My mother trained as an opera singer, and when I was quite young, I vividly

remember her taking me backstage during the intermission of Verdi's Macbeth, and I
watched the scene change and there was a sort of big Stonehenge looking set on
stage. And this man walked out and pushed one of the boulders across the stage. And
I was just shocked because it looked for all the world like a twenty thousand pound
stone. And yet clearly it wasn't. And I think that was the first time I kind of
understood stage scenery as an artifice, as something representing something else.

I met Hal Prince when I was getting out of graduate school and we talked for a
minute or two when I was completely overwhelmed and terrified of him. But the next
week he sent me a letter and said it was nice to meet you. It was nice to see your
work has always been a mentor to me that way. The first time I was really working
with him, I think it took me about six months not to be completely terrified. You
walk into his office and, you know, the entire history of the 20th century of
American theater is on the wall, either directed or produced most of it.

People often ask me, how did you how did you find your way to doing set design from
architecture? And I would think it's a funny question because to me, the tasks that
I'm doing are exactly the same building models and drafting. However, it's almost
like I said, design and architecture. The flip sides of the same coin. But with set
design, it's it's a completely ephemeral thing.

I took my first painting class, my senior year of college, and after that I wanted
to do a little bit more painting. And I spent a year in Italy ostensibly painting,
but then making my way back to three dimensional the three dimensional world.

I started building installations and objects, and it was actually a teacher of

mine, he said to me one day. Have you thought about scenography? He's British. So
you know that there were four set design. So then I went to graduate school because
I didn't know anything about the. Then when I graduated, I worked as an assistant
designer for a few years and I assisted a designer named George Seton, who also had
an architecture background. His studio was sort of like a sculpture studio, you
know, and it was great.

I find if I get a good concept, a good idea that really kind of encapsulates the
show in a simple way, it helps me determine every other choice I need to make in
the design. And everything else just kind of falls into place because it answers a
question and sort of guides me through all the other visual choices that I do. And
if I don't have a good concept or a good solid idea for it, that's when I get into
trouble and I start thinking, well, I don't know what the answer is. I don't know
whether it should be blue or red because my ideas aren't strong enough

to

a huge part of what the SAT does. And in theater is it creates the frame and the
surround that that we present the human figure in. I think what in film the camera
does and framing things, the set largely has to do in theater with some help from
the lighting.

I've started thinking recently of scenery design as a transformation of space over

time is kind of what I'm doing.

A big part of my job is how do I get from point A to point B quickly and seamlessly
and in a way hopefully that helps tell the story. Well, that's

what I like to think about, actually, is like what is the nature of the event? I've
always been interested in, like, how the audience is engaging with the piece, like
how to engage the audience in a more visceral way. So often when I'm designing a
play, when there's flexible seating, I think about what the relationship is between
the audience and the play. Actually, that's sort of the first question that I think
about.

One of my favorite things about being a designer is that I'm constantly learning.

When I get a play that I'm being asked to design, I'll read it and I try to read it
without too much preconception of anything. I just sort of read it and see what
images pump into my head. And before I spend too much time trying to figure out
what the set should be, I sit down with the director and I just like to have a
good, long talk with the director, maybe several good talks with the director to
find out what they think the play's about, what they're trying to get across in our
telling of the play. And I don't I don't tend to be interested in. Do you think
this should be green or do you think it should be the style or those kind of
things? So much. But I want to know what's the feel of it? Does it feel cold? Does
it feel warm and feel friendly? Does it feel unfriendly? I can make a model, sort
of a rough model, but finished enough that it looks like something. I just put it
on the shelf for a week or for a few days at least. So it's kind of there in my
studio while I'm working on other things and I kind of see it in my peripheral
vision. And usually then I'll start to think, oh, well, that doesn't look quite
right, or some part of it will bug me. And just by having it kind of there on the
periphery, I start to catch things that I want to change about it or the feel of it
isn't quite right. The kinetic energy in it isn't quite right. And I'll start to
mess with those things compositionally.

