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PATRICK PACHECO: Hi, I'm Patrick Pacheco for the
American Theater Wing. Our subject for today is set design
and our featured guest is David Rockwell, the noted and prolific
architect and set designer. There is probably no better
place to have this conversation than here, at the Public Theater
where David has designed a restaurant space called
The Library in what was once New York City's very
first public library. So come on in and join us for this edition
of Working in the Theater.
♪ [Theme Music] ♪
PATRICK PACHECO: Renaissance Man may be an overused term,
but that certainly applies to our main guest for today,
David Rockwell. David is a noted architect and designer
whose work has included hospitals, public spaces,
playgrounds, an airline terminal and numerous hotels
and restaurants around the world. But we're here to
talk about David's first love, the theater. That love has been
passionately expressed in 14 Broadway shows, including
Hairspray, Legally Blonde, Catch Me If You Can, The Normal Heart
and, more recently, Lucky Guy and *** Boots. Welcome, David.
DAVID ROCKWELL: Thank you, nice to be here.
PATRICK PACHECO: We're here in a space that you designed,
a restaurant in a theater. Tell us a little bit about your
inspirations for this theater-- for this restaurant.
DAVID ROCKWELL: Well, I was a fan of the Public Theater long
before I knew what the significance of it was.
When I first came to New York-- I started at college at
Syracuse University in `74-- and every summer I'd come to
New York and was sort of addicted to coming to the
Public, not knowing what was going to be here, but the energy
of the sense of community that happened here.
And spontaneously picking something to see. That love
for the Public continued and then in 2002 I went on the
Board. I was on the Board for seven or eight years and was
honored to have a chance to be a part of this amazing
organization. When the Public was renovating, Oskar Eustis,
who had taken over as the Lead Producer, the Artistic
Director, asked if I would like to do a piece of the
renovation. As we started to look for an opportunity,
there was a space-- this was originally 25-foot tall
open space so there was no room here-- and we talked
about what could happen here that in some ways
expressed the roots of the Public Theater as a library
and was in some ways an inner sanctum.
That led to creating a space that is a little bit like a
smaller, warmer, clubby, speakeasy, accessed through a
very small door. So we had to make a feature out of
that and have it be a tribute to a lot of the great artists who
have worked here and have it in some ways be a working
space that would change based on what's at the
Public at the moment.
PATRICK PACHECO: How does the space prepare the patrons for
what they're about to see? Often they'll come here, they'll sit
down, they'll have a drink and they're about to go in to
see a show. Does that work in this space?
DAVID ROCKWELL: I think it works in a couple of ways and it's
a little bit like I think what designers do is obsessively
plan and then what the world does is say it doesn't work
that way, it works this way. It's one of the things that so
fascinates me about work in the theater is understanding more
about choreography and movement and understanding there's not
only one way to go. So I think this room actually works in many
different ways. It works if you're coming from the street
and you walk into the lobby, which is no renovated and
glorious and white and you come up the stairs and you
enter this smaller space. I think it prepares you for the
scale of the performance spaces. I also think it's a great place
to go after the theater and have a chance to rub shoulders
and talk about what it is you saw because I think it's
what's so energizing for me about theater as a designer.
What's true with public space and with restaurants is that
they're alive, they're spontaneous, they're changeable.
So a lot of what we spend time laying out in a
restaurant, banquette locations. Everyone wants a corner.
It's a translatable conversation to in the theater where is the
power position on stage, where does someone make an entrance.
I guess my greatest joy is melding and mashing up those
things, so this room on a very small scale was a
chance to do that.
PATRICK PACHECO: You mentioned community early on
and when I was looking over your work, including numerous
off-Broadway shows as well, I noticed that community,
storytelling and emotion seemed to be the three main pillars
of your work. Community, obviously, came up in the
The Normal Heart, which was directed by a former producer
of the Public Theater-
DAVID ROCKWELL: Producer's the right title.
PATRICK PACHECO: Yes, it is the right title -- George C. Wolfe,
with whom you've done many shows, three, in fact.
And one of the most powerful set designs that you did was
for The Normal Heart. It was simple and, yet, very powerful.
How did community and storytelling and emotion
figure into that set?
DAVID ROCKWELL: Well, those are three of the most
significant factors in all of our design. I'm part of what
I think of as a robust studio and everyone's invited to
bring their ideas to the table and, at the end of the day,
community is what I fell in love with about New York,
about working in New York a lot of it's accidental community.
Walking down the street you imagine the city from the
air as a very organized place but on the ground it's much
more messy and vital. So that sense of community that happens
on the street, that happens in theaters is I would say
incredibly important to me and it's how I fell in love with
design. So as a kid we moved around a lot.
DAVID ROCKWELL: We had a lot of sudden transitions and building
and making things, being part of community theater--
as corny as that is-- but the making of something that brought
people together and created community, even if it was a
temporal community, mattered. So on The Normal Heart what we
tried to do was in some ways pay tribute to the original
1985 production.
PATRICK PACHECO: Here at the Public Theater.
DAVID ROCKWELL: Here at the Public Theater and, of course,
it was about the AIDS crisis, which didn't have a name then.
It was that early on and there was a sense that the set in
many ways could be a kind of monument and a tribute to
those who were lost and to those who were part of that fight
and that struggle. Of course, Larry Kramer is such a strong
voice and there's such incredible anger and passion
in the play that our feeling was if we could take the power
of words and turn those into texture. So the three walls,
which never touched the ceiling, in a way they are a kind of
memorial. They're a kind of art installation that doesn't
attempt to totally seal off the theater space.
Those words are grazed with light so for a lot of the show
they're texture. They become the very texture of the show,
the words that define the crisis of that period.
We just made it a very fluid set of pieces that set
within that environment that was built out of the
language of the crisis.
PATRICK PACHECO: The sense of emotions, storytelling and
community particularly you mentioned earlier was due in
part to your mother, Joanne, who ran a community theater
on the Jersey Shore. And took you at the age of 11, I believe,
to see Fiddler on the Roof, which was all about community
and about Anatevka. When you saw Boris Aronson's designs,
how much of an inspiration was that?
DAVID ROCKWELL: Fiddler on the Roof was the first time I
remember being knocked out by the combination and the
collaboration of music, storytelling, dance and visual
storytelling. At 11, I didn't know anything about Anatevka
or Boris Aronson's work or Chagall at that point, the
early references, but I instantly knew from the way
people moved and what that world looked like that it was
precarious, that the sense of community was defined by
the structure in the center. It was a great example for
me of being able to contribute to something through visual
storytelling and it certainly, to this day-- and I don't know
whether you know but Lisa Aronson, Boris' wife and widow,
passed away a week ago at 93 on her 93rd birthday.
An incredible woman-- and I collect his work and it became
for me a real turning point.
PATRICK PACHECO: Another community that you created with
George was in Lucky Guy by the late Nora Ephron. What are
some of the first conversations you had with George
about Lucky Guy?
DAVID ROCKWELL: I'm smiling because when we first got into
rehearsal, when we first got on stage for the first day
of tech and we set something up, George said just set it up
so I can see what it looks like and then he went, "wrong."
He said I'm just practicing. George is a very vocal guy,
very passionate. We started out by I read the script, I did a
lot of photo research. He drove us for photo research with as
many specifics as we could.
PATRICK PACHECO: This the 80s now, New York in the 80s,
tabloid world.
DAVID ROCKWELL: Mid-80s, tabloid world, heavy graffiti,
kind of a messy Ed Koch period-- in some ways the period
of The Normal Heart as well-- and most of the locations
where newsrooms-- The Post, The Daily News, Newsday.
I set about trying to get as much detailed research of what
those newsrooms looked like knowing that the script was
very cinematic in terms of location. So we had to
instantly go from one location to another and we knew
it couldn't be bogged down with heavy transitions,
so we synthesized it down to a couple of elements.
One was the ceiling. There's a kind of grid hung ceiling that
is ubiquitous with every newsroom, whether they were
smoke-filled -- in the first act in the mid-80s they're
smoke-filled and in the second act in the mid-90s they're
not. But that compression was a big decision and it was
something we built many models of and we played
with it as a projection device as well, so it creates a
compression but it also allows us to project onto the
ceiling and onto the back wall. Then we talked about how things
would be moved and whether they were automated or actor
driven and it was really George's thought that as much
as possible if the movement of the furniture became a
kind of choreography that it would give it an energy.
So we started with very small model pieces in this compressed
world with images that represented what the projected
content would be and it was very difficult to make it move at the
speed of the play, but that was the goal. That's the design
challenges, to embrace the play as written and to create
that kind of swirl of history.
PATRICK PACHECO: George has directed both dramas and
musicals. Did it help that he had a musical background
in terms of how to devise that?
DAVID ROCKWELL: Yeah, absolutely. He thinks musically.
He also is able to keep an unbelievable energy in the
rehearsal room. That's a lot of big guy energy that he had
to motivate. Tom Hanks was-- and is-- an incredible leader.
So from Day 1 in the rehearsal room, I think we all had a
sense that we were doing something significant and
I knew Nora a bit and she wanted me to do that play
and I think everyone felt like we had a chance to do
something original and everyone contributed to
the same thing. It's like when a show really works
everyone is telling the exact same story.
PATRICK PACHECO: Nora had died by the time you got into
the nitty-gritty of things. Was there a moment when you
thought I wish she were alive so I could ask her this
about the set?
DAVID ROCKWELL: No, because my relationship once
something's in production isn't really with the writer.
It's with the director. I think George felt like having
developed it over such a long period of time with Nora
that he had a good sense of how to do that. I would say
everyone felt like for a very high visibility new play with
a recently passed away major writer and a big star there
was none of that pressure. Part of it was everyone felt like,
we all felt like we wanted to do this work and it had a kind
of spontaneity to it.
PATRICK PACHECO: There's a weightlessness and fluidity
that characterizes your work. Things fly in, they're very
weight-- they have a certain weightlessness to it--
and you're probably also helped by technology and projections.
What are the dangers of technology? What do you have to
keep your mind on whenever you're looking at something
technological in terms of your goals, your immediate
emotional goals in creating something for a set?
DAVID ROCKWELL: I think that technology is an incredible tool
in our architecture. We actually have a small technology lab
within Rockwell Group that develops interactive
technologies that engage people in space versus separating
them. One example of that is in the Jet Blue terminal.
In T-5 there's an oval ring that sits over the main public
space that greets you when you're leaving or arriving and
it has technology that allows Jet Blue to put art
installations that react to you in real time, messaging that.
So that's technology in service of a real connection.
I think the danger is in falling in love with technology so
much that it becomes a kind of crutch. Technology has changed
the world. It's changed how kids perceive information,
so what their attention span is. In the theater,
technology can also lock you into a stage picture that takes
so long to undo that it removes any of that fluidity.
So I just think it's a balance.
PATRICK PACHECO: Getting back to something that you said about
the terminal and something that you said in general is
that people like to move around in circles.
DAVID ROCKWELL: Right.
PATRICK PACHECO: Entrances and exits, on and off the
merry-go-round. Did that figure in Lucky Guy?
DAVID ROCKWELL: It did. One of the things about the
set in Lucky Guy is there is no center upstage entrance.
