BY LOGAN STARNES
Kristeen Crosser (Associate Producer and Production Manager for Artists Rep) is primarily a lighting designer but enjoys mixing it up with set design.
This particular script calls for a lot of different pieces to inform the audience of the setting and convey the history of its occupants. Since the apartment is a central part of the play, the design process of moving it from the page to the stage is complicated.
Kristeen started out with the descriptions given in the script and expanded from there. “The script has very specific requirements of the place. It doesn’t necessarily require us to see the entire apartment at one time but we do need to imagine that the whole apartment could exist within the space. The script imagines this play taking place in a proscenium theatre in terms of the grandeur, size, and scope. So, putting it into our three-quarter thrust theatre was an interesting challenge.”
The next step was the actual logic of the script descriptions and how she could fit that into the Alder Stage. “It’s a pre-war apartment [and the script] doesn’t specify that there are three bedrooms but there are three individuals that have lived and slept in this apartment at some point. It’s fair to guess that it’s a three bedroom apartment. It’s intended to have some level of grandeur, in that it’s initially talked about with chandeliers in the rooms. Typically pre-war apartments in that area of New York have pretty tall ceilings, a lot of decoration, and a lot of detail work in the decoration of the structure itself. So, trying to put all of that into our space, which has a 14.5 [foot] grid and a 13 foot proscenium is interesting. The total depth of our stage is, I think, 30 feet. It’s also described as a railroad apartment, which is very specific and means it is long and skinny.” Making the long and thin apartment fit into a square space without losing the feeling of a large apartment was difficult.
I asked who she collaborated with and how they came to their solution for the design. “Ultimately, the main collaboration was spent between me and [the director] Adriana Baer. We both spent a good deal of time imagining how that full apartment could live within that room. We went through a world in which we did the box thing, it was on a jaunty angle so it was not just a box but it did not represent a railroad apartment.” Early versions of the design included more of a box layout but after re-evaluating with Adriana and the rest of the design team, they realized that they needed a different approach. “Adriana wanted the audience to be clear on where all the rooms are so she was initially talking about a paint treatment that represented the three bedrooms, the kitchen, the living room and the hallway. She very much wanted to see the whole apartment even though we do not go into at least two of those bedrooms.”
The solution came to Kristeen on the way into work on the morning of the design presentations. “I had this idea and I came in and drafted it. I spent a whole of 50 minutes coming up with this idea. I threw away the notion that we would represent it all on the floor but [instead] that we would create some sort of crown molding effect that would carry over to the audience and would give us a sense of room shape with the perimeter.” Everybody on the design team had a part in the concept, though the vast majority of it was Baer and Crosser reaching an understanding of what version of the play this space requires of them. They realized, “we don’t have to do that, that would be a much less interesting version of the play in this room because we would spend a lot of time watching people move things around than if we just represent it all from the beginning.”
Why such painstaking considerations and details? Well, Crosser asked that same question. “The apartment is very important to the play, a lot of the plotline— there are several plotlines throughout the script—but one of the through lines of the play has to do with whether this family should or could continue to live in this apartment. This apartment needs to be of a certain level of grandeur for the audience to also question and to go a little bit into their discomfort about who they are in judging that.” The play does a lot to make the audience question how they feel about their preconceived notions of folks. “For many of our audience members here in Portland, Oregon, where we are very white, we would assume the patriarch of this family would not necessarily live in this apartment. So, trying to create enough wall space to have that level of detail and to have that feeling of height and grandeur and chandeliers with audience on three sides of the space is an interesting challenge.”
Surprisingly, one of the big considerations for this play were two matching chaises that the script calls for. “Oddly enough finding two period chaises that match is astronomically expensive and the style or period of the chaise says a lot about the rest of the decor in the apartment. A lot of my time has been spent looking at chaise lounges to try and answer other questions about the play. We ultimately gave ourselves permission to only have one but still that one will influence the rest of the choices.” Who knew that a single piece of furniture could have so many deliberations and influence other choices?
The level of detail in the set dressings is also addressed in the script. There’s supposed to be family pictures throughout the apartment but depicting this without walls is a challenge. “We also had to look at the rent-control and when they would have had to move in to have that rent-controlled apartment, which is the early mid-seventies. That then informs what era of decoration the apartment has, they may have purchased items more recently, but we are presuming that the vast majority of the decor is from when they moved into the apartment.”
From start to finish the design process can be complex, but it is nevertheless vital to the vision of the play as a whole.
Artists Repertory Theatre’s Between Riverside and Crazy ticket and schedule information here.