Jake’s Women

As many of you know, for the past month or so I have been working as the scenic designer for the Alpha Psi Omega production of Jake’s Women.  It was an interesting project for a few reasons, some of these include it being my first fully-fledged scene design, and the other that our show was running on alternate nights with another show, i.d.

This meant that my set had to not only be able to come down and be put back up night after night, it also had to be built around the set of a completely different show.  On top of that, due to budget concerns and funding issues and such, I had about two weeks to build all of it as well as do all my decorating and such.  So the process was the most exhausting of my life, but also the most rewarding.  I learned so much on this production, and I worked with some of the best people anyone could ask for.

So I assume you want to actually see what I did, right?  Well, first, let me show you the set I had to build around:

As you can see, I had my work cut out for me.  Jake’s Women takes place both in a man’s apartment and his mind, and so I had to completely reinvent the space in order to fit our production.  Here’s what I did:

I decided that the best way to create a radical transformation was to wall in the set.  To really define the space as a set area, rather than something more open.  I created “portals” in the walls through which imaginary characters could enter, so as to distinguish from the real and the imagined.  The walls are meant to be the walls of both the apartment and Jake’s mind, which is why I chose to use a paper treatment that was sort of ripped away to reveal the true walls of the apartment.

Here are some more photographs of the set:

Advertisement