New York Theater: David Rockwell — who has designed the sets for more than 60 theatrical productions, including 27 on Broadway, and has helped create offices, restaurants, nightclubs, playgrounds, and theaters — has now built a book….or staged it. “Drama” (Phaidon, 311 pages, May 2021) presents both his theatrical and architectural designs, reflecting Rockwell’s dual professional practice, and also his long-held personal belief that “there are ideas from the theater that apply to the architecture world, and vice-versa.”
4 comments:
I can surely appreciate a hyper realistic set, but there's something about a set that is so painterly and so story book-like that has a perfect dream like essence that transports you to the world of the play. Of course this doesn't work for everything, it's probably best for musicals or comedies, but they're just so beautiful, it makes me wish the world was like that. Although some of the sets from this article, like the one used in The Normal Heart, are not in this style, it seems like that is what David Rockwell excels at, and for that I have a lot of respect for him. The way he plays with proportion and foreshortening as well, is so fun. It reminds me of Disney World. I'd love to walk around in a set like this, and selfishly destroy the illusion that was so painstakingly crafted for the audience. No matter how many times I see a set of a street in a small town, I will always be astounded by the artistry put into it.
David Rockwell’s work is always so much more than setting the stage. He does not just give it a time and place for the performers and the audience, rather he brings the company and audience to the world of the play. It can be seen clearly in each of the images highlighted in the article even though each image is a vastly different world from the next. This shows how he can create all sorts of worlds. While I am uncertain of the competition when “She Loves Me” won the Tony Award, seeing the artistry here as the set changes from look to look leaves me with no doubt that the design deserved an award. He clearly has a talent across the board from scenic designs to pavilions. There is no doubt with how striking and sad his design for “The Normal Heart” grew to be especially as the play progressed. I will definitely have to look into this book and more of his work.
I have never heard of David Rockwell before but these beautiful pictures made me want to by his book. Not only so that I can look at more amazing set designs but also to learn what such a successful designer deems as the most important principles of designing for theater. The two sets that I particularly loved was the one of a perfume shop and the one with the names of AID deaths on the wall. The ingenuity of the street view turning into the inside of the shop shocked me. My mind was blown. I don’t know if that type of design is common but I thought it worked so flawlessly. The reason I loved the names projected onto the wall is just the powerful simplicity of it. It’s always a mark of a good designer to know when less is more. And there is nothing more powerful that he could has done with the set then using the names of the victims of the disease whose impact was the focus of the play. It reminds the audience of the reality of the story that’s being told, in the lives of thousands of those people.
David Rockwell has such an incredible style and you can really see the personal care that has gone into every end product. The pages showing off these sets in the book at least look really cool. I like how certain details are highlighted and described near the top but the focus is given to the set images to let readers fully observe the whole thing, rather than throwing the set images in between chunks of text or reducing the overall size. According to this article, it seems like a bulk of the writing is dedicated to interviews, so I wonder how much of the overall book is about David Rockwell himself, or if he just uses examples from his work to support what is transcribed from those interviews. Either way, this seems like a very interesting read that provides experience from a lot of different angles, and although the article somewhat criticizes this book, I am left feeling compelled to pick it up.
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