August 12, 2024 • 15 mins
Join Tony Award-winning scenic designer, Derek McLane, and DMPA President and CEO Jeff Chelesvig as they discuss McLane’s incredible career and his approach to design for Moulin Rouge! the Musical.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Thank you for joining us for this episode of DMPA Conversations.
I'm Jeff Chelswig, President and CEO of Des Moines Performing Arts.
Today I'm joined by Tony Award winner Derek McLain, scenic
designer for Moulin Rouge, the musical, part of our Willis
Broadway series. These podcasts are designed to give you an
insider's perspective of the fantastic performances headed to DMPA stages.
(00:26):
Thank you again for joining us, and now here's my
conversation with Derek McLain. So, Derek, thanks so much for
joining me today. We're talking about Mulan Rouge, and before
we start, I want to mention that this will be
(00:47):
the second show in a row that you have been
the scene designer for. Our last Broadway show here at
the Civic Center was MJ the Musical, which was really
well received by our audiences. I know that they're going
to be really through to see the production of Mulin Rouge,
which is our.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Next That's wonderful. I'm honored to be back there.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
That's great. Well, congratulations on winning the Tony Award for
seeing design for Moulin Rouge. Let me start by asking
about your background as a scenic designer. How did you
get started?
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Well, I had done some house construction as a summer
job prior to going to college, and I spent the
whole summer right before starting college building a house in
Vermont with a contractor. I was a bit of a
grunt carpenter. I mostly carried sheets of plywood, but I
knew a little bit about carpentry. And so when I
(01:44):
was a freshman in college, somebody asked me to build
a set because I'd heard I knew how to swing
a hammer, and so I did. And you know, I
never really even heard of set design prior to that,
never contemplated as a thing, and I suddenly thought, wow,
design this would be really really cool. And so I
was lucky in a way that there was no theater
(02:05):
program when I was in college, so therefore there was
nobody to stop me or tell me no, I couldn't
design sets. There's lots of shows. There was no sort
of official department or anything, and so you know, when
I said I wanted to design sets for some college shows,
everybody was like, Okay, sure, go ahead. So I did.
And the first thing I designed was a production of
(02:27):
Guys and dolls that we did in the dining room.
I was terribly proud of it. And now I cringe
when I think about what I did, but I I
fell in love with it instantly, and I and then
I was lucky enough to meet Michael Urigan, who was
designing some shows for the American Repertory Theater, and I
kind of threw myself at his mercy and said, I
(02:48):
want to be your assistant. So, you know, I assisted
him on a few things and he asked me, you
know what I wanted to do. I said, I wanted
to become a set to, and he simply, you should
probably be a Yale drama school, where he was on
the faculty. So he helped me apply and helped me
get in, and that's what I ended up doing. And
then when I finished Yale, I moved to New York
(03:09):
and started assisting you know, every designer I could I
could find, which I did for probably five years. I
learned a huge amount from the various people I assisted.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
I want to go to before we start talking about
Mulan Ruth to ask you about how you approach in general.
I mean, you're you're working all the time, You're working
on theater. You also do things for television, do you
do you do stuff for film as well?
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Or not very much? A little bit, tiny bit of film,
but mostly I did do stuff for television, done a
lot of award shows, and then you know, did a
bunch of those big television musicals. Oh, yes, right, I did.
I did design the Oscars for six years. Last year,
I designed the SAG Awards. I said, designed the met
Gala last year, which was wow, an interesting departure. But
(03:57):
mostly most of my work is for Broadway. That's what
I love to do.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Well. Then let's segue to willon Rouge. So Willin Rouge
based on the two thousand and one Baz Luhmann film,
which is one of my favorites. I just I love
that film for.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
A lot of Yeah too.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Tell us about what was the process that you went through,
because you're kind of adapting something that's very known and
beloved for the stage.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Yeah, for sure. And I was intimidated by that in
some ways because it is beloved. The movie is beloved,
rightly beloved, and it's also I would say particularly beloved
by designers. Like design geeks sort of go crazy over
the movie Bluey Rouge and so I kind of knew,
like it was a real obligation designing this that you know,
I had something to live up to and something that
(04:41):
I knew would be scrutinized by all those design geeks,
and so I was keenly aware of that. You know.
