Experience Design and Theatre Combined at Northeastern University? More likely than you’d think!
Victoria Rojo
4/12/20
Capstone Rehearsal and Performance
1. Purpose
In the Spring of 2018 I sat down and looked at the various disciplines of design at Northeastern, in an attempt to find some way to build myself a pseudo-scenic design combined major. I settled on Experience Design, primarily because at the time it was the least defined and most open-ended of the three main disciplines offered. Experiences, theatre, the two seem to naturally go hand in hand. Since that day, I have had countless people ask me what my major means, what’s the point of it, and what even is experience design? In preparing for this capstone, I believe I have finally begun to dip my toe into what the intersection might be. Through in class knowledge, personal research, and my experiences stage managing for Mary Stuart this past spring, I have found that the intersection between experience design and theatrical design manifests itself in actively accounting for the effect of a production on its audience through various design elements.
2. Experience Design
Experience Design is a still-developing, ever-changing field of design, generally focusing on the concept of creating something for people to experience, generally in the hopes to solve a problem. It often manifests itself in utility apps, pop-up experiences, spaces, and products. Experience design focuses around creating something for an audience that solves one of their problems, where the design research will often start with identifying an audience before the problem itself that they plan to solve. The audience group is then researched about their experiences in certain occasions or aspects of life to discover any potential problems within them. Using a combination of surveys, interviews, and cultural probes, the designer attempts to find a solution to the newly discovered problem in order to help the target group. The end product is often an experience, be it an interaction with an item of the experience of an event, and the designer can examine the success of the design through participant takeaways and feedback. “...’experience consists of the ‘takeaway’ impression formed by people’s encounters with products, services, and businesses- a perception produced when humans consolidate sensory information” (McLellan, p. 31). Some experience designers take a more conceptual approach to their designs, where rather than solving a specific problem try to create experiences and spaces for people to use in their own ways. “Maya Lin, the designer of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C., explains, ‘I create places in which to think, without trying to dictate what to think.’” (McLellan, p. 34). Attempting to spark conversation is common ground among various forms of art, and considering experience design as a part of other styles of design can often lead to more invigorating displays. Ruecker states that, “...encouraging people to experience culture from different perspectives is a core value: we seek to enrich the object of study by layer-ing multiple, simultaneous, valid interpretations onto it.” (p. 259) Museums, memorials, even media can all be designed in such a way that doesn’t assume a guaranteed takeaway by the audience, but instead aims to give visitors a space for any kind of conversation at all to be sparked by the experience in question.
Experience design has, over time, divided itself into many subcategories. One of the most personally interesting of these is Exhibition design and general space design. “Recently the concept of performative in architecture has attracted attention as a new approach to spatial organization and interactivity that emphasizes the dialogue between space, body, and time.” (Dernie, p.46) Designers are able to draw concepts from other branches of the art world and bring them into their designs to create experiences that impact and resonate with more and more users, using performance to clearly define concepts, and looking at the way a space’s layout affects the way that a person experiences a space.
3. Theatrical Design
Theatrical design, while also changing in recent times, has a pretty long history with some deep-rooted traditions. For the purpose of this study, I will be focusing on scenic design, although costumes, lights, and sound all play integral parts of a production’s final theatrical design.
When we attend a theatre production, we first encounter the environment- the look and size of a space. Is it large or small, formal or informal? Then, as the presentation begins, we become aware of the performers and the roles they are playing, as well as the story that begins to unfold. (Wilson, p. 199)
The set of a production provides actors with a space to play in, an area to bring the words of their script to life. While many scenic designs closely mimic the world that a playwright alludes to in a play, designs have the freedom to take on any form, after conversations between the director and the designer establish what the production is trying to accomplish.
It is important to understand that a designer does not simply design a set. With the director and the rest of the production team, the designer devises a production... Think of the work as designing theatrical moments, not scenery… approaching your work in this way will help you design things from a text and performer-driven perspective and not begin by designing a picture that the actors merely inhabit.” (Klingelhoefer, p. 41).
Klingelhoefer makes an important distinction in that a set design shouldn’t just be a decorated room for characters to live in, but a full world that actors can play in. A text is a jumping off point, meant to be explored and interpreted by whomever puts on the production. I really like the notion that the designer is meant to design moments rather than scenery, as it implies designing for interactions and use by the actors rather than focusing on solely your immediate vision and then just hoping the actors can play within it.
