The Set Designer's Process

Allison Campbell, Set Designer

Campbell's definition of a set designer: "To create a space that functions for the play and is beautiful."

"The set, a landscape across which the action unfolds, requires technical considerations such as sightline concerns, space requirements, entrances and exits," Campbell says. Before even sketching the set, Campbell read the play several times and she listened to the New York reading and music of Heartfield. Campbell extensively reviewed the work of Brecht, who not only influences the play in terms of how ideas are communicated, but also is an actual character in the play.

The rest of Campbell's inspiration came from Brecht's contemporaries, Meyerhold, Piscator and Ernst, and furnishings and props from the time periods covered in the play. Campbell's set focuses on wit and Brechtian simplicity and elegance.

Campbell says the "real work of any theater artist is to make each gesture specific to the story being told," which she believes gives the work its aesthetic value. "I am interested in specificity of gesture," Campbell says, "even if the gesture can be read many ways-in fact, that is better."