Alex stibber Is the director, and I spent a lot
of time talking about what it is we wanted to
capture from the movie and what it is we wanted
to be different. And John Logan, the book writer, was
also very much a part of that. And there were
many things about the movie that were not possible to
do on stage. Of course, you know, one of the
(05:02):
one of the sort of hallmarks in that movie of
those crazy panning shots where the camera will shoot you know,
through a room and out of window and over the
streets of Paris and back into another room. You know,
so some of those things you can't literally do on stage.
But our takeaway as we analyzed it was that, you know,
there was an incredible sense of anarchy in the movie,
and that's what's sort of exciting and enjoyous about it,
(05:23):
and also really disparate styles. You know, like the whole
movie has a feeling of a bit of a mash
up in terms of the way music is used and
period Paris is creative. Period Paris is like not exactly
period in the movie. It's like gorgeous, but it's it's
it's you know, it's definitely its own invention. So we
(05:44):
sort of set out to think about, like, one of
the things that we can do we can successfully do
on stage, we'll capture some of that. You know. One
of those things was, you know, making it as environmental
as we could, really making the audience feel like they
were going into the club from the moment that they
that they walk into to the theater. So that was
that was one thing. Another thing was, you know, although
(06:04):
we can't actually do jump cuts, we can make it
feel like that by basically I made as much of
the set electrified as I possibly could. Like there's really
almost nothing on the set that doesn't light up somewhere,
so it's a little bit like like a jukebox or
a pinball machine. And what that does is, you know,
you can ever move scenery fast enough to sort of
(06:25):
create the energy of that movie, but you can move
the lighting and you know, which obviously moves at the
speed of light, and so that's that's what we do.
We you know, it's sort of almost violent lighting changes
that happened within the show, especially in that opening number,
which is so completely you know, insane and over the
top and has featured so many incredible songs that are
(06:46):
you know, really are literally a mash up in an
exciting way. Another thing that we did to try to
capture the energy of the movie was normally on most shows,
when I designed a show, I set out to be
stylistically coherent, you know, I come up to try to
up with a style that is consistent throughout the entire show,
and with Will my rouge, I really did the opposite,
Like I really deliberately made one scene in one style
(07:10):
and then the next scene in a completely different style,
so that there are things in the show that feel
very sort of modern and contemporary and graphic, and then
other things that feel like you're watching the nineteenth century opera.
Those juxtapositions make the scene changes feel more surprising and
sort of catch you off guard a little bit some nimes,
because you don't know what's coming. You don't know you know,
(07:31):
you have you go from one set to another and
you go, wait, where did this come from? This is
like a whole different style here, and which I think
is consistent with the spirit of the movie.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Right, And the windmill from that figures in a lot, right, it.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Does figure in a lot. I mean, you know, so
early on in the process, the producers sent me to
Paris to other than Mula Rouge, which I did, and
I had a wonderful time. I sat with the one
of the owners of the Mula Rouge, watched the show.
But one of the things, you know, obviously that's just
unmissible is that windmill, and so I thought that would
be just so much fun to have in the theater
(08:07):
when the audience comes in, I mean, completely unnecessary, but fun.
You know. Then I needed something to balance it. One
of the things that was the figures in that story
is the elephant that the team lives in at a
plot point, so you know. But what's interesting was the
elephant actually really existed in real mil Rouge. So windmills
and elephants both figure into the design, both big and small.
(08:31):
I mean, there's lots of different If you look carefully,
you will find many iterations of both of those things
in the set of Some of them you really have
to look for.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
I'll look forward to seeing that because I've seen it
on Broadway, haven't seen the tour. I'm curious about the
challenge of the tour some of the things.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Yeah, I mean, we're not able to do everything you
know on the tour that we do on Broadway that
the Broadway set took I think two months to load in,
And of course we have a dad basically for a tour,
so it does require a different kind of economy. But
I think we capture a lot of that feeling. I
mean we do. We do light the auditorium in a
(09:11):
way that's suggestive of the club, and you hear this music,
this very eerie, seductive club music when you come in
to the auditorium, and that will be true on the
tour and awesome, and I think that that's part of
what makes you feel like you're sort of there before
the show starts.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Tell us something you mentioned that looking around to see
the elephants, is there something scenic that you would like
people to kind of watch for in this show.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Well, if you get a chance to look upstage of
to lose Letres garrett He's got his set has which
is an act to it has a big skylight in
the back, take a look at what's in the little
skylet miniature skyline back there. I mean, one of the
things I sensed in the movie that I wanted to
try to capture on stage was that the show takes
place very much in a neighborhood. It takes place in
(09:58):
mart and it's not necessarily a huge neighborhood. Like you
get the sense that you know that they were all
kind of lived, kind of close to each other, and
so I wanted to convey that sense. And so I
think if you look out the window at the Garrett,
I think you'll see that. You'll see that Inme to Life, I.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Will definitely look for that. What else can you share
with us about the show?