That's a conscious decision because there's an LED wall
in that position. So we talked about how people are going
to get in and out and there is a kind of swirl to the way
the show moves, starting with the bar, which feels like a
very solid environment. Part of the reason that's true is
that is in some ways that bar is the last remnant of what
these old Irish reporters and policemen believe as the world.
That flies away and the city becomes more these fragments
but the bar stays on stage. So they can still stay anchored to
this thing that makes them feel connected. The desks move
in a pattern that's very much like a dance.
PATRICK PACHECO: There's a brechtian moment that Nora
wrote in and that was smoke machine comes in and you see
the smoke machine. The stagehand comes in with a smoke machine,
creates this. Did that dictate this brechtian moment?
Did that dictate you set for Lucky Guy?
DAVID ROCKWELL: No, but one of the things did is-- in reading
the script-- it calls for a kind of urban, mid-80s New York
version of Nicholas Nickleby where there's a sense that the
actors are making it themselves. So that did dictate a lot of
the set, that there were lanes, one window and a table.
There are three or four bars that are real locations.
The Lion's Head is an awning which is the thing people
remember the most. Although they remember this lion that
was in there that we just couldn't find any real images
of. So the way it was written did dictate a kind of noir black
and white approach to the work.
PATRICK PACHECO: And you're doing it with a large cast.
Once the cast gets on the set, are there modifications to
be made because of the demands of the actors or what the
actors want or need, perhaps, once they're on the
set and on stage?
DAVID ROCKWELL: Yeah, and what you try and do is have
those things built in the rehearsal room so that they
can try them. But many, many things changed when they got
on stage. In fact, in the case of Lucky Guy, what happened
when the actors got on stage is we removed more and more
scenery. So the show became lighter and airier. A good
example is the restaurant at the end of the first act where
McAlary, his lawyer Eddie- Eddie Hayes are having a discussion
and you can see that McAlary is starting to really commit to
becoming Jimmy Breslin. It's when he falls in love with that
power idea. We had a beautiful banquette, beautiful banquette
and on stage it just felt like it wasn't big enough.
But a banquette depends on intimacy. You can't make it
bigger or it's a barge. So we ultimately got rid of the
banquette and did it way downstage with a table,
two chairs and a projection piece and one ashtray.
The ashtray, while it's a very small piece, actually defines
the center of that picture and gives it a focus.
PATRICK PACHECO: In the minutes we have left--
just to back up-- do you draw?
DAVID ROCKWELL: I do.
PATRICK PACHECO: Do you use the computer? What are the steps
that you go through once you have a black piece of paper--
what Sondheim calls the most beautiful thing in the world--
what's your first step?
DAVID ROCKWELL: Frank Lloyd Wright used to say never start
drawing until you know what you're going to draw.
I don't do that. I doodle immediately and I start out
with a lot of research. I do find that directors appreciate--
and it's not just research that's linear, like here's the
location, but in the case of *** Boots a lot of the
research was about other forms of machinery. If you think about
craftsmanship, you want to believe that this factory is a
real working place so all of the set actually physically does
something. So we looked at other forms of extreme craftsmanship
and how things were put together. So what I'll usually
do is get all of that research and sit and start to sketch
and try and find-- and you have to take many routes to
get to it-- the engine of the show. What's the physical
engine? What's the motor? What's the fabric of it?
PATRICK PACHECO: David, what's the one bit of advice you would
give to anybody who wants to go into set design?
DAVID ROCKWELL: Well, that's such a-- if you could only give
one piece it's like what would you take with you. I would start
by seeing everything you can. I would take a sketch book.
I take a sketch book everywhere I go. See everything. By the
way, it's the same thing I advise kids who want to study
restaurant design. When you go to a restaurant, measure the
tables. Just start to understand those ideas and then sketch what
your response to the play might be after you've seen it.
It's just an interesting exercise to keep fluid.
PATRICK PACHECO: Would it be advisable to ask them how
they might modify the set, improve it, change it?
DAVID ROCKWELL: Yeah.
PATRICK PACHECO: In terms of what they've seen.
DAVID ROCKWELL: Yeah, but I think seeing as much as you can-
because there's so much great work in New York, on Broadway,
off Broadway, fringe theater-- and just start doodling and
sketching and think about what your response to that play might
be, how would it be different.
PATRICK PACHECO: And emotion is Number 1, your emotional
response to the show?
DAVID ROCKWELL: I would say it's a combination of emotional and
storytelling, because I think that's the world designers live
in is how do you tell that story to have an emotional impact?
What changes? What's the transition? It's compared to
architecture where the physical world can't really change.
You're able to create this piece that changes over time.
PATRICK PACHECO: And that's a frontier that we'll explore in
the next segment, but thank you so much for this segment and
I look forward to continuing the conversation with two of
your collaborators, Jack O'Brien and Jerry Mitchell.
DAVID ROCKWELL: Thanks very much.
PATRICK PACHECO: We're now joined by Director Jack O'Brien
and Director/Choreographer Jerry Mitchell. As a team,
Jack and Jerry have worked with David on three shows:
Hairspray, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and Catch Me if
You Can. Individually, David has worked with Jerry on two
shows, Legally Blonde and *** Boots, and with Jack
on the new drama Dead Accounts. Welcome to you both.
JERRY MITCHELL: Jack is really a choreographer, too.
JACK O'BRIEN: I can dance a little.
JERRY MITCHELL: Yes, he has, yes.
JACK O'BRIEN: I can trip that light fantastic,
don't think I can't.
PATRICK PACHECO: So gentlemen, tell me what's the first
thing you think of when you hire David?
JACK O'BRIEN: That I don't have to worry anymore.
JERRY MITCHELL: Thank God, yeah.
