DESIGNER STATEMENTS


FLY DAVIS—SET AND COSTUME DESIGN The design of a show is about creating a framework for a piece of theatre and helping the audience to understand and invest in it. I believe the designer’s input is becoming more and more of a dramaturgical role, both vocally and aesthetically. This means, as a designer, you collaborate wholly with the director, choreographer, sound, and lighting designers from page to stage. All of our disciplines have to work harmoniously as a package to create and support the wonderful worlds of the plays, musicals, and operas.


As Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori have gloriously given us a piece which could be described as more of a play-opera, along with the presence of personified objects like the radio, washer, and dryer, it meant Michael Longhurst, the director, and I could give the design and some of the costumes more of an operatic gesture.


into her best dress and hat. That’s the only change we see in her. The Gellmans, on the other hand, are constantly changing clothes, especially Rose, who loves to shop. Her stepson, the pampered Noah, is very much at odds with Caroline’s poorer children, who practically live in the same clothes but nonetheless are richer in many ways than Noah.


Costume sketch by Fly Davis for the Moon in Caroline, or Change


For the set, we have created an environment which isn’t rooted in naturalism; we are not saying that we are literally in this or that room, inside or outside at times—it is slightly more fragmented and abstract. We have enlarged a late 1950s pattern to help realize the sense of domestic claustrophobia of that time. The split levels connected by the stairs reinforce the class and race divide of the wealthy white Jewish family upstairs and out of reach with their unattainable materialistic goods like a TV—“they got everything.” Caroline is described by Rose as the


Costume sketches by Fly Davis for the Radio in Caroline, or Change


In the world of costumes, we start the show by delving into the isolated mind of Caroline with her comfort characters: the Washing Machine, Dryer, Moon, and Radio, and we were able to have 3D surrealist fun from the ’60s. The Radio are mood setters, and they change in color. They hint at being like The Supremes, but we have turned down the dial of naturalism and upped the futurism of their attire. The Washing Machine, the cooling influence on Caroline, is covered in bubbles, spraying mist in the air, and the Dryer is acting as a conscience and temptation with light-up coils of red hot electricity and a rusted boiler suit and red makeup across his eyes. The Moon waxes and wanes in her light and dark costumes, ancient, eternal, and of course, sequined and fabulous. We only ever see Caroline in her maid’s uniform until she goes to church, when she changes


18 ROUNDABOUT THEATRE COMPANY


“negro maid” toiling away in the hot, “horrible basement” on a very low wage, 16 feet below sea level, surrounded by the noisy swamps of Louisiana. Caroline is working on her double turntables, hinting at her resistance to change and constant routine and cycle of her life, work, and how they are intertwined. Both history, with JFK being assassinated, and Emmie, Caroline’s rebellious daughter, disrupt this rhythm—we alter the architectural framework of the design, rupturing the space, creating caverns between characters, sparking the need for change, acceptance, and healing.


We’ve opted to put our wonderful band on stage; raised and split in two, they frame the space. They are visible and absolutely part of our production, as the music is the heart and soul of the storytelling. Jack Knowles, our lighting designer, occasionally illuminates them even more, along with the twinkling Moon, with a series of light bulbs hinting at being stars in the universe. The darkness is key in the design, it surrounds the playing space and creeps onto the walls and the floor almost like a watermark from a deluge. We connect it to loss, the great unknown, the characters’ futures, and where Noah and Caroline’s children dare to dream bigger.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24