How Well Do You Know Broadway Designers
Written past Victoria Myers
Photography by Tess Mayer
May 21st, 2019
This flavour, two of the most complicated sets on Broadway were designed past Rachel Hauck. And by complicated, I don't merely mean technically (although ane of them has swinging lights and a turntable and a big reveal, and listen, you try fitting all of that into an old Broadway theatre with limited fly and wing space). This flavour, Rachel Hauck designed the 2 near emotionally complicated sets on Broadway. For the musical Hadestown, Hauck had the job of figuring out a pattern for a testify that lives in metaphor, and with the mandate from the creators, Anais Mitchell and Rachel Chavkin, that "it's a poetry piece, not prose." For Hadestown, Hauck earned her starting time Tony nomination for Best Set Pattern of a Musical. She likewise designed the set for Heidi Schreck'southward Tony-nominated What the Constitution Means to Me, the most intellectually and emotionally rigorous play to be on Broadway in years. For Constitution, Hauck had to create a set up that both supported the complication of the play's class and allowed it to breathe. Both Hadestown and Constitution were shows where the sets could have been anything, and both had long gestation periods earlier getting to Broadway—and now that they've arrived, it makes Hauck the only female ready designer in the 2018/19 flavour to design the sets for both a Broadway play and musical. I recently spoke to her in her studio near how she became a set designer, designing for new work, her process for creating the sets for Hadestown and What the Constitution Means to Me, and more.
How did yous get into ready design?
I got into information technology in high school. I went to a class with my friend who wanted to audience to be in a play. In our loftier school, y'all couldn't audition to be in a play until you'd gone in on the weekend to build scenery, and she didn't want to do that by herself. And then I tagged along with her. She lasted about two days and I was similar, "That's what I desire to practice." [The play] was William Inge'south Picnic, and there was a model designed by an builder. The guy who was designing the play was an builder named James D. Hill. Those guys really know how to make models. I looked at that and I was like, "That. I want to exercise that. I understand how to tell a story like that." I was a freshman in high school and I never wanted to do anything else, and and so I pursued it.
I had four solid years of high schoolhouse drama, like a super geek. Then I went to UCLA and got a BA in theatre. I really wanted to get to a conservatory but my parents were very determined, correctly, that I become a Liberal Arts education, and I am and then grateful to them for it because it really changed the way I think. How to think about the earth a little fleck more fully was really, really helpful to me.
I got a terrific internship in television set, actually, right out of college. I worked through the Tv set Academy. I did two months with them, one month on the soap operas and one month on the sitcoms. I was working for a guy named Dahl Delu who designed Thanks, Dearest John, and the first season of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Then I got a job on The Fresh Prince and stayed on that for almost a year and a half. I got fired for having an mental attitude trouble, and they say if y'all get fired from your first chore in Goggle box it means you volition work forever. I went back to theatre. I did work in Telly for a couple more years, merely I was doing theatre on the side. It became a moment where I needed to choose, and I chose theatre.
I went away to Europe for 3 months and walked around and cleared my caput with my backpack, like yous're supposed to practice at that age. Then I started working with two equal and reverse, terrific companies in LA. One is the Actors' Gang, which breaks every possible rule and works in all kinds of interesting ways. And with the Marker Taper Forum, which had remarkable new works. There were five people who had gotten Mellon Grants to piece of work at the Taper at the same time. It was Luis Alfaro, Diane Rodriguez, Chay Yew, John Belluso and Lisa Peterson, my partner of many years. And and then, they were all in LA working for Gordon Davidson at the aforementioned time and they connected the community of writers in all dissimilar ways.
Information technology was an extraordinary period of new work evolution at the Taper. I just got lucky and started kicking around the halls there. I learned the combination of things, and that was sort of my grad schoolhouse. I learned the rules from the Taper and I learned how the break them at the Gang—I e'er knew how to interruption them, that's my souvenir. Learning the rules was the harder part.
Eventually, I started to work regionally, just it'southward ever been new plays, it'south always been new work. Lisa and I met at the Taper and started dating and then. She always had an apartment in New York. Then we were going back and along from New York to the regional [theatres] to LA doing all of that work together.
With set design, is there a large difference between new work and revivals?
Oh, completely. Completely, completely different. Every play is different, every playwright is different. Where they are with their work when it goes into rehearsal is dissimilar. There's always great ideas, at that place's always great text, just the moment that the prepare designer shows up and y'all have to effigy out how it actually looks, it becomes more real in a different manner.