JACK O'BRIEN: It's so interesting because historically
Jerry brought David and me together because they had
done Rocky Horror together. When Hairspray came up,
Jerry said-- as usually he will with me-- I know who we need to
have and I usually say okay and we had this wonderful
breakfast, the three of us.
DAVID ROCKWELL: At Coffee Shop.
JERRY MITCHELL: At Coffee Shop.
JACK O'BRIEN: At the Coffee Shop in Union Square.
And we've never looked back. I don't know whether this is
apocryphal or not but if you see it as a job I think it is
a job. If you're dealing with your friends, it's time that you
love to be together in which creative things happen.
I think the reason we've all worked together and love
to work together over the years is because we always have a
great time. This will be the exception today.
PATRICK PACHECO: It sounds like you're talking about a
playful quality that David has. Did that come into play in
Hairspray when you were putting it together?
JERRY MITCHELL: Oh god, yes. Don't you remember
we went to...
JACK O'BRIEN: What is that? There's a cowbell in here.
JERRY MITCHELL: There's a cow in here.
JACK O'BRIEN: Is that my fault? Are my teeth clattering?
What is that? Yes, playful, well we do play.
JERRY MITCHELL: Yeah, he brought in all the 60s toys.
That's how we got the Light Bright bulb.
JACK O'BRIEN: That's exactly right.
DAVID ROCKWELL: And Necco Wafers.
JERRY MITCHELL: Necco Wafers and all that stuff.
PATRICK PACHECO: Talk about Hairspray for a minute because
you recreate, there's a time period called The 60s but it's
the 60s, David, not as the 60s but 60s with a modern
sensibility. How do you locate a certain time and yet not
make it specifically that time?
DAVID ROCKWELL: Well, you mentioned the idea of play and
I'm thinking about the first real presentation that we had
on Hairspray where I filled a very big conference room
with 20 boards. So I had solved every moment of the show
before the first meeting. So Jack and Jerry came in and they
looked around and I looked at images from the period and I
looked at the kind of innocence I thought of the period.
They walked around, they both gave me a hug and they
said this is fabulous, now let's take everything out and
let's start with what we need to bring in to tell the story.
JERRY MITCHELL: Yeah, but those boards, that is one
of the great things that David does on every show is you
walk in for your first official meeting at the office and he's
collected so much research. He calls them mood boards,
but it could be a whole board just on color of the period
that you're dealing with. Another board can just be on
shoes of the period, which has nothing to do with the way
the set is going to be designed- although it might have in
*** Boots. But literally it's about the feeling of the piece
that you're starting to discover and talk about.
JACK O'BRIEN: It's a vocabulary thing, it's the mood.
Somebody said here is the aquarium in which we are
swimming. Everything in here is game. What do you like?
Some of it doesn't make any sense and sometimes you're
galvanized by an image or a silhouette or something that
you think that's it, that's what I feel.
DAVID ROCKWELL: In the case of Hairspray, part of the way
we got so far from literal-- because if you look at the
shows from that period they're a disappointment based on
what your memory is. You have the memory of them,
so we didn't want to be literal about it but there was
something about the sense of playfulness, the simplicity
of line, the use of color and-
JERRY MITCHELL: And the scale, the scale was what
was so brilliant.
PATRICK PACHECO: There's that great bird's eye shot
that started the whole show of Tracy Turnblad.
JACK O'BRIEN: Jerry Mitchell called me up in the morning,
called me up-
JERRY MITCHELL: I was singing the song
Good Morning Baltimore. And Scott had given us CDs of all of
the songs and would just listen to them over and over
and over. I was in bed, lying in bed, looking at the ceiling
singing Good Morning Baltimore and I'd just woken up and I
went that's how it starts. She's in bed and the
audience is the ceiling.
PATRICK PACHECO: David, then did you take it to the
bird's eye perspective?
JERRY MITCHELL: No, he first took it to almost the prototype
and I said no. I said no. No, it has to be like that.
Then we finally got it right.
DAVID ROCKWELL: The thing about once we got the angle of
it right in Seattle when we did that we had a more graphic
idea. Part of what-- I talked to you earlier about finding
the engine or the key idea-- I think with Hairspray we wanted
to tell the story from the point of view of Tracy Turnblad,
so the bed became simpler. Do you remember I had to
go out and find all the pink *** carpeting we could find in
Seattle? Then the bedroom turned around and became the
house which gave her a chance to have that piece be hers,
not something that was alien to her.
PATRICK PACHECO: Did the tone of the piece come from your sets,
from the music? How did you establish the optimistic
tone of the piece? Did it come from Harvey?
JERRY MITCHELL: The visual?
PATRICK PACHECO: Yeah.
JERRY MITCHELL: From his way of thinking. I remember he sent
Jack and I each a big, big thing of Twizzler licorice, a
big package, and a bottle of red wine and the instructions
were first drink the bottle of wine then lay the licorice out
on your bed. This is what I'm thinking of for the curtain.
Because the whole curtain was made out of tubing.
JACK O'BRIEN: Seven miles of it.
JERRY MITCHELL: Tubing and it lifted to become her
bouffant hairdo, because it was originally going to be hair,
which ended up being too expensive and too heavy.
JACK O'BRIEN: Right, it was terrifying.
JERRY MITCHELL: What was so beautiful about that curtain
also and the design of it was it looked like a curtain and
then it turned into the auditorium hair bouffant do
with a clip in it. Also the color behind the red was a blue
which made your eye almost-- you know that thing, what is
it called, morret, when fabric makes you go like this?
It made that happen. It made that happen.
DAVID ROCKWELL: And that curtain also, in some ways, channels
a slightly John Waters bizzaro version of Lawrence Welk.
