Storytelling Through Space: Theatrical Set Designer Beowulf Boritt

"If you love theatre, you've likely seen a set designed by Tony Award-winner Beowulf Boritt," claims an article from WNYC. And if you browse his website, you can easily see why. He's best known for his stellar list of Broadway productions such as Act One, Come From Away, Be More Chill, and Bernhardt/Hamlet, just to name a few, and his off-Broadway and international credits are extensive as well. It would perhaps be more difficult to find a theatre-lover who hasn't seen one of Boritt's innovative designs. But what exactly is it that makes Boritt's work so enticing? And more importantly, how does he do it?

To understand how Boritt does his work, one must first understand what exactly the theatrical set design process is. Depending on the timeline of a show, designers might have anywhere from a few years to a few months to create an entire world for the play to live in, all the while bowing to the whims and requirements of the producers, directors, show budget, and theatre space. Designers begin by collecting research for the specific show before moving on to drawings and models. Here the work begins to look very similar to that of an architect, but engineering comes into play here as well. Designers must determine how to make something beautiful and functional. Then, designs often have to go through multiple revision processes, especially when designing for new works, which Boritt often does. For example, a designer might perfect the set for a certain scene, only to have that scene cut in the next rehearsal. It's a tedious, demanding process with very little immediate payoff. Actors often don't begin to work in the space until the last few weeks before opening, and that time can be make-or-break for a particular show. It's easy to see why many productions look so similar. For many designers, the urge to play it safe and stick with what works overwhelms the desire to experiment and explore. Often, the risk of failure is simply too great. 

But Boritt's designs are known for taking risks. His design for an adaptation of Zola's Thérèse Raquin involved replicating part of Paris' River Seine onstage--complete with real water the actors could be drenched in. His design for award-winning musical Come from Away involved using the trunks of real trees to create his sparse Newfoundland forest--trees which were kept in a raw enough state that they began sprouting leaves on the Broadway stage! Although accidental, this was a fitting happenstance for a show about creating hope and new life from the most tragic of circumstances. 

 

Real leaves growing from the real trees of Boritt's set for the Broadway production of Come From Away.

 

A time lapse of the set build for Act One.

 

Perhaps Boritt's most notable work is his three-story tall rotating set for James Lapine's Act One, the set that won him his first Tony Award and catapulted him to Broadway fame. In an article with Theatre Mania, Boritt details how he came up with the idea for the convention-defying set--and how he was able to pull it off. The budget for the set was half a million dollars--a lot of money even for Broadway, but certainly not enough to create this set, at least not under normal circumstances. But Boritt explains:

"Almost always for Broadway shows, you find out your theater two or three months out. The set build has to be really fast. Since we knew our theater nine months out, we could spend time sourcing materials and finding the cheapest options." 

But this still doesn't explain how Boritt created the idea, only how he was able to execute it. Fortunately, the article delves further: 

"I knew from the beginning the play had a lot of locations and scenes that needed to move really fast. Since it was a play about the theater, I thought, Let's do an empty theater set. The actors could bring in props for each scene: a desk, a chair, whatever...But frankly, I've done that set a lot of times, and we've all seen it. It works, but it's not so different."

This perhaps is the core of Boritt's work: the desire to be different, to do different, whatever the risks. This divergent method of thinking--taking the conventional and running the other way--is the core of the work of many great artists, but it's not something seen as often in theatre, at least with set design. Typically those imaginative ideas run into constraints such a time, budget, or shop capability, and designs must be simplified down to the way things have always been done. But Boritt chooses to look beyond those constraints for new solutions to old problems. For example, all of the backdrops in Act One were digitally printed onto large pieces of canvas from scans of Boritt's model miniatures. Previously, all backdrops had been hand-painted by professional scenic artists, but this was a lengthy and costly process. Printing was a fantastic innovation, and allowed for much more budget flexibility. But it did bring with it some unfortunate side effects.

Boritt's innovations in response to the constraints of theatre work removed the collaboration that is so essential to many good creative works, and he is aware of that fact. "I love having a scenic painter add their level of artistry to a set, but it costs more money...When they come back, I'm always a little jarred because I'm used to someone else's hand being part of it. A really good scene shop will add a level of artistic flair to something that will make your design better. It's like a symphony." So in one way, the choice to print backdrops is more creative, but in another way, it isn't. This is the fine line that so many artists must walk, the balance between two different types of creativity and innovation.

Another one of Boritt's designs also came with unexpected consequences, but these were more interesting than disappointing. The show Hand to God is set in a typical church basement, and Boritt worked to make the set as realistic as possible. "We did a lot of research as to what church basements look like. You look around a real room and there are electrical outlets, fire extinguishers, things like that.” But this realism took an unexpected turn when an audience member climbed onstage before a show and attempted to charge his phone in the set's outlet--a fake outlet, but nonetheless real enough to convince an inexperienced theatregoer. Although the audience member's actions are a sound example of bad theatre etiquette, they are a good testament to Boritt's skill as a designer. “It’s certainly the first time anyone has gone onto one of my sets and tried to use it as a real space.” But this is often the purpose of good set design: to convince the audience that this is in fact a real space. And Boritt succeeded, yet another mark of his talent. 

Ultimately, Boritt's innovation is not about what is considered good or bad set design. There are some fantastic traditional sets out there, as well as some horrible new ones. For Boritt, his talent comes from knowing when to innovate and when to play by the rules. Hand to God was a brilliantly innovative set--built using traditional techniques. And Act One contained one of the most commonplace techniques--fabric backdrops--but it was the production method that was innovative. This balance is what makes Boritt's designs so successful, and his imagination, spurred by a desire to do differently, is what makes them so compelling.

Sources: 

https://www.wnyc.org/story/2022-theater-you-can-still-see-set-design-beowulf-boritt/

https://www.beowulfborittdesign.com/home

https://www.theatermania.com/broadway/news/review-beowulf-boritt-transforming-space-over-time_94258.html

https://www.theatermania.com/broadway/news/a-tree-grows-on-broadway-come-from-away-and-the-cu_80967.html

https://www.theatermania.com/broadway/news/tony-nominated-set-designer-beowulf-boritt-returns_77162.html

https://www.theatermania.com/new-york-city-theater/news/turning-turning-beowulf-boritt-on-act-one-and-the-_68608.html

https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/07/hand-to-god-audience-member-tried-to-plug-in-phone-beowulf-boritt