Somewhere in there is where we sort of nail down what the set is and the model gets
more and more finished and more and more looking like what the final set is going
to be.

And then I have to actually get that that small model and make the big version of
it. And for that, then I've got to do a bunch of technical drawings and we send it
out to a shop to build the full scale set. And then ultimately that moved from the
shop that's built. It gets taken apart and brought into the theater and installed
in the theater. And then we go into technical rehearsals where you add the lighting
and you add the sound and the actors get onto the set for the first time. And
that's really where it all comes together. And that's where you learn whether the
set was actually a good idea or not. I kind of really don't know until we're
running the play on on the set and you see if it works for telling the story or
not. Sometimes something that looked really beautiful and seemed like a great idea
just doesn't somehow work to tell the story the way you thought it would. And
sometimes it's something that I really thought might not work or I was worried
about it or didn't think it was a great idea. And suddenly, once you get the actors
in there to activate it and live inside it, it becomes alive. And it really does
work.

When I'm in early stages of working on a project, often it involves going to buy
materials. Sometimes one of the early inspirations for a design can be a material.
I will go to the paper store and see what kind of paper feels right. This is this
is my favorite part is is kind of trolling, trolling about and like kind of letting
your thoughts wander and seeing what hits me going to the library. That's a big
that's a big part of my process.

Sometimes I go and I just like wander through the aisles and just pick random
thoughts, like sometimes you don't really know what you're looking for yet. There's
also this room called the picture collection at the Manhattan Library, which I
pretty much go there at the beginning of every design process. I don't know.
There's something about being in that space that is more contemplative than sitting
in front of a computer.

I tend to draw only as much as I need to in order to figure out the idea.
And then I tried to move to a model for as quickly as possible. I feel like I'm
really a very three dimensional person. And so I think I figure things out more
intuitively in a in a model form.

For me, models don't lie. So in a drawing, you can make it work like you can fudge
things you don't. You know, the implication of depth in a drawing is just all by
perspective. And so you can fake that. So there are things I think, that you might
not realize in a drawing, but as soon as you build it in a model three
dimensionally, you realize, oh, like, oh, we're going to see that side. And then in
communicating with directors and choreographers and people who don't might not
necessarily understand a technical drawing like things exist in three dimensions.
So a model is just a smaller form of it, but it's closer to reality, so it's easier
to understand and communicate with other people.

So I'm actually just getting ready to script this model to Chicago, to the theater.
But I actually have built a new object that I need to look at in this model, so I
need to unpack it.

This is a play that's about the urbanisation of China. It's called The World of
Extreme Happiness. We've decided to use as a kind of neutral envelope for all of
the scenes. So then this. Space opens up and actually acts like a diorama. This is
a moment when they're wandering through the countryside.

You know, it's written in a pretty filmic way and we cut from, like, you know, the
magic of, you know, the fluorescent lit factory, essentially. Then the final scene
is in a mental hospital. That's sort of the final. The final, basically a shot
photographed every scene, so this is this is the beginning and then the second
scene, so storyboarded through with the model,

it's a projection moment. This is the scene that I was setting up. And there's
there's also a backdrop.

The idea for that one really came to me in one of those lucky Eureka moments, the
first draft that I read was one hundred and fifty pages long and had 50 locations
in it. And all of them were very short scenes. So I had to get from one place to
the next. Very quickly, I'd done a model of a kind of an empty backstage approach
to the play, and all the different locations would be an actor drags out a chair
and suddenly we're in an office and they bring out a desk and we're in a different
place. That was going to show to James Lupine, the director. And the night before
that meeting, I had this kind of nagging feeling that the idea just wasn't good
enough. But suddenly I said, wait a minute, no. Instead of doing this empty, bare
stage, let me do a great big turning thing that has a multiple level thing on it.
And each one of those locations had a little cubbyhole on stage that it existed in
in the set would turn and you would play a space here or space here, a space up
here. And a lot of the needs of the play were difficult and we're sort of answered
by that kind of a design. So we had the sort of the fancy set for George Kaufman's
townhouse and the not so fancy tenement where Mosshart grew up with a stairwell
leading up to the roof and all the laundry in the backyard.