I got actually lucky to be in the room for all of that development work at the Taper. At that place'due south nothing more generous than hearing playwrights read each others' plays, and what you acquire about how to mind to a new play from that. Then I went to the O'Neill, where for ten summers nosotros worked on new plays, and it's all almost helping a author imagine their own world.
When you're working on a new play in a new rehearsal room and you lot know where yous're actually going to do the product, in those conversations there'southward a director and the director is absolutely the captain of the ship. But there's a real generosity in working with playwrights that is about knowing they are still discovering their piece of work, and if it's the showtime production, they're going to acquire a ton from the actors. [Part of my task is] just trying to get in as possible as it can be for them to continue to discover the play. Significant, if information technology's at all possible, the set is not designed in a way to limit something similar the reordering of scenes, or the changing of a detail.
Over the course of your career, what'south the biggest thing you've learned about how to function in that process, especially in those like early meetings where rehearsals oasis't started? What'southward your jumping in signal?
This is an obvious thing to say, just my jumping in point is ever the text. Particularly a project like Hadestown, where information technology could be but anything, going back to the spirit of the text is key. When I sit down down with the director to talk virtually a play for the first fourth dimension, that conversation is a great two hour wild ride with a lot of java and no imagery and no ideas. I volition read the play a couple of times before that meeting, but I won't form whatsoever ideas about how information technology should look until I talk to the director because what the director is interested in is absolutely the atomic number 82 to follow. Even with a play that has super specific stage directions and descriptions of the earth, in that location's 500 dissimilar ways that that play could look and still honor every give-and-take of the stage directions. It'southward most what the manager is excited virtually, and if the playwright is with united states of america, what the playwright is thinking about, that's the leaping off point.
So we come dorsum here and exercise an enormous amount of visual research, even if nosotros're going to fully abstract it, I want to know exactly what information technology is I'm abstracting. Why this clothesline and not that clothesline and how different those things can be in the world. We exercise an enormous corporeality of research hither and I'k very fortunate to have an extraordinary assistant that works with me. Jessie [Bonaventure] does an enormous amount of visual research and and then nosotros shape it and shape it and shape it. Then I bring that to the managing director and the playwright, if they are interested in being in that part of the process. And that's a jumping off point [likewise], because you now have enquiry of what these places really await similar, what feels right, what's interesting to y'all. So if we start with 200 images of something as specific as, for example, All The Means To Say I Love You, which took place in a confined a high school guidance counselor'southward office, how could that space look? Which of these is most heady? Which of these feels correct? And and then, how is that world going to capsize on itself? All of those come from real images. I'll look through that listing with a director—in that case Leigh [Silverman]—and say, "Here are the 15 images that are almost heady to united states." And so I'll come dorsum here.
I piece of work through models, and then I build a very specific model of the theatre space itself because there'south a atypical relationship between the phase and the audition, it'south different in every room you lot're in, so understanding what that space is and how information technology works and how it feels to be in that room is key to how the pattern volition shape. I put the enquiry all upward on the bulletin board and I have that model in front of me and I starting time sketching in models. I have all these little toys, all these little quarter-inch versions of things. Then, you start to find the shape of the world. I get to a certain point and then I'm like, "Well, this is worth looking at with the managing director." And the director comes over, and we push it around and take it apart and cut it apart and shift it. Information technology just starts to form. But that function of like, "How do you make the actual design," I don't know, that stuff's magic, right? It comes from that squishy other place that you can't really define.
From talking to a lot of playwrights and directors—I've noticed particularly with the playwrights—there are some who are visual, and some who are really, really not visual. Directors tend to be more visual. But visual language and how people draw things visually can be and so diverse, and usually everyone is not using the same words to mean the same things when translating from the text to what it's going to wait like. Over the course of your career, have yous found tricks in terms of how yous communicate with playwrights and directors and how you listen to them to effigy out similar, "Oh, you're saying this, but what you lot actually mean is this"?