Speaker 2 (10:16):
You know, one of the sets that we spent a
lot of time in an Actuan is Stine's sort of apartment.
You know. That's so that design is inspired a little
bit by the movie, but also research. I did you
know of Paris in eighteen ninety nine. Paris in eighteen
nine nine was a pretty whack noodle place. There were
a lot of really fascinating art influences going on there.
(10:39):
But one of the things that were really interested in
was the Far East India. And Morocco, and so you
saw all of these influences in interior design, not just
you know, around the Mula Rouge, but throughout Paris. You know,
it's a team plays a kind of high class courtism,
and so I did do research on Courtisan's apartments, you know,
(11:02):
from that era, and a really big theme was this
kind of Eastern exoticism, Moroccan style arches and swagged sorys
and Indian and Chinese fabrics, and so Seteen's apartment definitely
reflects that, you know, and so I think that's sort
of a fun thing.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
And lastly, the music, so much music, and so much music, yeah,
different from a lot of the music is different from
the film is what I remember the most.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Yeah, Well, Alex Timbers and Justin Levine, who is the
music supervisor, wanted to capture some of the music from
the movie. So some of those incredible songs like Roxanne
and of course Lady Marmalade, you know, those things are
all there. But also to make it feel a little
more contemporary, and so it's it's been you know, some
(11:52):
of it's been updated, and so you hear some more
contemporary artists like Ci and Beyonce and you know, they're
all in there. I think I can't remember, but it's
something like seventy two different songs in the show. But
some of them you just hear almost the sniffets of.
I mean, it's part of the thing that you know
we're talking about before. The energy of the show really,
so much of that comes from the music and the
(12:12):
kind of mashup of these music and Justin Levin did
such a brilliant job. It's sort of layering these songs
and creating new songs out of a conglomeration of you know,
three different, three different songs. It was very sophisticated, but
he did. It's you know, it's such a treat to
listen to.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Beforehand, you and I talked about the High School Musical
Theater Awards. We have a lot of high school films,
so we work with for aspiring scenic designers. What kind
of advice would you give.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Them, Well, I would say a couple of things is,
you know, try to work in the theater to make
sure you really like it. It's not an easy place
to work necessarily, it can be very very rewarding. It's
not for everybody. So there's nothing like you know, finding
a way to actually work in a theater to sort
of discover that. I think, if you actually want to
be a design the thing that a lot of young
(13:02):
designers miss is developing their drawing and their art skills.
You know, it's easy to think of set design as
a technical skill, but it's it's really more of an
artistic endeavor than it is technical. You know, you I
don't know how to build the sets that I design.
I don't know how to work out the automation for them.
They're people who are much smarter at those things than me.
(13:24):
But what I'm really responsible for is how does the
show work artistically, which includes how it moves and how
it flows and all those kinds of things. But you know,
what is it? What does it feel like? What does
it look like? And the only way I know how
to do that, And this is really true I think
for other working designers is you just have to keep
drawing it. Drawing is to a designer what writing is
(13:45):
to a writer. You just you work things out with
a pencil. And I start on every single show, include
with a blank piece of paper, and sometimes I have
an idea of what I want to draw, and sometimes
I don't. But even if I don't, I just draw something.
You know, I'll draw the most basic thing. I'll go, okay,
well Seteen has a room. She's got a bedroom, so
I've got to draw her bedroom and then look at
(14:06):
it and say, well that doesn't look very good, But
how do I make it better? And then you just
redraw it. And it's that process of drawing is how
you develop a design. And I think it's very hard
to design something if you can't draw it. I think
if as a young designer, you can, if you can
nail that, you'll have a huge leg up on your competition.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
We appreciate you joining us for this special conversation. The
DMPA Conversations podcast is produced by Andrew Downs. To our
donors and season ticket holders, thank you for providing the
foundation for great performances and educational opportunities at des moin
Performing Arts. Visit DMPA dot org or wherever you get
your podcasts for future conversations like this one. Thank you
(15:00):
for listening.