Another quintessential aspect of theatrical design to consider? The audience. “We may not realize it, but when we attend the theatre, we, as spectators, are essential to the experience. To be complete, each one of the performing arts… requires an audience.” (Wilson, p. 4) Very rarely is the audience to move around during a production, and so they need somewhere to sit. With black boxes and found spaces rising in popularity, seating arrangements are becoming more and more flexible, resulting in seating configuration needing to be one of the first choices made by a scenic artist. From there, the play spaces can be defined.
The stage, regardless of its configuration, functions as an optical focal point, and creates the impression we are looking through this lens into a boundless space beyond. In fact, for most spectators it is the apprehension of space that may be the most profound and powerful experience of live theatre although, admittedly, it is one that is most often felt subconsciously. (Klingelhoefer, p.107).
To those uninvolved with theatre, the first image that comes to mind for an audience configuration is a proscenium theatre. Generally, the entire focus is on the stage there, and a production is able to stage as realistically as it wants while the audience observes through a single view. However, with these flexible spaces, scenic artists are able to use the audience as a part of the stage vision, either as a spectator backdrop, or as a tool to break down the realism of a production and abstract the concepts a little more.
Sometimes a designer goes beyond scenery and special effects to design an entire theatre space, rearranging the seating for spectators and determining the relationship of the stage area to the audience… In this case, the designer considers the size and shape of the space, the texture and nature of the building materials, the atmosphere of the space, and the needs of the play itself. (Klingelhoefer, p. 218)
Scenic designers, depending on the space they are designing in, will have the freedom to configure every aspect of their design. Often, this leads to more interesting designs, as they bring the audience closer to the production and make them feel more immersed in the play. In embracing abstract set design, the possibilities of design interpretation become endless. “It takes very little to give specificity to space. Two verticals become a door when used as such...Objects of any kind can divide a space” (Klingelhoefer, p. 109). Like before, one of the beautiful things about the theatre is that spaces are not literal. A cube on stage can become anything the actors make it, and anything the audience imagines for it. It gives the text more freedom to be expressed through direction of the production.
So, what does the scenic design process actually look like? First, “Director and designer meet for a preliminary conference to exchange ideas about scene designs and a design concept. During these discussions, they will develop and discuss questions of style, a visual concept for the production, and the needs of the performers.” (Wilson, p. 214). Janie Howland, a professional scenic designer based in Boston, shares that these are some of the first questions she tries to ask every director at her first design meetings. “What do you think the play is about? Whats the most important to you? How do you imagine it presented? Any artist comes to mind or other visual research?” (Howland) After deciding on a general plan and direction, the designer will come in with visual research to get feedback on some ideas and further refine the direction they are meant to go in. After this come preliminary ground plans, which are refined a few times before the final draft. Currently, the majority of professional scenic projects are drafted and then modeled digitally.
How can a design be deemed successful? Jeffrey Petersen, another Boston based scenic artist, shares. “The true measure [of successful theatrical design] is whether or not it serves the play.” (Petersen) Does the design match the tone of the production? Does it help create an experience that sparks the same kinds of questions the Director is asking? Can the actors effectively use the playspace to bring their text to life?
4. Overlap
So, where do the two overlap? What is the intersection between the experience and theatrical design disciplines? The most constant intersection between experience and theatrical design is the importance of the audience.
In theatre, the actors prepare their production to the text and their interpretation. The audience then comes in and affects the actors, beginning the connection cycle in that way. “It doesn’t just mean that we are in the personal presence of performers… Our presence, the way we respond, flows back to the performer and alters what he does. We are contenders, making the play and the evening and the emotion together. We are playmates, building a structure.” (Wilson, p. 9). Wilson makes an extremely important point here about the interactions between audience and performer in the theatre. Because a performance cannot exist without some sort of audience, the actors’ performances are altered by the reactions of those in the room. It is not as strong of a connection in traditional large proscenium theatres, where the audience can feel worlds away, but in designs with more eclectic seating arrangements and just generally a closer, more involved audience, the cycle of effect between the performers and audience gains strength. This consideration of the audience is a key point in the intersection between experience design and theatre. In Performative Experience Design, Jocelyn Spence writes,
“... ‘performance’ is a work in everyday life as well as on stage, and ‘theatricality’ can serve to amplify the sense of connection between performer and spectator just as much as it can signal a lack of authenticity. Kitchen Show engaged with its audiences intellectually, emotionally, and aesthetically because of the combination of the everyday and the theatrical, rooted in Baker’s tone and manner- in her own home.” (Spence, p. 50).