Absolutely. I piece of work very hard to be as approachable as possible. I work very hard to keep things low key, which every bit a Californian isn't that big of a achieve for me. I don't desire to be intimidating, I don't want to be unapproachable. I make as safe a space as I can for everybody to have the dumbest ideas together as possible. Of class, the director is the leader in all of that. But, for example, with research, if you have 300 images to first with and you start to have a Rorschach test of this ane feels right, and this one feels wrong, at the end of going through all those images, yous accept 20 images that, for whatsoever reason, feel right to the director and the playwright. If the director is responding to those things, if you print them all out and lay them all out, you will find there is some vocabulary that's forming. I want them to talk to me about how the play is going to work emotionally. That'southward the stuff that I'm excited near. And then it's my chore to figure out how to interpret information technology with all that stuff around them. Some directors are super visual and they go their hands dirty with you lot. In that location are some director who are like, "I don't know, that'south only not right, and permit's try again. I can't quite say why that works or why it doesn't but information technology feels not right to me." And and so I am working to help find something I can hang onto and be like, "I understand what y'all mean by that. I empathize how to make the world feel like that."
Allow's talk about Hadestown.
I think Hadestown is probably the hardest thing I've ever done. It's an incredible family of artists. [Composer] Anaïs Mitchell is a magic person. [Director] Rachel Chavkin is incredible. And that could have looked like annihilation. Considering information technology starts from the concert anthology.
When I talked to Rachel [Chavkin], she mentioned that a big thing was how you translate the poetry of the slice and finding concrete and specific things in the metaphor, and to not brand it look like, "Oh, information technology's anything and everywhere." Figuring out how to anchor information technology enough and still allow for that other metaphoric thing to happen.
Information technology's very much like, you know what you need to know most the story and how it unfolds in the lyrics. And how to discover a way to not trap yourself in whatever one globe because Anaïs is traveling and so many worlds. Verse kickoff is absolutely the first thing those guys walked in here and said. If you are going to mind to the music and respond to the music, that'due south the grounding. The quality of that music is the grounding force of everything that comes out of that.
You demand very petty to actually tell the story. There are very few manus props in that world. There is big emotion in that globe. So [one of the questions became] how to not arrive your ain way. Nosotros had a couple journeys near that.
The outset version of this at New York Theatre Workshop was absolutely concert first. That was the affair we knew most. Concert, and starting to figure out how that story unfolded. The anthology was incredible, Anaïs wrote a lot of music. We had an incredible cast and those guys developing what those ideas are together. That space that nosotros developed for the workshop was absolutely a safe space. Information technology was similar a dramatized concert. And the dominant influences for that design were concert, Greek amphitheaters, barns, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, and that kind of music. All of the Dust Bowl imagery was really prominent, and that led the mode in that production. Now, quite conspicuously, New Orleans has become the ascendant image in the blueprint. Rachel very, very much knew it was not linear, it was ovular. And so we tried a lot of things before we kindly asked New York Theatre Workshop if we could rebuild their unabridged theatre. It just feels round, it feels warm. That space was a magical infinite, it felt similar being outside in Vermont.
And so we went to Canada and we were like, "Well, how practise y'all take this thing that works so beautifully on its own, that people responded to so purely on its own merits, and just rethink all these ideas?" We set all that stuff aside and said, "Allow'due south try again, let's meet what happens if there'south railroad tracks and trees and grass and we fabricated them all magical." We put the turntables on meridian of the stage rather than affluent with the stage, so it fabricated it sort of an chantry. Nosotros had this giant, cute, silver tree. Information technology was all beautifully built and it was cold. It was cold, and it was similar, the stuff that had felt like exactly the right imagery suddenly was not the correct thing. We had lost our intimacy with those characters in that world.
Rachel's two starting ideas for this play is that incredible paradigm of those swinging lights, and the image of a really cute, dynamic tree, which is an incredible grounding image in a lot of Greek myth and a lot of storytelling myth across all cultures. And she knew she wanted this huge transition when you go hugger-mugger that felt like going undercover. I couldn't figure out how to do it within the limitations of the workshop; we talked about a ton of things but I couldn't get my head around how to practise information technology in a style that felt like what she was describing. So, we let it go for there. In Canada, where we were in a traditional theatre, that tree, instead of existence dynamic and coming over the audition, was a two-dimensional theatrical tree. So, when it flew, it was like a piece of scenery flying, it didn't have whatsoever emotional impact. We knew right away, something's wrong, we've lost our connection to these characters. We put half of that scenery on the dock immediately, we only cut it, which is an extraordinarily brave matter to do. That was the twenty-four hour period we made all those changes, and everybody was so happy. You could just run into it felt correct.
We started working on the London design nigh a month afterwards Canada. And nosotros started working on the generic Broadway pattern, hopeful it would come hither. So we started developing these ideas independent of knowing where we were going to do them. Virtually three months into that process, the opportunity to become to the Olivier came up and they said, "Are you available similar tomorrow to go to London and encounter the Olivier?" And I said, "Aye. Aye, I am." I cleared the agenda and got on a aeroplane, and saturday in an incredible theatre, and I just kind of looked at those people and said, "The design we are working on looks like it was designed for this space, information technology'due south crazy." So that was a natural, easy fit. That'due south where we found the bar. That's where we found New Orleans. We went back to the amphitheater; information technology feels embracing, it feels warm. The band is absolutely central. Greek amphitheater is unmissable in the imagery, and New Orleans. Yous let David Neumann'due south incredible choreography and Rachel's remarkable staging and that cast but tell the story with the pieces they have.
For something like this there is also a lot that is evoked and almost tricking the audience into thinking that they're seeing more what'south actually there. For case, when you're going from 1 world to some other how do you get the audience to experience the different temperatures of the spaces, which manifestly aren't really changing. How do you do that?
A huge part in that storytelling is [Lighting Designer] Bradley King and [Costume Designer] Michael Krass. I am an abstract thinker, I'chiliad an abstract designer. I know what a difference it makes if you lot choose this glass over that glass and what the audience will practice with that. I know that what yous see in this glass is different than what I see in this glass. So, in a manner, nosotros are asking the audition to invest themselves. In every abstract blueprint, you're asking the audience to make full in what'southward around it. We are giving them a lot of tools. Similar those rotting walls are rotting blue walls, but they're too skies, they're also not skies. We can make it feel like you're outside or within. We can make it feel teeny and we can brand it feel vast. Only, a huge role of information technology is trusting that if nosotros have an emotional response to information technology, they will accept an emotional response to information technology.
Nosotros did a bunch of things. Information technology's a lot warmer when you're above ground considering it'due south small and there'southward this tiny bit of furniture on it, which makes it cozy. And and then, you take that furniture away, and suddenly it's not so cozy. And so, the world splits apart and it's a whole different affair. At that place's a New Orleans bar, in that location's an oyster platform, there's all that beautiful Nola. At that place are tempest doors. Information technology'south spring, it's winter. That'south such a simple way to tell the season, and also the generosity of how open information technology feels when there's a little café table up there and people are hanging out eating and having a drinkable and having some oysters. And so, when it's winter, that stuff closes. In that location are 5 one thousand thousand little tricks. The green is not so bright on the other side of the doors. The doors are not in such expert shape once yous come across them. And of grade, once the world splits, all the stuff that felt like a deteriorating New Orleans globe, when that stuff goes out and you lot tin see the rot on the walls,
information technology'southward yet space, but that feels incredibly different. It feels like there's something independent, and that feels like your tum's going to flip a little fleck.
At that place's also the practical aspect to all of this. Dealing with the bodily concrete space of the theatre—limited wing infinite, limited fly space—and actor safety.
Information technology was really hard. It is also technically the hardest thing I've ever done. I have a stellar associate, Meredith Reese, who, thank God, has done a few Broadway musicals before this one. The trick of this is how small the Walter Kerr actually is. So making this really technically fit is a sort of a feat of technology. Together we worked out all these plans, and so sent them to the remarkable store, and those guys figured out technically how to brand things move. You might observe that the turntables turn while those wagons are in place, and you might detect that those wagons actually have things like pianos on them. So how practise you accept a turntable plow nether a platform that has a piano on information technology and not make information technology really loud, and likewise it'due south a planked wood flooring, turning nether a turntable that has casters on it, and that will put the piano out of melody. The complications are amazing.
Those swinging lights are the most complicated engineering affair you'll see to create the simplest, most elegant, beautiful, breathtaking thing. And where do you bury all the speakers so that the actors accept their playback and can hear what the musicians accept? How do yous isolate the sound of a drummer merely keep him dead stage center? How you get actors to that second level with nowhere to put an access? There's nowhere to put the stairs to that [platform], so that's ane of my favorite tricks in the prove that nobody always has asked about, which is how exercise those actors get to that platform? Information technology feels similar the space is enormous and it's all simply in plain sight.