Thank you for joining us for this episode of DMPA Conversations.
I'm Jeff Chelswig, President and CEO of Des Moines Performing Arts.
Today I'm joined by Tony Award winner Derek McLain, scenic
designer for Moulin Rouge, the musical, part of our Willis
Broadway series. These podcasts are designed to give you an
insider's perspective of the fantastic performances headed to DMPA stages.
(00:26):
Thank you again for joining us, and now here's my
conversation with Derek McLain. So, Derek, thanks so much for
joining me today. We're talking about Mulan Rouge, and before
we start, I want to mention that this will be
(00:47):
the second show in a row that you have been
the scene designer for. Our last Broadway show here at
the Civic Center was MJ the Musical, which was really
well received by our audiences. I know that they're going
to be really through to see the production of Mulin Rouge,
which is our.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Next That's wonderful. I'm honored to be back there.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
That's great. Well, congratulations on winning the Tony Award for
seeing design for Moulin Rouge. Let me start by asking
about your background as a scenic designer. How did you
get started?
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Well, I had done some house construction as a summer
job prior to going to college, and I spent the
whole summer right before starting college building a house in
Vermont with a contractor. I was a bit of a
grunt carpenter. I mostly carried sheets of plywood, but I
knew a little bit about carpentry. And so when I
(01:44):
was a freshman in college, somebody asked me to build
a set because I'd heard I knew how to swing
a hammer, and so I did. And you know, I
never really even heard of set design prior to that,
never contemplated as a thing, and I suddenly thought, wow,
design this would be really really cool. And so I
was lucky in a way that there was no theater
(02:05):
program when I was in college, so therefore there was
nobody to stop me or tell me no, I couldn't
design sets. There's lots of shows. There was no sort
of official department or anything, and so you know, when
I said I wanted to design sets for some college shows,
everybody was like, Okay, sure, go ahead. So I did.
And the first thing I designed was a production of
(02:27):
Guys and dolls that we did in the dining room.
I was terribly proud of it. And now I cringe
when I think about what I did, but I I
fell in love with it instantly, and I and then
I was lucky enough to meet Michael Urigan, who was
designing some shows for the American Repertory Theater, and I
kind of threw myself at his mercy and said, I
(02:48):
want to be your assistant. So, you know, I assisted
him on a few things and he asked me, you
know what I wanted to do. I said, I wanted
to become a set to, and he simply, you should
probably be a Yale drama school, where he was on
the faculty. So he helped me apply and helped me
get in, and that's what I ended up doing. And
then when I finished Yale, I moved to New York
(03:09):
and started assisting you know, every designer I could I
could find, which I did for probably five years. I
learned a huge amount from the various people I assisted.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
I want to go to before we start talking about
Mulan Ruth to ask you about how you approach in general.
I mean, you're you're working all the time, You're working
on theater. You also do things for television, do you
do you do stuff for film as well?
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Or not very much? A little bit, tiny bit of film,
but mostly I did do stuff for television, done a
lot of award shows, and then you know, did a
bunch of those big television musicals. Oh, yes, right, I did.
I did design the Oscars for six years. Last year,
I designed the SAG Awards. I said, designed the met
Gala last year, which was wow, an interesting departure. But
(03:57):
mostly most of my work is for Broadway. That's what
I love to do.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Well. Then let's segue to willon Rouge. So Willin Rouge
based on the two thousand and one Baz Luhmann film,
which is one of my favorites. I just I love
that film for.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
A lot of Yeah too.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Tell us about what was the process that you went through,
because you're kind of adapting something that's very known and
beloved for the stage.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Yeah, for sure. And I was intimidated by that in
some ways because it is beloved. The movie is beloved,
rightly beloved, and it's also I would say particularly beloved
by designers. Like design geeks sort of go crazy over
the movie Bluey Rouge and so I kind of knew,
like it was a real obligation designing this that you know,
I had something to live up to and something that
(04:41):
I knew would be scrutinized by all those design geeks,
and so I was keenly aware of that. You know.
