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THEATRE Copyright Lighting &Sound America January 2017 http://www.lightingandsoundamerica.com/LSA.html 52 • January 2017 • Lighting &Sound America The SociTahe newl Broadway musical Dear Evan Hansen uses a Network tightly integrated production to render the world of cyberspace By: David Barbour ear Evan Hansen may be the first musical to take place inside the Internet. That’s an exaggeration, bDut only slightly so. Many playwrights have grappled with the implications of life in the digital era—this season, James Graham and Josie Rourke’s Privacy considered the disappearance of secrets in a world shaped by Wikileaks and the NSA’s PRISM program, and Jenny Rachel Weiner’s Kingdom Come dealt with the phenomenon of catfishing—but Dear Evan Hanse n, which opened at Below and opposite: Scenery, projection, and lighting (and also sound) combine to create a sense of the omnipresence of digital Broadway’s Music Box Theatre in December, takes a hard media in the characters’ lives. y h p r u M w e h t t a M : s o t o h P l l A www.lightingandsoundamerica.com • January 2017 • 53 THEATRE look at how contemporary lives, especially those of emo - mother who, with all the best intentions, tries too hard, he tionally vulnerable young people, are affected by the likes leads a friendless existence. He is also luckless; when we of Facebook, Snapchat, and Pinterest. As the recent “fake first meet him, his left arm is in a cast, the result, he says, news” phenomenon has revealed, social media, a space from falling out of a tree during a summer internship at a designed for the expression of emotions and ideas, is also local park. Evan’s therapist has encouraged him to write a place where feelings and facts can be manufactured, letters to himself, spiritual pep talks designed to boost his without regard to reality. self-confidence. One such missive falls into the hands of The title character, played by Ben Platt in a star-making Connor Murphy—like Evan, an adolescent outcast, but one performance, is a painfully shy, socially awkward 17-year- who faces the world in a far more hostile manner; when old; haunted by the father who abandoned him, stifled by a Connor kills himself, Evan’s letter, found among his things, The above image shows the integration of the design’s visual elements. A wagon at stage center suggests a bedroom. Surrounding it are tracking panels and LCD panels loaded with content. Lighting picks out the characters, allowing them to stand out. 54 • January 2017 • Lighting &Sound America is widely misinterpreted. The idea gets around that Connor bled teens, getting Evan to sign on as co-director. When and Evan were, secretly, friends, a fact that causes Evan to Evan’s speech, at a school memorial for Connor, goes viral, be seen in an entirely new light by his peers. He goes along he becomes famous—for a friendship that never was. with the idea, partly to console Connor’s grief-stricken par - Connor’s parents begin treating Evan as a replacement ents and partly to spend more time with their daughter, Zoe, son, Zoe starts to fall for him, and the Connor Murphy long the object of his affection. Project becomes a national sensation, inspiring a flood of At first, the situation seems manageable; Evan imagines posts, tweets, and financial donations—trapping Evan in a it will soon fade away and be forgotten. But along comes false reality he has helped to create. the alarmingly organized Alana, a fellow student, who starts Steven Levenson’s book achieves a remarkable kind of The Connor Murphy Project, with a mission to help trou - double vision, revealing the pain and fear that drive Evan’s actions even as they become more and more reprehensi - ble; the songs, by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul—especially the heart-piercing “Waving Through a Window”—deepen the emotional stakes with each downbeat; we are made to care terribly about Evan as he rockets toward a reckoning that can’t be avoided. And Michael Greif’s production, which was honed at Arena Stage in Washington, DC, and New York’s Second Stage, is tightly integrated, as scenery, lighting, projection, and sound vividly evoke that ephemer - al no-man’s-land of ones and zeroes where so many of us seem to live these days. In “Waving Through a Window” and other numbers, moving scenery and projections— showing posts, videos, and tweets—accompanied by automated lighting and a soundscape of voices offering running commentary, all combine to make a powerful audio-visual representation of our modern digital reality, which becomes Evan’s place of purgatory. Scenery and projection David Korins, the production’s scenic designer, says