The first time I did a play that I was really proud of, it was a super minimalist play. Minimalism is non for the faint of heart. It'due south very, very, very challenging. And I was talking to my dad most it at the time, about how difficult it was, when he finally saw information technology he said, "Well, that didn't look difficult." I was both infuriated and I was like, "Oh, that's how I know nosotros got it." Because information technology looks merely like the most obvious thing. It's like, of course yous'd tell the story at a New Orleans bar with some bar tables, of course.
Let'due south talk nigh What the Constitution Means to Me. Let's offset at the beginning there too.
Maria Striar [Founder and Artistic Director of Clubbed Pollex] sent me a genius email that said, "And so, Heidi Schreck's written a matter. Nosotros don't know what it is. At that place's about 13 pages of material, she'southward going to work on it throughout this, it could exist annihilation. It could be a huge slice of scenery, it could be nothing. The vivid [director] Oliver Butler is in the room with her. Nosotros know we're going to make something, are you game?" And, I was similar, "Admittedly." "The budget is $2,000 dollars, the fee is like five bucks. Are you game?" And I was similar, "Absolutely." I've designed 2 of Heidi'south other plays. She is very dear to me, she's an incredible writer. I was very honored to exist asked because from the jump on that, it'south been an incredibly vulnerable piece to create. I dearest things that breathe and modify.
Heidi was actually reaching for how the play would have shape. She had that incredible get-go scrap, and how do you expand it? And what should it be? The design is a gut reaction to what she's talking virtually. We did a lot of research of all these dissimilar American legion halls and Seattle and the timber industry. Oliver had very strong feelings about making certain that we represented a lot of unlike things in the story. As information technology was starting to develop, we knew there would be a debater. We didn't know what that would be, just we had incredible 12-year-erstwhile Rosdely [Ciprian] in the room.
I found a very specific research paradigm of an quondam guy in a legion hall with woods paneled walls. Information technology was the deli part of the hall, and at that place were super American red and white checks on the tablecloth and rows and rows and rows of pictures of Legionnaires and this guy taking his coffee. And I was like, "That's it, that's what y'all were talking almost. That's exactly what you're talking most." I simply knew it was the earth. And we had all these conversations, which she sort of teases out, [like] should there be a door? At that place was a menstruation where the whole side wall was defended to the timber industry.
We waited a very long time to design this because she was writing it. I knew nosotros had to be able to execute it with the resources nosotros had at Clubbed Thumb, which are super limited. And I knew that I did not want the set to be the reason that Heidi couldn't continue thinking almost the play. That's very important to me. And then, we waited a long fourth dimension and poor Maria Striar was starting to get nervous. I was like, "Information technology's going to be okay." So I sort of kicked in the door and I was like, "Yous know, [in an early version] we had this idea of [a line in the play about] a diorama that Heidi had built herself, right? And everything about that suited what she was talking almost and the identify nosotros were doing the play." I was like, "Well, these should be eight foot tall flats, this should be constructed siding that you lot tin can get at Abode Depot, it should exist a carpet that's one roll deep. And then, these pictures." All those details come up directly from research. A series of images were put together about what the deli tables expect like, what that bootleg lectern looks like. There's a plant, which somebody'southward married woman bought ane twenty-four hour period, and information technology'due south the dandy outdoors represented in a single establish. Information technology was simply sort of mind meld between Heidi and I. I was like, "I remember you're talking most what it is to be a young woman in the middle of this world of men." Heidi talks about this a lot, just the first fourth dimension she got on that set up at Clubbed Thumb, she freaked out. She totally freaked out. That set is one of the meanest things I've ever done to an actor because to stand on that set is to be the target of the eyes of 163 men who are just standing there. We talked almost, should there exist a door? Should there exist a way out? I felt very strongly that the cardinal to it was the emotional trap of standing in that infinite.
As the play has grown and changed, the gut connection has never inverse. It'southward changed shape and calibration and information technology's gotten bigger, it's gotten nicer. It's all natural wood now, that's stained, as opposed to synthetic woods. The lectern is mitt made and everything has intendance to information technology. But that prototype has never inverse.
Something that'south interesting to me in relation to what we were discussing with Hadestown, is that really this could have been annihilation, besides. Yous could take gone with something abstruse. You mentioned that there's one image you establish, but was in that location annihilation else? Or anything textually or something that happened in the rehearsal room where you were similar, "Oh no, no, it actually is a legion hall?"