Spence makes connections between performance and experience designs, although her end goal is to apply the concepts to Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and digital design processes. However; the concepts presented and explored still apply to physical theatrical design, and examine ways to make theatre more engaging for the audience. Spence uses Bobby Baker’s Kitchen Show as a case study. The performance was one of five pieces of work created and performed by Baker between 1991 and 2001 that formed Daily Life. Kitchen show was a 70-minute production in Baker’s own North London kitchen, where audiences of up to 25 were invited to witness. The show was a part of the London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT), and featured 13 actions taken from everyday life such as opening a new tub of margarine or making tea. Each of the actions was marked in a way, with applied lipstick, a bandage wrapped around a finger, some noticeable way so that the final action could include displaying each of the marks to the audience while standing on a cake placed on a coffee table. The final image is shocking to the audience, after having seen a slow build of so many common and relatable tasks. Autobiographical productions in themselves tend to be engaging to audiences because of their natural and relatable natures. Audience members tend to be able to really see themselves in the place of the performer, and then feel the need to fully realize and unpack what the performer was attempting to tell the audience through the piece. From a design perspective, one of the things that made Kitchen Show so engaging was that the audience was inserted into a completely realistic and common looking home scenario. However, theatrical moments and exaggerated details were thrown in throughout the production, breaking the audience’s comfort in the reality and forcing them to engage more and more.
In experience design, the audience is the group in stasis, and the interruption is caused by the experience, whether it be a performance, an installation, or any other sort of interactive experience. The job of the experience designer is to research and know the audience well enough that they can create and then present an experience that will affect them in some way. Experience designers fully understand that, “...individuals pay attention to different parts of a performance in different ways, attach significance to different elements, associate based on personal memories and attitudes, etc.” (Spence, p.29). They can use this concept to inform decisions made about experiences that affect a particular target group. The audience is then the primary affected group, which is a slightly different focus to the theatre. If scenic design can take this approach into consideration, and analyze the audience in the early stages of design, it could potentially create designs that are even more impactful to the audience, guaranteeing that some sort of conversation comes out of the production.
For clarity’s sake, in experience design there is a clear linear role for the audience whose problem the designer attempts to solve. The audience is the constant that a designer researches and finds a solution for. In theatrical design, however, the production is the constant, and once the variable audience is added into the equation the production is affected and the performances may vary slightly each night.
A clear study in the way that taking an entire production space’s design into consideration can affect the overall theatre experience is the Park Avenue Armory. Built in 1861 as both a military facility and a social hall, the Armory is really a space like no other. Productions at the armory have a 55,000 foot drill hall to transform into the theatre of their choosing, and with the prestigious, high quality productions it produces there are very few budgetary limitations. Personally, I have had the opportunity to see two shows at the Armory, Macbeth and Yerma.
Although the production originated in a cathedral at the Manchester Arts Festival, Kenneth Branagh’s Macbeth was translated into the vast drill hall of the Armory seamlessly. The Armory’s production of Macbeth took the set designed by Christopher Oram (other credits include Frozen on Broadway, Evita on and off Broadway, and various works with the Kenneth Branagh Theatre Company.) and expanded it from a small cathedral setting into an entire world occupying the entire building. Upon entrance to the building itself audience members were transported away from the bustling streets of New York City. Depending on ticket locations, guests were given a wristband with a clan name on it, and encouraged to explore the front rooms and galleries, which were decked out in clan tartans. Once house doors open a completely new world was uncovered, as guests were led down a dirt path in a dark, boggy atmosphere to their assigned sections. The risers were properly wood clad, keeping every detail within the world of the play. Once seated, the scenic design itself was phenomenal, a dirt alleyway with an altar at one end and three stone pillars at the other. The show began with the battle and rain came down from the drill hall ceiling, essentially turning the dirt to mud and giving the actors a new obstacle to play with.
Christopher’s design engaged the audience from the moment they entered the armory, and led to a memorable experience from their end. I can still clearly remember the feel of the environment despite the performance having been in the summer of 2014. By using immersive details the audience had no choice but to be engaged no matter where they looked. In the theatrical perspective, the design of the actual playspace gave the performers an incredible playground in which to explore Macbeth. From the rain that splashed onto the first few rows of audience, immediately connecting them to the playspace and unifying the entire room to a mud pit and climbable stone structures, the actors were able to give the performances their all. The energy that they gave, combined with the energy of such an engaged audience led to an entire incredible system of engagement within the drill hall.