JACK O'BRIEN: No, no. Do you notice how quiet I am?
No, this is true. You have to understand when we went back
and talked about relationships and friendships and stuff,
the enthusiasm evoked the vocabulary that visually leaps
between these two men began with Rocky Horror Show.
I was brought in to sit at a breakfast table and for the
first three weeks of Hairspray I sat and watched Jerry do the
first four numbers, because it starts out with four numbers.
I was catching up for a long time and still am, in a certain
way-- no, and I don't say this in a defensive way.
It's extraordinary because we do different things with
each other and as a group we do different things. So basically
I learned-- because I'm very mouthy, too, have you noticed
that? I have learned to watch the electricity leaping between
them, let them settle down and then comment, which has been--
until David and I started working by ourselves without
Mr. Mouth over there, which is fairly recent-- a whole
different methodology. It was very helpful to us as a unit,
I think. That's all I have to say.
JERRY MITCHELL: I remember the first time I worked as a
director with David without Jack, which was Legally Blonde,
and it was very lonely. It was really weird. It was weird
because we do have a special-- the three of us-- sort of
unit, cohesiveness that makes it-- comfort.
DAVID ROCKWELL: And also, I think, reinforced the best
parts. I think everything's a risk. Who knows what an
audience is going to respond to and I think there's a kind
of clarity and confidence about finding the way to tell
the story. You asked the question earlier about do things
change in previews. I was terrified to go into Seattle,
which Jack insisted on we not have the set for the finale
and we had no set.
JERRY MITCHELL: Well, we had a lot of things change from
Seattle. One of the things I remember specifically was
Motor Mouth's unit was much more an abstract idea.
It was just records, records, records, records, records.
JACK O'BRIEN: This big, big background.
JERRY MITCHELL: We realized we needed something
more real.
DAVID ROCKWELL: And I came back to New York and
designed that while we were in Seattle.
JERRY MITCHELL: He sketched on his piece of paper,
like he did, and showed it to us and they made that.
The Dynamites, which was an interesting story because the
first time we were in his office we were looking at those
mood boards and there was no three girls singing in the
Dynamites. That was not planned until I saw a picture on
the wall of a group and it was a guy in a red jacket and
three African American girls in red dresses. And I said what
if we got rid of the guy and we had those three girls come
out of the poster and be the Greek chorus that takes
them on the journey. That's how that number began.
We didn't have a bridge in that number. We didn't have a lot
of stuff in that number. Then we designed it in Seattle
and it would come on in one So the girls were in the poster
and it would truck on in one. William had made that beautiful
dress with all those little beads and all you could see
were the beads going like this as the girls were trucking out.
I said that's never going to work, we've got to put them in
two. So we put them in two behind the wall and revealed
them and suddenly it was magical.
DAVID ROCKWELL: Yeah, it was great.
DAVID ROCKWELL: You forget, we had to bring the people in that
built the-- there's some West coast thing where they building
living versions of paintings.
JACK O'BRIEN: Oh yes, the Pageant of the Masters.
DAVID ROCKWELL: Right, in Laguna Beach.
JERRY MITCHELL: I had met him when I was in the Will
Rogers Follies. He came and did the living pictures in the
Will Rogers Follies, painted us into the pictures. So I said
to David we should get this guy to come help us make
this really look like they're coming out of the poster.
So he worked with us and we went back to Bill Mensching's
shop and we built that whole thing.
PATRICK PACHECO: When you're directing traffic-- obviously,
the actors-- and when you're choreographing, is that fairly
well preset before he makes his design so that you know
you need this amount of space in order to choreograph your
numbers or you need this amount of space to get people
on and off or is the set modified as you go along?
JACK O'BRIEN: No, I don't think that I lead that as a
director in any way, shape or form. We agree on an
environment in which we think will solve the problem and
then it's my job to inhabit it and its best but not to
impose my needs on that. That's a different aspect.
JERRY MITCHELL: As far as choreography goes, the
only thing I need to know before we get into the theater--
which we usually decide on before-- is how much depth
am I going to have for each number. I have to...
JACK O'BRIEN: And the shape of the floor. You need to know
about the floor.
JERRY MITCHELL: Yeah, I need to know where my space it
but I have a tendency to like to push it all downstage.
I don't really enjoy a lot of upstage depth, particularly in
a cast size which is less than 30. I like to keep it
on the audience's lap, so to speak.
DAVID ROCKWELL: That's one of the reasons why *** Boots
is that intimate because the process of that model was
it was much more open and we kept pushing it smaller
and smaller and smaller so that people didn't feel lost.
JERRY MITCHELL: Hairspray and ***, strangely enough,
have a lot of similarities because they're two groups
of people. In Hairspray it was the African American
kids, the Motor Mouth Gang we call them, and then the nicest
kids in town. In *** Boots it's the factory workers
and Lola's club and they often work together but often
they also work apart, so you're dealing with half of your cast
on stage instead of your whole cast.
PATRICK PACHECO: David, you started working with Jack and
Jerry two years into your career, in 2002. What did you
learn from them about the craft of making theater--
the most important things that you learned from them?
DAVID ROCKWELL: It's a huge list. I learned that it
can be an unbelievably joyful experience, perhaps a
slightly unbelievable joyful experience in the case of the
success of Hairspray. I remember in the early previews I didn't
know, I thought that's just what it was like, I thought that's
what-- and they said it's not always like this. I learned a
lot about collaboration, which is one of the things in
architecture that I think separates us as we really
embrace collaboration and do a lot of projects with
other groups, because I think that kind of mash-up
and having the confidence to do that. I was working
with two masters who were at the top of their game and
really wanted to have fun and at the same time didn't want
anything that wasn't part of that rigorous telling of the
story. I remember one major lesson I learned-- I came back
to New York for a few days during tech and all these
phone calls that the producer was flipping out for a bunch--
the producers flipped out for a lot of reasons, as producers
do. But this one was because we had these towers upstage
when the original concept was the cast was going to
hang out on the towers and it turns out that isn't what
wanted to happen. So everyone was terrified about what to
do with the towers to get rid of the empty towers.