We were designing the Canadian production of Hadestown at the same time we were doing this production at Clubbed Thumb, and I was going dorsum and along. I spent as much time in that rehearsal room every bit I could. I but kept bringing in all of this research without any agenda and being like, "Here's the world yous're talking about, remember?" And she would be like, "Oh yeah, that's those, I remember those places, I retrieve going to all those worlds." I knew that blueprint before I knew if it was right for where she was going. I just knew it. Nosotros talked most a lot of options. I'grand a large believer of, okay great, if yous got that in your brain, you can always go back to it, set it aside. We riffed on a whole bunch of other things. Nosotros were like, well, information technology could be a bunch of really impaired theatrical drops. The comedy has always been essential for her to be able to do that. In that location's a tone question. And making sure information technology didn't get too heavy so that you couldn't hear it was very of import. For instance, the presence of those guys [in the photos] changes the more yous're with them.
So we talked about a few things, but we landed at [the design] pretty chop-chop. Then nosotros did a lot of dissimilar versions of information technology—things that softened it and things that made information technology harder. Then Oliver started to talk about it like a diorama. It'south very important for Heidi to start exterior of it and step inside of it, and for that world to exist controlled and a matter that she's in control of to a sure extent—that is essential. Knowing that there was a really limited infinite where she couldn't comment on the world and and then stride into the world and then become her younger self, then stop being that. Just that whole amazing line about, "I wish this could all become away now," and that there would be a big, cool set change? Nosotros looked at all different versions of that and Oliver and I and were both like, "I don't remember it does that." I retrieve the problem was they didn't go anywhere. It'due south been an incredibly generous procedure and that piece gets richer and richer and richer. I feel about both these pieces that they are both their pure selves from downtown to uptown. They both inverse significantly, but it's similar they've both merely get richer versions of themselves.
Could we talk a little bit more nearly tone for Constitution? It goes and so many places in terms of beingness quite funny, and then quite serious, and when it zooms in and when it zooms out. How do you balance that in a blueprint that'southward static but doesn't actually always experience static because information technology gives her the space when she goes to other places to have the audition with her?
There's no like shooting fish in a barrel answer to that. It'due south so much nigh making room for that to happen and so letting the super vivid lighting and sound designers do that. [Lighting Designer] Jen Schriever, who is vivid, is super quietly, actually manipulative. Nosotros're very much in control of when that room feels like a neutral infinite, and when it feels menacing, and how keenly and at what indicate you are aware of those faces. One of the things that we did, essentially by the placement of those photographs, is brand it possible for them to disappear equally wallpaper, or, depending on what Jen's up to and Oliver's up to, make yous aware of them equally individuals. That'due south how that changes tone and then aggressively. In the same mode that Mike [Iveson] equally Mel Younkin changes. He holds his hand in this fist for the whole grade of the show and you feel a tension from that guy. As Mike dissipates from, and stops being Mel and starts existence Mike—and at that place's a significant portion of really vulnerable text once he'due south just Mike up in that location—that changes the whole room.
An enormous amount of it is, of course, in Heidi'southward control. That performance is boggling. Heidi is walking a knife'southward edge. Having seen this evidence then many times, I still never know when she'due south in control and when she's out of control. She is willing to place herself in a very vulnerable place, and so a lot of what you're responding to is merely her. And information technology's her remarkable control over how the world feels when she's 15, when she's 40, when she thinks she'southward in control, when she knows she'southward not in control. That'southward an incredible actor, that's not me. That is me giving these tools and being 100% nowadays for that chat and watching what they practice with those tools. Knowing what I know the potential of it is, and an enormous amount of that is gut. It'due south very collaborative. In that location's no part of it that's simply me. There's no function of it that you know if I was designing Heidi's play and somebody other than Oliver was directing it, information technology would expect different. It's all the ingredients together.
There's so much visual stimulus today. Do y'all see the way people read things visually as irresolute, or the level of visual literacy changing?
I don't. I remember that theatre design is e'er evolving. And that tin can hateful a million different things correct now. Just like every other corner of the planet, at that place is what's becoming possible considering of engineering science. And I mean that in every level. Obviously, Hadestown is one level of engineering science. The way that everybody thinks is irresolute at present, and that translates through all of us in ways that I don't even know that I know.