Alex stibber Is the director, and I spent a lot
of time talking about what it is we wanted to
capture from the movie and what it is we wanted
to be different. And John Logan, the book writer, was
also very much a part of that. And there were
many things about the movie that were not possible to
do on stage. Of course, you know, one of the
(05:02):
one of the sort of hallmarks in that movie of
those crazy panning shots where the camera will shoot you know,
through a room and out of window and over the
streets of Paris and back into another room. You know,
so some of those things you can't literally do on stage.
But our takeaway as we analyzed it was that, you know,
there was an incredible sense of anarchy in the movie,
and that's what's sort of exciting and enjoyous about it,
(05:23):
and also really disparate styles. You know, like the whole
movie has a feeling of a bit of a mash
up in terms of the way music is used and
period Paris is creative. Period Paris is like not exactly
period in the movie. It's like gorgeous, but it's it's
it's you know, it's definitely its own invention. So we
(05:44):
sort of set out to think about, like, one of
the things that we can do we can successfully do
on stage, we'll capture some of that. You know. One
of those things was, you know, making it as environmental
as we could, really making the audience feel like they
were going into the club from the moment that they
that they walk into to the theater. So that was
that was one thing. Another thing was, you know, although
(06:04):
we can't actually do jump cuts, we can make it
feel like that by basically I made as much of
the set electrified as I possibly could. Like there's really
almost nothing on the set that doesn't light up somewhere,
so it's a little bit like like a jukebox or
a pinball machine. And what that does is, you know,
you can ever move scenery fast enough to sort of
(06:25):
create the energy of that movie, but you can move
the lighting and you know, which obviously moves at the
speed of light, and so that's that's what we do.
We you know, it's sort of almost violent lighting changes
that happened within the show, especially in that opening number,
which is so completely you know, insane and over the
top and has featured so many incredible songs that are
(06:46):
you know, really are literally a mash up in an
exciting way. Another thing that we did to try to
capture the energy of the movie was normally on most shows,
when I designed a show, I set out to be
stylistically coherent, you know, I come up to try to
up with a style that is consistent throughout the entire show,
and with Will my rouge, I really did the opposite,
Like I really deliberately made one scene in one style
(07:10):
and then the next scene in a completely different style,
so that there are things in the show that feel
very sort of modern and contemporary and graphic, and then
other things that feel like you're watching the nineteenth century opera.
Those juxtapositions make the scene changes feel more surprising and
sort of catch you off guard a little bit some nimes,
because you don't know what's coming. You don't know you know,
(07:31):
you have you go from one set to another and
you go, wait, where did this come from? This is
like a whole different style here, and which I think
is consistent with the spirit of the movie.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Right, And the windmill from that figures in a lot, right, it.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Does figure in a lot. I mean, you know, so
early on in the process, the producers sent me to
Paris to other than Mula Rouge, which I did, and
I had a wonderful time. I sat with the one
of the owners of the Mula Rouge, watched the show.
But one of the things, you know, obviously that's just
unmissible is that windmill, and so I thought that would
be just so much fun to have in the theater
(08:07):
when the audience comes in, I mean, completely unnecessary, but fun.
You know. Then I needed something to balance it. One
of the things that was the figures in that story
is the elephant that the team lives in at a
plot point, so you know. But what's interesting was the
elephant actually really existed in real mil Rouge. So windmills
and elephants both figure into the design, both big and small.
(08:31):
I mean, there's lots of different If you look carefully,
you will find many iterations of both of those things
in the set of Some of them you really have
to look for.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
I'll look forward to seeing that because I've seen it
on Broadway, haven't seen the tour. I'm curious about the
challenge of the tour some of the things.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Yeah, I mean, we're not able to do everything you
know on the tour that we do on Broadway that
the Broadway set took I think two months to load in,
And of course we have a dad basically for a tour,
so it does require a different kind of economy. But
I think we capture a lot of that feeling. I
mean we do. We do light the auditorium in a
(09:11):
way that's suggestive of the club, and you hear this music,
this very eerie, seductive club music when you come in
to the auditorium, and that will be true on the
tour and awesome, and I think that that's part of
what makes you feel like you're sort of there before
the show starts.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Tell us something you mentioned that looking around to see
the elephants, is there something scenic that you would like
people to kind of watch for in this show.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Well, if you get a chance to look upstage of
to lose Letres garrett He's got his set has which
is an act to it has a big skylight in
the back, take a look at what's in the little
skylet miniature skyline back there. I mean, one of the
things I sensed in the movie that I wanted to
try to capture on stage was that the show takes
place very much in a neighborhood. It takes place in
(09:58):
mart and it's not necessarily a huge neighborhood. Like you
get the sense that you know that they were all
kind of lived, kind of close to each other, and
so I wanted to convey that sense. And so I
think if you look out the window at the Garrett,
I think you'll see that. You'll see that Inme to Life, I.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Will definitely look for that. What else can you share
with us about the show?