JERRY MITCHELL: And they were downstage of the
Light Bright wall for the whole show in Seattle until, until...
DAVID ROCKWELL: So I came out to the theater and walked
the stage with Jack and Jerry and everyone was panicked
and it looked like an unsurmountable thing and we
didn't try and solve it right there. We had a drink,
we talked about it.
JACK O'BRIEN: We had several drinks.
JERRY MITCHELL: And Twizzlers.
DAVID ROCKWELL: And we looked at the pluses and minuses
and it turned out to be not such a complicated physical
solution but it had to come out of...
JERRY MITCHELL: We just had to pry a lot of weights.
DAVID ROCKWELL: And figure out the priorities.
JERRY MITCHELL: Yeah, we ended up lifting the wall when
we could, moving the towers upstage and lowering the
wall. So we had to counterweight that wall, which was
extremely heavy in its first incarnation because we
created that wall. It never existed.
JACK O'BRIEN: No one ever saw that before.
DAVID ROCKWELL: That was actually an architectural
lighting fixture that Ken Posner found that's used for a
downlight with essentially what translated the Light Bright
into that scale was like a Tupperware party.
There were these plastic things that we made that went over
it because when we were playing with this Light Bright wall,
which we would do endlessly at meetings, we realized if you
want to say something signals the 60s and welcome to the 60s,
if we were going to reel one element that stays with the show
the rest of the show, that had to be it.
PATRICK PACHECO: To what extent does budget play a role when
a change like this comes up? Is that why the producers
were freaking out or was it one of the considerations?
JACK O'BRIEN: Budget is always there. The trick is basically
which way do you want to look at it, from budget up or
from ideas down. Very often the producers, the minute we
get excited, which we always do when we're together,
they see the dollar signs going up and they want to say
now remember, you can't have any crew and you can't have
any mechanical parts and you can't have blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah and you want to say get the hell out of our
faces. The truth of the matter is we have to dream first and
then we fall in love with things that we are reluctant or will
not give up and then that is incumbent upon our work as
collaborators and artists to say okay, you say I can't have
that, watch this. I think it was Gielgud who said theater is
the art of compromise, and it is. When you are given
everything you want, you know what, it's usually
not very good. But when there are restrictions ultimately
and were passionately involved at what it is you're
creating, you find a way to make it happen. So we know the
budget, like the Boogeyman, is always there in the closet but
we don't want to see the Boogeyman until we get
finished dreaming.
PATRICK PACHECO: David, coming from the world of architecture,
did you have to make adjustments in terms of what money
you had to spend on your sets?
DAVID ROCKWELL: No, I wouldn't say-- they're not relative.
The one interesting analogy I find, which was an interesting
commonality, is in the world of restaurants and we've done
a lot of restaurants. The opening cost is one issue but
the running cost is what really matters. So if there's a chef
who's more interested in reviews than running a long time,
you can have food costs that are so high that the restaurant
can't really survive. So and the restaurant part of it is
I feel that chef and the designer have a common point
of view. In theater I found that to be very true and you have
to have your collaborators, your director, your choreographer be
willing to help make a case for what the priorities are.
You have to have some courage to say we'll have this and
we won't have that or I also find architecture it's about
relationships. So it's being able to talk to the shops,
figure out what you really need, settle for a little bit less.
But you need to have enough of that magic.
I think producers flip out because they don't have the
language to say how do we solve all this and still have
some magic. I think that's what our job is and being able
to support each other in doing that is thrilling beyond
anything you can imagine.
PATRICK PACHECO: Jerry and Jack, David comes from a
multi-disciplinary world. To what extent-- you've obviously
worked with other set designers that didn't have quite that
background, coming from that background, what strengths did
you discover in David, perhaps, that you couldn't have gotten
perhaps from another set designer?
JACK O'BRIEN: Quite that background-- no one has that
background. I say this affectionately, Jerry once
pulled me aside and said apropos of this do you realize
that David Rockwell is probably the most famous person we
know? Meaning basically, there's so many fields in which he
is revered and loved and probably terrible scared,
people are scared to death. You get this world with David's
comprehension which is not just protecting the theater or what's
on stage. He, with an architect's eye and with a
philosopher's mind, is there with us in the clouds,
not just nailing things down but very often encouraging us
to speak first to find out where maybe our temperature is,
where we're going before he lands anything.
That's very rare, don't you think?
JERRY MITCHELL: You once said something that I always
remember. And one of the reasons I love being in the
room with David so much is because of this.
He said something like if I knew what it was supposed to
be before I did it, it wouldn't be any fun. It wouldn't be
interesting to create it if I knew what it was I was
going to create.
PATRICK PACHECO: Not knowing the answers.
JERRY MITCHELL: Not knowing the answers is what makes it so
fun to design something with David because it is sort of
a search. It's a mission. You're on a same mission to discover
how you're going to visualize this story.
PATRICK PACHECO: Is it scary?
JACK O'BRIEN: It's the ideal climate in everything we do.
JERRY MITCHELL: It's more exciting. It's more exciting.
JACK O'BRIEN: Absolutely, it's true of dance, it's true of...
JERRY MITCHELL: If it's scary, it's more exciting.
JACK O'BRIEN: When you don't know and you are holding
your hands and jumping together...
