The Marriage of Figaro
by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Center for Faith and Life
Luther College
Decorah, IA
May 2008
Lighting Design by Nick Brot
Costume Design by Donalee Burns
Directed by Dr. David Judisch

(Photos by Chip Peterson.)

Act 1 - Chair DL and window seat UC.	Act 2 - Dressing table UR and window seat section pulls out and covered to become a bed.
Act 3 - Thrones (far L in picture) added.	Act 4 - Bed unit rolled out again (uncovered) with greenery added for outdoors.

Quick Vectorworks rendering. The "Castle Top" on top R, as well as the railing you can just see through the L archway were both cut for budgetary reasons.	The wide shot without actors. Note the tile roof - not easy to see, but over 300 pieces of split carpet tube. The doorway was from the Salon-de-Embajadores. I fell in love with that design and needed to use it. Too bad those doors will most likely never be used again.
A basic floor plan with heights and measurements.

This show is my first scenic design for an opera, actually. There was a relatively limited budget (not bad, but not grandiose) and the set needed to be transported from Portage, WI to Decorah, IA (When renting a truck, do like I did, pony up a little extra to ensure the 8' ceilings.) so there were some constraints from the get go. (Aren't there always?) I wanted to capture the largess of a older Spanish castle and plaza. I know, the time period might call for more fru-fru, but to me, the action of the story centers on the Count representing an older time (the feudal right to bed the wife on the night of the wedding) as well as his personal lust, so I chose to use an architectural form from an earlier time. Obviously (or maybe not), the use of columns and smoothly round arches and platform elements reflect the sex comedy nature of the show (I like the dual column - competition?). The checkerboard came from the Plaza de España, and I hoped to give those areas a punch, as well as allude to the game that is playing out.

The director (and the budget) really wanted a more unit set, and with simple changes of furniture pieces and what not, it allowed for a change in focus. To be honest, I don't feel like the set fully transported us away from the unit set feeling - given the large statement of the architecture, the furniture elements were relatively small, but they did change the flow and focus of each act, and in the end, the desire on the director's part for fast changes also contributed to that decision.

With color, I wanted to keep to the stucco style of Spanish architecture, as well as leave focus for some brightly colored costumes. Though again, in all honesty, I didn't feel my paint treatment on the walls read as well as they could have and I wouldn't mind another pass at the walls to create some larger scale irregularities in the faux stucco - something I would have done had we built in place and painted it. I never got a chance to put the whole thing together prior to shipping, nor really be able to step back and see the walls. I've been spoiled by painting in place, and working on smaller stages, and large scale painting in the CFL was not permitted. I know, it sounds like I'm making excuses, but just trying to keep a critical eye on my work.

Functionally, there were two large rolling wall units - one each SL and SR, that allowed for a variety of looks in the archways (and changed the traffic patterns on the stage.) UC was a rolling platform that started out as a window seat, then became a bed and later an element for the outdoor Act 4. The window/doorway UC was functional for a "jump out of the window" and the SL rolling wall unit's alcove was also a functional door.

I think that's more than enough - probably more than you wanted to hear. Who reads these sections anyway? I'm guessing maybe theatre students looking for hints for a class project. Remember, Picasso MAY have said, "Good artists borrow, but great artists steal," and Shakespeare may have boosted just about all his plots, but I think you will agree that a Picasso painting or a Shakespeare play are unique, and if they had just copied other people's work in their entirety, we wouldn't know their names today.