Macbeth

Scenic Design

Department of Theater Studies
Yale University, 2012

Director: Sam Lasman
Executive Producers: Kate Pitt and Jamie Biondi
Lighting: Zoe LaPalombara
Technical Direction: Jeff Zhu

Mounted as one of the flagship productions in a semester celebrating Shakespeare across Yale’s campus, my set for Macbeth reimagines the Scottish Play in a landscape of American myth and legend. Inspired by the textures of Appalachian farmsteads and Western ghost towns, pillars constructed from reclaimed lumber are organic enough to be trees yet architectural enough to be columns. The set wraps around the edges of the audience to invite them in for an immersive theatrical experience.

Multiplicity

Pillars outline a series of superimposed spaces, which are sequentially activated by the actors and movable set dressings. A line becomes the portico at Inverness; a perspectival ‘V’ becomes the hallway to Duncan’s ill-fated chamber, and a half-ellipse becomes the “oval office” interior of Dunsinane.