the depiction of the social network, as described above, “is in the show’s DNA. We wanted to show the Internet in all its good and evil. You can’t be a designer these days and not grapple with how to show iChat or direct messaging or Facebook.” He adds that he was brought to the project by Stacey Mindich, the lead producer, who wanted to ensure that, despite the script’s often chilling depiction of technol - ogy in action, a sense of the warmth of family life—even deeply troubled family life—would be retained. At an early reading of the script, Korins says, “I took the printout with the names of the cast, folded it into sixteenths and did 16 tiny thumbnail sketches of my emotional response to the show. In my first meeting with Michael Greif, I showed him the paper and asked, ‘Do any of these strike a chord with you?’ He pointed to a circular disk with a bed on it and also a kind of wind-chime arrangement of monitors; it was, if you will, a floating tectonic plate of warmth in a huge void with cyber screens flying overhead. Three-and-a-half years later, that’s the show.” Creating the sense of the digital world, Korins says, are nine video monitors that are rigged to fly, along with five tracking panels, covered with scrim, which serve as pro - jection surfaces; one of the tracking panels is also rigged to fly. “Also,” he says, “there’s a top-and-bottom iris all the www.lightingandsoundamerica.com • January 2017 • 55 THEATRE way upstage, which can open to reveal two horizontal In terms of developing content, Nigrini says he and his banks of monitors.” An innovation for Broadway was the team dealt with “an incredible amount of source material decision to wrap the proscenium in Rose Brand Black and how that needed to evolve into a design. There was a Front-190 front-projection screen to provide an additional period of time when a lot of the content had specific projection surface. This was part of a strategy—which details that weren’t germane to the show—for example included raking the stage—of creating additional intimacy storyboards that included my friend’s Facebook posts”— in the Music Box, the largest venue the show has played. which were essentially used as placeholders. “Once we (Images can also be seen on the set’s portals, also cov - knew what we wanted it to look like, then we decided ered with Black Front-190, adding to the sense of the what each image should say, what the photos should be, characters being inside a digital vortex.) and what platform it should allude to. One of the show’s At the same time, in order to represent such locations producers, an executive at Mashable, became my social as Evan and Connor’s bedrooms and the Hansen and media tutor, explaining, for example, the nuances of Murphy families’ living rooms, Korins implemented a pair Snapchat. It’s the same kind of research that actors do. of wagons on curved tracks. “One of them is a turtle,” he We’re putting on stage the social media life of a 17-year- says, “which you see when Zoe is sitting on Connor’s bed, old; I could make it up, and you and I would believe it— which rotates into place and the movement of the projec - but would another 17-year-old?” tions counters that. One wagon stores at stage left and the Another challenge involved creating imagery that allud - other at stage right.” The wagons are refitted with different ed to the “real” locations, without resulting in what the furniture arrangements as needed; in keeping with the designer calls “a projected monstrosity,” meaning a large- show’s aesthetic, the minimum number of pieces is used scale image that would overwhelm the actors. “If you have to suggest each location. Scenery for the production was the right set designer, your job is much easier,” he notes. built by PRG, using the company’s StageCommand “When there isn’t the possibility of making a big, horrible automation system. Additional scenery was built by picture, it removes the expectation from the audience.” Daedalus Productions. Instead, each scene is surrounded by screens on which Korins says that he and Peter Nigrini, the show’s pro - the designer places close-ups of fragments—throw pil - jection designer, began working early on to define the look lows, tree branches, and the like—that help to identify of the social media imagery that is central to the show: each location. “Peter had to figure out how to depict Internet tropes like Speaking of the decision to go with a combination of the Facebook moment, the Twitter moment, and the projection screens and video monitors, Nigrini says, “The Kickstarter campaign [the latter to raise money for the monitors—those glowing, emissive surfaces—have a nice Connor Murphy Project].