The theater here, which in curtain came in and out and we played lots of different
theater scenes here and there was a whole audience up in the balcony, sometimes
audience in the box.

One play that I worked on recently, a few months ago was called an octoroon. It was
at Soho rep Sarah Benson, the director, and I both, I think, are interested in this
question of what is the nature of the event. And we started talking about it like
maybe in more of a performance art context as opposed to a theater context. And the
reason for that was because we really wanted the audience to not be able to sit
back and like hold this piece at a distance, like as a historical piece like this
is not something we're living in a post-racial society and we don't need to think
about that anymore. We wanted it to be like actually like the audience, like
physically and viscerally affected by the production. The wall that you see when
you're coming in, 14 foot high wall would fall towards the audience. And when that
happens, like the gust of air that's blowing out the audience is quite immense. So
there's is a tiny theater. It's got 70 seats, and the audience was literally five
feet away from where the wall landed. And it reveals two women dressed as 19th
century slaves knee deep in a sea of cotton balls. The next scene in the play is
that we're in a plantation. And I didn't want to depict any sort of realistic
architecture. You know, it wanted to be, you know, sort of abstract in a way. What
I'm dealing with sort of more realistic things where the characters are that
inhabit that space becomes very important. And in that sense, you kind of have to
put yourself into the mind of the character as much as you can. And it is, I guess,
almost like acting or sort of thinking through what would the character do? What
would they choose? If it's a sort of a talky play where people are just sitting
around that I need to provide chairs and things for them to sit on and sort of
focus areas around the set that will draw an actor over here, over here to help
with the staging and give the director a reason to make a person walk from the side
of the stage to the others. So it's not just a random movement, but it's motivated
in some way by something that's existing on the set.

My aesthetic bent is definitely not realism. I feel like the reason that we do
theater is to be able to see something different and see something differently.

This is for the dance piece to the Shubert music and the ideas that we're going to
make a forest of trees out of string.

I would say that my favorite things to do are generally a little bit more abstract
and sculptural.

My work with the lighting designer is very important to me and how the light lands
on the set, how it affects and shapes the set is so important to me. There's a lot
of just kind of physical back and forth that if I put this piece of scenery here,
you can put a light here and you can put a speaker here. And we all have to play
together in the same space. And as video has become more and more a part of
theater, I'll have a lot of interplay with the video or projection designer as
well, so that the set is a surface that will take projection. Well, and in the past
year or so, I've started doing the projections myself sometimes because as the set
designer, I have a lot of opinion about what that should be. And and sometimes I
would prefer just to do it myself and have it kind of be my vision.

The people who are building the set is really a collaboration with me as well. And
all of those people need to have a sense of what I want as a designer because I
can't be there dealing with every little detail of all of it. I need to have a team
of people who kind of understand my taste. And so as it works almost like a
symphony, that everybody's doing their part and it all comes together to create
something that's coherent

on the team. That's John's only copy of that avant garde guarded. And maybe once
you're done, get it back. But I think if you can get it up in some kind of online
way for us all to access, it would be great.

Collaborating with the choreographers is very different from collaborating with

directors, I find choreographers obviously tend to think more spenceley. I actually
think choreographers and architects get along very well.

They think about space in a sculptural way, are basically decomposing bodies moving
in space. Sometimes directors are not necessarily, you know, understanding space
quite as strongly as the choreographer.

I think the biggest compliment I find when I'm working on a play and then actors
come in, they discover the set and they start living on the set. And if they say to
me, like, oh, I feel really comfortable in this space or like I feel inspired by
the space, that's that's always like the best feeling. There's a company I work
with a lot in Philadelphia called Pig Iron Theatre Company. They create a
performance as a group. And so all of the text is generally generated by the actors
improvising in rehearsal and the design is created alongside the piece. But what's
great about that is that as a designer, I'm there from the very beginning and
potentially a design proposal that I put out there at the beginning could could
really dictate the direction that the piece is taking. I find that to be a very
gratifying way to work. It's me and the actors and the director in a room before we
know what the play is.