Speaker 2 (10:16):
You know, one of the sets that we spent a
lot of time in an Actuan is Stine's sort of apartment.
You know. That's so that design is inspired a little
bit by the movie, but also research. I did you
know of Paris in eighteen ninety nine. Paris in eighteen
nine nine was a pretty whack noodle place. There were
a lot of really fascinating art influences going on there.
(10:39):
But one of the things that were really interested in
was the Far East India. And Morocco, and so you
saw all of these influences in interior design, not just
you know, around the Mula Rouge, but throughout Paris. You know,
it's a team plays a kind of high class courtism,
and so I did do research on Courtisan's apartments, you know,
(11:02):
from that era, and a really big theme was this
kind of Eastern exoticism, Moroccan style arches and swagged sorys
and Indian and Chinese fabrics, and so Seteen's apartment definitely
reflects that, you know, and so I think that's sort
of a fun thing.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
And lastly, the music, so much music, and so much music, yeah,
different from a lot of the music is different from
the film is what I remember the most.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Yeah, Well, Alex Timbers and Justin Levine, who is the
music supervisor, wanted to capture some of the music from
the movie. So some of those incredible songs like Roxanne
and of course Lady Marmalade, you know, those things are
all there. But also to make it feel a little
more contemporary, and so it's it's been you know, some
(11:52):
of it's been updated, and so you hear some more
contemporary artists like Ci and Beyonce and you know, they're
all in there. I think I can't remember, but it's
something like seventy two different songs in the show. But
some of them you just hear almost the sniffets of.
I mean, it's part of the thing that you know
we're talking about before. The energy of the show really,
so much of that comes from the music and the
(12:12):
kind of mashup of these music and Justin Levin did
such a brilliant job. It's sort of layering these songs
and creating new songs out of a conglomeration of you know,
three different, three different songs. It was very sophisticated, but
he did. It's you know, it's such a treat to
listen to.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Beforehand, you and I talked about the High School Musical
Theater Awards. We have a lot of high school films,
so we work with for aspiring scenic designers. What kind
of advice would you give.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Them, Well, I would say a couple of things is,
you know, try to work in the theater to make
sure you really like it. It's not an easy place
to work necessarily, it can be very very rewarding. It's
not for everybody. So there's nothing like you know, finding
a way to actually work in a theater to sort
of discover that. I think, if you actually want to
be a design the thing that a lot of young
(13:02):
designers miss is developing their drawing and their art skills.
You know, it's easy to think of set design as
a technical skill, but it's it's really more of an
artistic endeavor than it is technical. You know, you I
don't know how to build the sets that I design.
I don't know how to work out the automation for them.
They're people who are much smarter at those things than me.
(13:24):
But what I'm really responsible for is how does the
show work artistically, which includes how it moves and how
it flows and all those kinds of things. But you know,
what is it? What does it feel like? What does
it look like? And the only way I know how
to do that, And this is really true I think
for other working designers is you just have to keep
drawing it. Drawing is to a designer what writing is
(13:45):
to a writer. You just you work things out with
a pencil. And I start on every single show, include
with a blank piece of paper, and sometimes I have
an idea of what I want to draw, and sometimes
I don't. But even if I don't, I just draw something.
You know, I'll draw the most basic thing. I'll go, okay,
well Seteen has a room. She's got a bedroom, so
I've got to draw her bedroom and then look at
(14:06):
it and say, well that doesn't look very good, But
how do I make it better? And then you just
redraw it. And it's that process of drawing is how
you develop a design. And I think it's very hard
to design something if you can't draw it. I think
if as a young designer, you can, if you can
nail that, you'll have a huge leg up on your competition.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
We appreciate you joining us for this special conversation. The
DMPA Conversations podcast is produced by Andrew Downs. To our
donors and season ticket holders, thank you for providing the
foundation for great performances and educational opportunities at des moin
Performing Arts. Visit DMPA dot org or wherever you get
your podcasts for future conversations like this one. Thank you
(15:00):
for listening.
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