Upstage Playgoer's Guide > Caroline, or Change Upstage Playgoer's Guide > Designer Statements

Lighting, set, sound, costume, wig, projection, and other designers working on a production often articulate their artistic choices in a designer statement, sharing how they approached creating their designs.

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Fly Davis: Set & Costume Design

"The design of a show is about creating a framework for a piece of theatre and helping the audience to understand and invest in it. I believe the designer’s input is becoming more and more of a dramaturgical role, both vocally and aesthetically. This means, as a designer, you collaborate wholly with the director, choreographer, sound and lighting designers from page to stage. All of our disciplines have to work harmoniously as a package to create and support the wonderful worlds of the plays, musicals, and operas.

In the world of costumes, we start the show by delving into the isolated mind of Caroline with her comfort characters: the Washing Machine, Dryer, Moon, and Radio, and we were able to have 3D surrealist fun from the ’60s. The Radio are mood setters and they change in color, they hint at being like The Supremes, but we have turned down the dial of naturalism and upped the futurism of their attire. The washing machine, the cooling influence on Caroline, is covered in bubbles, spraying mist in the air, and the Dryer is acting as conscience and temptation with light-up coils of red hot electricity and a rusted boiler suit and red makeup across his eyes. The moon waxes and wanes in her light and dark costumes, ancient, eternal and of course, sequined and fabulous. We only ever see Caroline in her maid’s uniform until she goes to church, when she changes into her best dress and hat. That’s the only change we see in her. The Gellmans, on the other hand, are constantly changing clothes, especially Rose who loves to shop. Her stepson, the pampered Noah, is very much at odds with Caroline’s poorer children who practically live in the same clothes but nonetheless are richer in many more ways than Noah." — Fly Davis, Set and Costume Design

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