Sometimes designing a show that isn't fully written yet can be a big challenge.
When I when I was hired to do the last five years, Jason Brown hadn't finished
writing the show. I had an outline and I kind of generally knew what it would be.
So I had to design a set for a show that wasn't fully written yet. It was similar
on Sondheim, on Sondheim. And in both cases, I think it was exciting. And they're
actually two of my favorite sets that I've done. In some ways, I think not having
the rigidness of a finished play was was kind of liberating.

There's definitely like the fear at the beginning of every project when you're
staring at the kind of blank piece of paper or the empty model box of the theater,
and you're just like, I have no idea what I'm going to do. It's a good kind of
fear. You know, it's feels like it's full of possibility.

My real nervousness is, is that sort of jump from the small scale to the big and
putting the people into it. And, you know, as much as I have some expertise doing
it, I've done it a lot of times. I'm nervous every time. You never know for sure
until it until you see the big thing. If it what looked good this big is really
going to look good this big.

The budget is important to me, obviously, because it affects what I can do if my

concept for the set is sound is really good, then I can do the cheap version or the
expensive version. But obviously, you can't have a big grand, expensive, difficult
idea if you don't have a big grand, expensive, difficult budget. But I feel like
most things can be solved in sort of a simple, evocative way with scenery. If
you're careful, you can really stretch the money. And that's the one secret I found
to trying to make a budget bigger than it feels like it is. I do always know the
budget before starting the project, but generally I don't I don't tend to let it
affect my thinking too directly at the beginning unless it is very extreme, like
unless the budget is literally like two hundred dollars. And I know that I'm going
to have to come up with some kind of very simple idea or some kind of interesting
material that's going to be a single gesture. Other than that, if it's just kind
of, you know, a normal budget which can range from, you know, ten thousand to one
hundred thousand dollars, I would say my process would probably be about the same.
I feel like it's always best to not be hampered by thoughts of the budget at first
for the very, you know, just the genesis of the idea. I try not to think about it
too much. And then, you know, soon after that, I'm trying to figure out how to make
it work.

Theater, I fear, is an inherently not very eco friendly art form, except tend to be
thrown away at the end of a production, I think everybody tries to be sustainable
about it. And and I do try to save stuff. And it was interesting working at Lincoln
Center recently, almost all the props for the show were things that we pulled out
of storage. Either Lincoln Center had them in storage or some other theater did,
and we borrowed them and used them. But scenery inherently, because it's kind of a
custom made thing for a particular production used in a particular way, a lot of it
gets thrown away and I always feel bad about it and I don't know the answer to it
are you would need enormous warehouse space to try to save all that stuff.

The impermanence of set design versus architecture. What that means is generally
that after four weeks of performance, the entire set tends to be thrown in a
dumpster, which always just feels like such a tragedy. I have a hard time throwing
anything away. I think this is maybe the curse of the designers, like every little
thing is like potentially useful and like, oh, well, that could come in handy
someday or, you know, so I, I tend to keep things and try to reuse things as much
as possible.

Maybe this is also coming from architecture where, like, I'm very interested in
using real materials, I'd rather use a real material than have a painted version of
it. It's kind of a struggle sometimes, because sometimes it's much more practical
to fake it

by the time an audience shows up. I kind of know what I think of the thing usually.
And, you know, and I'm interested in what other people think of it, too, but I
don't like it even if everybody else loves it. I'm kind of disgruntled about the
project. There have been other times where I do just that. Maybe I did it quickly,
or maybe the director pushed me to do something I didn't want to do and I'm just
not satisfied with it in the end. And if I feel like if I really love it, even if
everybody else hates it, it was still worth it to me.