I recall theatre has an ability to speak direct to people emotionally by beingness in the physical room that's all its own. Theatre design is fundamentally different from design for idiot box or film, fifty-fifty if everybody's doing realism. There is something cardinal that happens when you're in the same room. There's a singular vocabulary that happens between an audience and a stage, which allows a kind of magic realism. Information technology allows a kind of abstraction. It allows a different vocabulary to enter the picture than you tin have with any other medium. That means y'all can brand rules and modify the rules and it has a different emotional impact. That'south what we're fooling around with in Hadestown. It's similar, "These are the rules. Oh no, those aren't the rules. Oh, now you're gutted." And in Heidi's world, ane of the things that'due south my favorite thing almost that set up is the box itself is one affair, but the world around information technology is another. Information technology'south the affair that nosotros discovered in New York Theatre Workshop was that at that place's actually a undercover, gigantic axle that's in the back. It's a concrete header that'southward across the room that's but quietly oppressive. Information technology makes the space heavy. And that is a thing nobody's aware of. Heidi didn't even know we did it. Nosotros did it at the Workshop, and information technology just completely inverse the room. At the Helen Hayes, likewise. There's that sense of being in the world, and being effectually the world at the aforementioned time. Those things are fundamental to theatre.
So one gender question. There are beginning to be more female designers on Broadway. Only it'south still tiresome. Why do you think that is? What tin can exist done to alter information technology?
Rachel [Chavkin] actually spoke so beautifully about this in the interview you did with her, and I couldn't agree more. It's about giving people opportunity. This manufacture is not financially rewarding. And and so, if yous limit the opportunities to people who tin can self-sponsor the work, y'all are limiting who can practice the piece of work. I recall it's essential that nosotros find a way to create a living wage for doing this work. There'south a 2d layer to that. This is, by any standards, one of the most hands-on, apprentice trained fields there is. Who you lot have as your assistant, who you have as your acquaintance, and who you have equally your intern is who gets that training. And who asks for those opportunities is different based on who they're asking, correct? People take to become very, very enlightened of opening their doors and giving opportunities so that we can create a world in which it's really super feasible for women and people of color to get experience then that when the work comes their way, they're able to do the work. Rachel'southward thing about the absolutely preposterous notion that yous can't exercise Broadway until you lot've done Broadway is ludicrous, as is seen past this, right? Like, here's your welcome to Broadway. These shows are extraordinary. And Rachel's done it before, simply everybody else is similar, "What are nosotros doing uptown?" I think part of the reason people are responding and then strongly to these two pieces is they're from perspectives that are new perspectives on Broadway. And people seem to be starving to hear them. I think that's just a testament to letting more than voices in the mix.
The set designers sort of define the look of the production. They also spend a lot of coin and who trusts who to spend that coin is its own question. And that was Anaïs' signal well-nigh women every bit producers. And women as directors. I was at the O'Neill, and this guy who is a director asked me who I work with. I listed off all these directors. And he said, "Exercise y'all always work with men?" It hadn't even occurred to me that I didn't. For years and years and years, the opportunities that came to me were from women directors. Eventually that inverse. At present, that is non a gene in my work. But information technology is a noticeable modify. And then it's which director gives which designer an opportunity, but too which producer is willing to sponsor it. These pieces of scenery on Broadway are not inexpensive, and who do you trust to do that? A sure amount of that is trusting something that's proven merely because information technology'southward proven. I think the miracle of both of these shows are producers in both cases who are like, "You know what's valuable about this? Information technology'south new." Everything nigh information technology is unproven, and that'due south what'southward exciting about it.
Professionally, over the next five years, what are the things you lot want to do?
It's been such a goal for such a long time to break this ceiling for myself, I'm sort of stunned to detect myself in this position with 2 shows that are doing and then well. I'grand thrilled. I beloved doing musicals. For years, people didn't remember of me for them so I'g very, very excited to being doing some musicals. The beauty of telling stories that way is rad. I love teaching, and doing a little bit of that, which wakes my brain up in the nigh vital style. I'd beloved to exercise an opera. I've e'er wanted to do an opera. I feel hopeful that that will come up my way sometime. I feel such a deep, long connection with new writing. I simply want that. I just want more of that. I'm very happy. I feel very lucky to have such incredible relationships with writers and directors. It'southward a golden age of writing and directing. So, I don't know dudes, I'm pretty lucky, I'thousand pretty happy.
Source: https://www.theintervalny.com/interviews/2019/05/an-interview-with-set-designer-rachel-hauck/
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