SCENIC DESIGN for
THEATER EMORY in ATLANTA, GA at the EMORY UNIVERSITY
“Can’t I have a decent life?”
WRITTEN BY MARIA IRENE FORNES
DIRECTED BY MARY LYNN OWEN
SET BY JOSH OBERLANDER
LIGHTS AND SOUND BY BRENT GLENN
COSTUMES BY JORDAN CARRIER
Mae, a spirited young woman living in extreme poverty with Lloyd, her simple-minded counterpart, seeks to escape the brutality of her life – the mud – by going to school. When she meets Henry, an older, quasi-educated man, she invites him to join their household, and very soon Henry is a threat to Lloyd and one more tether to Mae, leaving her desperate for escape.
The space was meant to center Mae’s feelings of confinement and isolation; just as she feels trapped in this family cabin with only small glimpses of an outside world full of promise (represented by sunlight filtering in through gaps in the planking), the cabin itself is trapped, an isolated box captured in a hopeless void. Fornes was very specific about the rules and palette of the space, and on top of historical images of the Great Depression America, I also used my own primary research images of textures in Georgia, where I’m from, such as images of red clay seeping up bleached, crackled wood walls, to tie Fornes’ images into the southern imagination.
THEATER EMORY in ATLANTA, GA at the EMORY UNIVERSITY
MUD
“Can’t I have a decent life?”
WRITTEN BY MARIA IRENE FORNES
DIRECTED BY MARY LYNN OWEN
SET BY JOSH OBERLANDER
LIGHTS AND SOUND BY BRENT GLENN
COSTUMES BY JORDAN CARRIER
Mae, a spirited young woman living in extreme poverty with Lloyd, her simple-minded counterpart, seeks to escape the brutality of her life – the mud – by going to school. When she meets Henry, an older, quasi-educated man, she invites him to join their household, and very soon Henry is a threat to Lloyd and one more tether to Mae, leaving her desperate for escape.
The space was meant to center Mae’s feelings of confinement and isolation; just as she feels trapped in this family cabin with only small glimpses of an outside world full of promise (represented by sunlight filtering in through gaps in the planking), the cabin itself is trapped, an isolated box captured in a hopeless void. Fornes was very specific about the rules and palette of the space, and on top of historical images of the Great Depression America, I also used my own primary research images of textures in Georgia, where I’m from, such as images of red clay seeping up bleached, crackled wood walls, to tie Fornes’ images into the southern imagination.
RESEARCH:
