was that under stage light the paint color would not look the way I intended. In the past, I have had to entirely repaint a show floor once I saw it under show lights and I was worried I may have a similar problem with Twelfth Night. The colors I had chosen looked great in the model, on the paint elevations, and on the unit while it was still in the shop. Even thought I was able to do a few tests in the shop, I was concerned that I would look at the unit under stage light and that the pale green would wash out, the browns and oranges would be too muddy, and the floor would be too bright.
I had photographed the model under five or six specific different light conditions, which I hoped would be replicated in the show. Indeed, there was a huge range of lighting moments from the initial foggy blue to the amber speakeasy to the gentle morning light, and I needed to look at the paint colors under each set up. It took us four days to tech through the show. I felt relieved on Saturday when finish the last moment and I confirmed that the paint was creating texture, feeling flexible, and responding to the different lights in the way I had hoped.
There were a few things that made me less happy the more I looked at them. The unmasked space didn’t disappear in the way that I hoped it would. The exit sign, silver crash bar, fire extinguisher, florescent light fixtures, and red cable labels were visually frustrating and continued to pull my eye to the walls of the theatre. We were able to address some of this by covering the exit sign and the florescent light fixtures with black fabric and hiding the fire extinguisher behind the up stage left masking flat, but I found myself short on time and never addressed the red tape or crash bar.
I was also surprised to see the back wall of the theatre lit for so much of the show. It had been my understanding that we were not going to light the back wall as my intention was to have the structure hover in a black void. When I saw the color on the back wall during tech, I had a conversation with the director and lighting designer expressing my concerns. I felt that the color pulled focus from the action downstage, it emphasized the horizontal architecture of the back wall, which was in direct opposition with the narrow vertical posts I had designed, and it destroyed any illusion of a void or an infinity behind the set.
The director was greatly in favor of the color on the wall as she thought it gave the scenes a more magical, poetic quality. These color washes were initially kept to scenes in Orsino’s speakeasy, but soon grew to include other moments—the first and final tableau. It was then decided that Olivia’s scenes needed something on the back wall to make them feel as magical as Orsino’s scenes and thus there was also a leaf gobo light added. I had the same concerns about this light as well, but I was overruled in this matter.
I look back at this part of my process with frustration because somewhere along the way there must have been a communication breakdown between the lighting designer any myself. If I had known that Thorn was planning on lighting the back wall I may have been able speak my concerns sooner and the two of us could have found a different way of creating the poetic feeling that the director desired. Moving forward, I will try to spend more time checking in with the lighting designer both about concept and about the specific choices and instruments used to achieve these concepts.
What Now
Graduate school has been a challenging and rewarding experience that has reshaped who I am as a designer. The skills I have learned and the projects I have worked on allowed me to become a proficient technician, collaborator and explorer. Twelfth Night is my best work to date, but I hope to continue to grow and push myself. I feel that I am leaving UW on a high and hope to use that momentum to launch into the next chapter of my career. I do not know where I will land, but I feel prepared to take that leap.
Julia Hayes Welch
University of Washington MFA Scenic Design Candidate
Submitted February 25th, 2015