One of the first things that graduate student Bethanie Wampol considered in designing the set for House for Sale, a stage adaptation of an essay by well-known novelist Jonathan Franzen, was whether to recreate the author’s childhood home in Missouri. In the essay, Franzen recounts the experience of returning to it after his mother’s death to prepare the house for sale.
After much discussion with the director, Daniel Fish, and the show’s other designers, the thinking became how to address “what we all feel when we grieve the loss of a parent or a loved one,” Wampol says, “and how a lot of the emotions and responses that the character in the essay experiences are really universal.” The inspiration for the environment onstage, then, became a funeral home.
Produced at the Victoria J. Mastrobuono Theater at Rutgers–New Brunswick during the fall, House for Sale was Wampol’s first main stage production at the Mason Gross School of the Arts, where she is pursuing a master of fine arts in set design. Her mentor, design program director R. Michael Miller, says the beauty of the funeral home idea is that it lets the audience know, up front, that the play is about grieving, prompting an instant emotional reaction. “The set gives people a place to start,” Miller says. “Then the story, and the language, takes us to another place.”
Set design is a visual art, but unlike the work of a painter or sculptor, it serves the vision of a director and is shaped by a group of artists. Well before the first rehearsal, the director meets with the chief designers (set, lighting, sound, and costume), as well as the stage manager, and, in the case of a Mason Gross production, Miller attends as faculty adviser. The director talks about the play, the group discusses ideas, the designers retreat to sketch visual responses, and the team reconvenes repeatedly to develop concepts. Three-dimensional models, technical drawings, and, ultimately, a crew of 30 to 50 people brings the designs to life.
Although Wampol’s foray into creative expression began with the fine art classes she took as a child, she says that theatrical design appealed to her more because of this collective process. “I think the ability to work together as a team strengthens what you can tell visually,” she says, “because you’re bringing everybody’s experiences to the table.”
Miller’s role as a mentor tends to be more active in a classroom setting, in which he teaches various professional techniques. One of these techniques is to start by thinking of the play from the physical point of view and making a list of what Miller calls “problems to solve.” Does the script call for a front door, a chair, a staircase? Once the physical analysis is complete, a designer can do more of a philosophical analysis—what is the essence of the play? “Maybe you don’t absolutely need a staircase when you actually look at what the play is about and what the actors have to do,” he says.
In a design meeting for a production, Miller is a quiet observer, speaking only when it will help to facilitate the discussion between the director and the designers. “The designers and the director have to build up a trustful, truthful relationship so that they’re a solid team,” Miller says. “And if you have other people, no matter how well intentioned, getting in the way of that, it’s detrimental to the process.”
After the meeting, though, Miller is the person whom Wampol will approach with her ideas before presenting them to the director. “I take it to Michael and say, this is what I think Daniel said and this is how I’m responding,” Wampol says. “Does this make sense to you? Am I communicating my train of thought? Is there any way I could make a stronger choice?”
One of Wampol’s biggest strengths, Miller says, is the amount of work she does early in the process “so we can take it apart, throw it away, and refine it and make it better. The fact is that every design grows by being tested over and over again.”
In the sense of being tested, and of learning from her colleagues, Wampol will always be a student, and that is what thrills her most. “Any time I do a play, whether I’ve done the play six times or never, each process, because I’m working with a different group of people, will be different,” she says. “Just the simple variety of exposures and things we get to talk about is really exciting.”
— Lara De Meo RC’97