JERRY MITCHELL: It becomes what can we do as opposed to
what do we have to do.
PATRICK PACHECO: And David just paints it on a very wide,
large canvas.
JERRY MITCHELL: Yeah, everything's possible,
everything's possible. That's a fun way to work.
PATRICK PACHECO: Getting back to Hairspray, you worked with
The Courtney Collins Show and television in terms of those
scenes. Were those difficult to design, David? Was the role
of television in that musical-- how did that evolve?
DAVID ROCKWELL: I don't know about difficult. There was a lot
of research that we did on what those looked like
backstage and one of the results of that was the microphone
iris with the lights. Originally we had more thoughts about
onstage equipment and offstage equipment but I think there
was something very freeing about the Courtney Collins Show
and that TV world being represented by color,
those Necco Wafer pieces...
JERRY MITCHELL: The sheer curtain.
DAVID ROCKWELL: The sheer curtain.
JERRY MITCHELL: The podium and the stand that we could move
anywhere we wanted to, because Jack wanted to put the cameras
out in front on the proscenium so the actors had to look at
the different cameras, so we didn't have to put the cameras
on stage. We made you believe they were out front.
DAVID ROCKWELL: And the Turnblad home became a mobile
piece so they could dance around that.
JERRY MITCHELL: The worlds could, again, dance in the space
at the same time.
DAVID ROCKWELL: By having the minimum amount that we
needed to create the TV world, you could meld the worlds more.
It became less-- it became more fluid.
JERRY MITCHELL: Even the house, that was one of the
great things about the show is as we set up the show,
we set up the vocabulary but as you go back to a scene you
don't have to bring all of the scenery back. The audience
knows what you're talking about so we would bring back
just the ironing board and the lamp and then we would bring
back just the TV and the lamp and the phone, whatever was
required for that moment to tell the story, because we had
already introduced what was the Turnblad home.
DAVID ROCKWELL: The ironing board was like the Mother of
Courage. That was like-- she had that with her at all times.
JACK O'BRIEN: But it was moving from a master shot
into a close-up and once we had established that
vocabulary we had the luxury, because we'd made
the statement we could be selective.
PATRICK PACHECO: Has those shortcuts with the audience
evolved as the years have gone on where you can all...
JACK O'BRIEN: We're all in a very interesting, fluid
situation which is highly influenced first by the
development of film and film techniques and now, of course,
by the internet. I'm constantly, when I'm asked to do speeches
about this I talk a lot about Shakespeare because I've had
a lot of experience with it. For instance, talking about a
soliloquy, a soliloquy in Shakespeare's time was an actor
standing on stage and making a noise like the Metropolitan
Opera. They'd never heard language like that and they just
stood, it's basically spoken thought or he's speaking to
the audience, whatever choice it is, but there's no action
required. I keep saying to people go home, turn on a
network show and tap a pencil, turn the volume down, tap a
pencil every time the image changes, which means that
the ocular nerve is being *** and that's candy.
The ear, which is the conduit to the brain, is lagging behind.
So we have had to learn, all of us, new techniques for how
to make the stage which is basically static into something
that seems to be moving because people can no longer
listen unless you're constantly changing the venue.
And now internet even more than that with people playing
games on their phones and texting and all this other
stuff. It's changed. We're constantly learning new
techniques that have to be appropriated into what we do.
PATRICK PACHECO: David, how has that-- what Jack just
referred to-- affected your visual palette and can you
apply that to what you may have done on Catch Me if You Can,
which was very cinematic? In fact, all the works that you've
done I think are based on films as well.
DAVID ROCKWELL: Well, I think the one other factor I would
add to that is theater is live and communal. So there is that
additional beat where the TV doesn't talk back to you and
the internet. Although, being the father of a 13 year old boy
and an 11 year old girl, they do a lot of gaming that is social
and communal. But I think in the theater now there is less
patience for-- and frankly both of you had no patience for it
on Hairspray when we did Hairspray. None of us were
interested in bringing in a curtain and changing the set.
That transition that says we're going to do this and we're
going to take our time and then we're going to bring up a
new world. Those worlds had to weave from one to the other.
JERRY MITCHELL: Also, that doesn't happen in the writing.
The old musicals they used to close the curtain and they'd
do the in one number while the scenery was being changed.
That's not the way shows are written anymore. They are
written from one big scene to the next big scene to the
next big scene to the next big scene. So you have to
discover the vocabulary in your transitions which,
by the way, can make or break a musical if they're
not done right.
DAVID ROCKWELL: So in Catch Me if You Can one example of
that is Man Inside the Clues, which is a song that takes
place in three or four locations. And we talked about
do we change motels? We don't really need to change motels.
You have a TV, you have an element and then there's signs
that we see that come in electrified in different ways
against the bandstand. He actually gets on top of the
bandstand at the end of the number. So there's cinematic
movement without having to have that heavy
bring in a location.
JERRY MITCHELL: Change the sign, don't change the room.
PATRICK PACHECO: In terms of tone and the fact that in
Catch Me If You Can you had both the gritty world and the
realistic world and the magical world, those tones that you
established, how did sets apply to when you were dealing with
the father and the real problems of Frank Abagnale?
Did I pronounce-
JACK O'BRIEN: Abagnale.
PATRICK PACHECO: Abagnale versus the fantasy world that you
were creating?
DAVID ROCKWELL: One of the things we wanted to try
and do was that show, more than most shows, was really about
the music. So the band is part of the architecture of the show
and part of the concept was he was experiencing
this as a TV spectacular. So the challenge became how do you
take away the band when you needed, how do you-- so there's
a big sheer curtain that comes in that really represents
fantasy. But there's also elements of a simple bed and
the bed is something that repeats in different scenes.