Another memorable production in the Armory? The Spring 2018 production of Yerma. Critically acclaimed as one of Billie Piper’s career- defining performances, Lizzie Clachan originally designed Yerma to be performed in the Old Vic theatre in London. While the Old Vic does have flexible seating arrangements, similar to the possibilities of the Armory, it still does have house sizing restrictions, leading to a supersizing for its USA debut. The Yerma set consisted of a large platform enclosed on all sides in glass, with hidden doors at either end. The audience was seated in an alley configuration much like the Macbeth one, however the wooden risers were traded for sleek, modern black risers with black seats. Through the glass box, depending on the lighting, the audience on the other side was either visible or hidden, leading to some very interesting decisions to give Billie a visible audience or not. While the box did not make many drastic changes inside, there was a point where the set changed from an indoor room to an outdoor garden, but the transition was seamless. For this production, the Armory itself was the pre-show experience. Exploring the front rooms of the armory led simply to its usual beautiful reception rooms, preparing the audience to be very real observers to the production they were about to witness. I personally was incredibly captivated by the set design, and found it to be memorable despite it not having been an entire experience from the very beginning. I enjoyed getting to see the other side of the audience settling in as I waited for the performance to begin from my seat, and consequently was intrigued the entire performance by the way that the set made me feel like I was observing Billie almost like a scientist. The performance was able to feel incredibly powerful and connected while distant and clinical at the same time, and led to a pretty constant engagement for the audience. I am not sure if the cast was able to see the audience from inside their box, as we were dark and they were generally light whenever they were onstage, which led to some of the feeling of disconnect.
Both of the Armory productions serve as prime examples in the way that productions can seek to engage their audiences in original and different ways. They demonstrate one of the most fundamental concepts of experience design, which is that there is no sure formula for a successful design. It is all knowing what details may engage your audience and playing around them to create something unique for each production, be it different shows in the same space or different spaces and concepts for one show.
5. Mary Stuart
The practical portion of this Capstone was stage managing for the Northeastern University Theatre Department’s production of Mary Stuart. The show details the relationship of Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I, during Mary’s final days pre-beheading. Through confrontations, poor judgement, and miscommunications, the story unfolds, and the production was able to strike a chord with its audience and bring to light the themes that still apply today.
The layout design for Mary Stuart, combined with the precise orchestration of the production led it to be an immersive experience from the moment audience members walked through the entrance doors. The design centered around a large angled platform, immediately drawing the attention of the audience. To add, they were seated on all four sides of the auditorium, forcing them to focus on the center of the room no matter where they sat. Audience members sitting on one side could also see me sitting on a platform to call the show, which further pushed the idea that this show wasn’t meant to be a hyperrealistic telling of Mary’s story, but rather a production highlighting important concepts and raising discussions about the themes that apply both in Schiller’s times and in the modern day.
In designing the production, Antonio (Director) brought forward the idea of creating an overall Experience rather than just a play from the very beginning. He asked me to work with Jeffrey Petersen to find ways to transform the space into more than just a traditional set. After reflecting with Jeffrey about the importance of audience inclusion in general productions, he stated,
It’s so important! This makes me wish I knew more about UX design. How an audience receives an artwork is one of the most important things. From when the audience arrives, you can work designs and figure out what things you want to kind of keep in your pocket. In MS it was important to include the audience from the very beginning. Especially in a space like the studio, it’s basically one of the first things to focus on, where and how you want your audience situated. (Petersen)
I hadn’t quite been expecting to actually have to assist with the design work of the show, especially since I hadn’t fully delved into Experience Design yet. To be honest, the first few ideas I contributed were gut reactions before I even knew what I was talking about. I immediately decided to read about exhibition and space design, and upon first ever search landed on this article, “Designing an exhibition: These 5 tips should be your mantra” from MuseumNext. There are two main ideas I took away from that article, 3. You’re creating an experience. Not a Content Grid and 5. Yes, there is such a thing as way too much content. I took these into consideration when bringing in my next round of feedback for Jeffery. In the former, we looked into ways to make the entire space more cohesive, and extended the playspace into the audience itself/ The actors had space to walk directly up to or past the audience, even sometimes disappearing into the shadows until it came time for them to speak. In the latter, the space was very minimally decorated aside from the central platform and chandelier. There was conversation about masking the entrance to make it more thematic, but with some enthusiasm from Antonio the decision to leave all of the space’s storage and mechanics visible was made.
