DESIGNER STATEMENTS


DEREK MCLANE—SET DESIGN When I first read Steven Levenson’s If I Forget, my brain started to figure out the ground plan or the geometry of this particular house. Basically, my job is to figure out how to solve the requirements of the text scenically. It was very perplexing for me for a while. My ideas kept changing with each new draft of the play. At one point, there was a draft that required a fully equipped and working kitchen. There was another draft where a scene took place on a subway. All that is gone now. The challenge of designing the set for this show is that the text requires that we see various rooms of a two-story house simultaneously. Basically, the locations are a dining room and a living room and upstairs there is a bedroom connected to the rooms downstairs by a staircase. I finally came upon something rather simple and logical. When the action is in the dining room, we will see the living room upstage through an arch and when the action switches to the living room or the bedroom, the whole house will rotate as the various rooms come into focus. The play takes place during the years 2000 and 2001 and the matriarch of the family has passed away—so I decided that the last time there was any substantial remodeling done to the house was sometime around 1975. The décor will reflect solid middle-class taste and the architecture of the house will be reminiscent of houses built in the Bethesda, Maryland area during the ‘30s and ‘40s. Another challenge for me was keeping sight lines in mind. When you design a two-level set, you have to make sure that the audience can see all the action, especially from the side sections in the Pels Theatre at the Steinberg Center.


JESS GOLDSTEIN—COSTUME DESIGN There are many projects that require a good deal of research and preparation for a costume designer, certainly anything that is set in an historical period. However, most plays that are set in modern times are usually more about getting to know the actors who will be creating the characters they play and providing them with clothes that help them become the characters. Of course, with period costumes, a costume designer is also designing and choosing clothes that define the character and help tell the story of the play. In this case, the actor is often not familiar with the look of the period, and the more knowledgeable costume designer will take charge in establishing it. Contrary to this process, in a contemporary play, because the actor will usually be wearing costumes not unlike their everyday clothes, actors are more invested in offering opinions, and the design process becomes far more collaborative. Usually, all of the clothes are shopped and it's always appreciated when the designer provides several options for each look the actor will wear. The actor tries on the various choices with the designer's advice, and sometimes with the director's input, and the final look is chosen together. If I Forget is set in the year 2000, 16 years ago. What I find interesting is that until about 30 years ago there would have been a much bigger difference in 16 years of fashion history. For example, people generally dressed very differently in 1986 than they did in 1970. But in the last few decades fashion has become far less rigid and more individualized, and all kinds of shapes and silhouettes prevail. There are differences year to year, but they're far more subtle. The clothes the characters will wear in the play, summer casual in Act I and winter casual in Act II, are not appreciably different from what we wear today. The one


18 ROUNDABOUT THEATRE COMPANY


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