As simple as what the end table is, the lamp and the bedding,
it's radically different in the real world than in the fantasy
world. So if you have a repetitive element that you
treat in very different ways, I think the audience gets the
idea that this is what he's trying to get away from and
that's what he's trying to go to.
PATRICK PACHECO: And you handle that in *** Boots as well.
There is the dreary world of the factory and then the
explosively colorful world of Lola.
DAVID ROCKWELL: Romantically dreary. I wouldn't- dreary's not
the word I would use.
JERRY MITCHELL: Yeah, I think it's very...
JACK O'BRIEN: I thought it was stunning.
JERRY MITCHELL: Well, when we started the design, I knew
that I wanted the show, like Hairspray and like all the
shows that Jack and I and David had done either together or
alone, to move quickly and not let-- I hate when the audience
gets bored watching scenery change. I think David hates
that, too. So we always are looking for how do we get
to the scene quickly. I knew I wanted a sense of reality in the
factory workers so I-- and I didn't want any tracks in the
floor because of the *** boots, because I didn't want
anybody getting their foot caught in the track, which left
us no option for automation in the deck. But my real--
I think one of my first questions to David was do you
think we can move everything on the stage by the factory
workers, because I believe it will give them purpose in the
factory. This is the show where you actually can use
them as factory workers moving the stairs, moving the units
because they are actually there doing the work.
DAVID ROCKWELL: There's a kind of romance to the industrial
nature of the show that I think relates to...we were working on
a project outside of Philadelphia in Bethlehem
in the old blast furnaces that used to make the steel and I
think there's a romance to the idea of craftsmanship and
making that inform the factory. One of the things we talked
about is through clear story windows and many other devices--
walls that open and close, in fact platforms that could rotate
and light up and become the proscenium. You would have that
thrill of believing in this place and every part of it is
part of that kind of romantic industrial architecture.
PATRICK PACHECO: And once Lola enters the scene,
you see those changes in the factory, don't you?
JERRY MITCHELL: The center office unit, we call it,
as it turns it becomes the pub, as it turns again a curtain
drops and it becomes the club in London where Lola's
performing and little rivets light up and it opens up and
becomes the background of the boxing ring.
PATRICK PACHECO: You mentioned, David, earlier that Jerry had
taken a model to the beach and then sort of --
what was the model?
DAVID ROCKWELL: We built...
JERRY MITCHELL: It's the whole model, the whole show.
PATRICK PACHECO: The entire show?
JERRY MITCHELL: It was all designed by them, yeah.
DAVID ROCKWELL: It was all designed and each piece--
when you look at that platform, it's two pieces, two visible
stairs, an escape stair that can engage the walls in any
one of those places.
JERRY MITCHELL: All the pieces were designed and I needed
now to sit with it and block the show to make sure I had
enough people to make each move, because all of the moves
on the deck were going to be done by the factory workers.
I spent like two weeks with it. You shipped it out to me.
The salt water slowly warped everything, but it was okay.
PATRICK PACHECO: Was that sensational conveyor belt
number done by that time, choreographed by that time?
Did it inspire that number?
JERRY MITCHELL: The conveyor belt was built. It took us
about six to nine months to create that, yeah. I had the
idea. I asked David to build me one. They built me one.
I fell to the floor about six times.
DAVID ROCKWELL: We looked at available technology
before we built one.
JERRY MITCHELL: I sent it back to the shop.
I said I need bars to choreograph and to make sure
equity will let me put actors on it. It was on a dial so the
speeds were all over the place. I said this has got to be
two speeds: one for the shoes, one for the dance. I had the
drummer in the room. I picked the speed, set it with Stephen
Arenas, picked my two speeds, sent it back to the shop.
JACK O'BRIEN: He's bossy. He's very, very bossy.
JERRY MITCHELL: Then it came back and I said okay
now I need all of these controls on the unit for the actors,
because I'm going to make them be responsible for it.
It will be the best way to do it.
PATRICK PACHECO: We have to-- I'm sorry, go ahead.
JACK O'BRIEN: We could go on all day but I don't think we can.
PATRICK PACHECO: We have to wrap up. I just want to wrap
up by saying you've got future projects together. Just one
thing that you can say about Houdini on the way to Houdini.
JACK O'BRIEN: It's glorious.
PATRICK PACHECO: Anything set related about Houdini?
JACK O'BRIEN: No, we're in the dreaming part right now.
We're beginning to find our vocabulary and we're beginning
to talk to each other about where we could start and
what we think we need. But that's actually interesting
that you bring it up-- next week we have two days together
by ourselves, a luxury we've not afforded ourselves yet because
we just now know it's going to happen that way.
PATRICK PACHECO: Fantastic. A future collaboration for
the two of you?
JERRY MITCHELL: Oh yeah, we're going to do a new restaurant.
A Mexican restaurart, El Paradores.
PATRICK PACHECO: Seriously?
JERRY MITCHELL: With girls in fiesta hats who dance
between the courses.
DAVID ROCKWELL: We've got a couple of things
we're dreaming up.
JACK O'BRIEN: Sounds fantastic. In case anybody's interested,
I'd like to express-- in case they're wondering-- gratitude to
Elsie the Borden Cow, who was underneath this table most
of the time swinging her cowbell. If anyone wants--
thank you Elsie, we're very very good. I just don't want us
not to be able to use that, in case anybody needs it.
PATRICK PACHECO: Well she couldn't possibly upstage
any of you. Thank you so much for joining us.
We want to thank the
Public Theater for hosting this edition of Working in
the Theater. These programs are brought to you through
the Graduate Center of City University of New York and
our friends at CUNY TV. I'm Patrick Pacheco,
thanks for joining us.
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