Observing from a purely theatrical standpoint, the set was still excellently designed. As Jeffrey stated in is interview, “The true measure is whether or not it serves the play. With MS, we were trying to bring the audience into the play.” Antonio's main goal and wish was to integrate the audience into the production and make them a part of the court, And Jeffrey’s design did just that. In abstracting the concepts in the play and breaking from realistic tradition, he had the freedom to truly create a play space and not just a beautiful image for the actors to try and act around. The counter-rake in the platform allowed the actors to discover for themselves the power dynamics of the stage and how to use them to their advantage, such as many moments when Elizabeth needed to assert her dominance in a situation. The platform itself served as Elizabeth’s stage, requiring an invitation to walk onto, which often forced the actors to figure out how to attempt to earn their invitation or even argue from the common lands around the edges, aisles, and audiences. It created an opportunity for dynamic staging, and integrating the audience into the playspace forced them to become a part of the story and notice the current correlations with the play’s theme.
The set design also lent itself to interesting opportunities to play with lighting and the creation of new architecture through the lights themselves. Though there were no moving set pieces, the lights were able to show when locations changed from inside the court, to Fotheringhay Castle, to the outdoors. Arches would appear and disappear, outside light would shine, and the underside of the stage would develop an intense glow to mimic the intensity of certain scenes.
The experience design and traditional theatrical design elements came together to form a truly unique experience for the spectators who came to experience the show. From the moment audience members entered the auditorium, they were already a part of the experience of the show. Their close proximity to the platform, combined with seeing other audience members seated all around the performance space, led to an immediate air of inclusion in the production. Next, with exactly 3 minutes before the start of the show, a select few cast members were released to mingle out in the public’s eye, circling the platform, making notes about the audience, and preparing the house for the experience to come. The moment Erin stepped on stage to begin the preshow announcement, the entire house’s attention was already on her, waiting to see where the night would lead. Then, the court’s entrance through the main doors neutralized the entire room and solidified that every inch of the studio theatre was an active playspace.
The preparation that we had put into the production beforehand, thinking about the audiences that we would have in the theatre, how to integrate them, and then encouraging the cast to not only react to the house’s energy but also not be afraid of being very close to the front row of the audience all worked together to create a total experience for the audience members who came to see Mary Stuart.
Now, one of the most useful gauges of the success of a design- both in experience design and theatrical design- is public feedback. In Experience design, a concept will be reviewed by other members of a firm for feedback, then often sent to trial groups, and tweaked over the course of many rounds before its final form is released as an experience to the general public. It undergoes its feedback stages during the creation process, leading to a successful final project. In theatre, feedback generally comes either in the form of a review or a talkback, both of which occur after a performance is presented to the public. Is there a way to bring in the iterative nature of experience design to the scenic design world?
Production design in the professional world seems to be kept a golden secret from all but the production’s company. Everyone involved with the process is a seasoned theatre professional, so how can a production ensure that it is captivating and engaging for the common theatre enthusiast? In the academic setting, it is not difficult to get feedback from the rest of the department before finalizing a production, though you may run into similar issues with a lack of diversity in the audience. One solution? Rethink the current subscription model. While theatres across the world already offer subscription, often the perks included are limited to choosing early tickets and meeting artists at performances. A subscription could additionally come with perks like seeing the design of a production early and giving feedback to improve it, a win-win for all. Subscribers get to feel involved with the process and give their opinions to professional designers, while the company can create a more loyal subscribership and get public feedback before risking an entire production.
6. Conclusion
What did I learn about my major over this last semester? I learned that while the particular Experience Design curriculum at Northeastern isn’t exactly related to what I want to do, as they focus on digital designs and research design, there are parts of Experience design that I will surely be using in my future scenic designs. I hope that theatrical designers everywhere try to not only just consider the audience when designing a show, but actively thinking about who is coming to watch the show, and how to design a production that will get them engaged throughout the entire experience so that they come out of the audience with questions that help foster discussions about the themes in the incredible texts that are being written in the theatre industry.
Bibliography
Dernie, David. 2006. Exhibition Design. First ed. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Howland, Janie. Interview by Victoria Rojo. Phone. Boston, March 2020.
Klingelhoefer, Robert. 2017. The Craft and Art of Scenic Design: Strategies, Concepts, and Resources. New York, NY: Routledge.
McLellan, Hilary. 2002. "Staging Experiences: A Proposed Framework for Designing Learning Experiences." Educational Technology 42 (6): 30-37.
Petersen, Jeffery. Interview by Victoria Rojo. FaceTime. Boston, March 2020.
RUECKER, STAN and JENNIFER ROBERTS-SMITH. 2017. "Experience Design for the Humanities:; Activating Multiple Interpretations." In Making Things and Drawing Boundaries, edited by Jentery Sayers, 259-270: University of Minnesota Press.
Spence, Jocelyn. 2016. Performative Experience Design. Springer Series on Cultural Computing. Switzerland: Springer International Publishing.
Wilson, Edwin. 2015. The Theatre Experience. 13th ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.