Teaching Artist Leah Reddy spoke with set designer Alexander Dodge about his work on I Need That.
Leah Reddy: What is your theatre origin story?
Alexander Dodge: My father was an architect and I have always loved architecture, but I didn't want to be an architect like my dad for whatever reason. He'd always taken me and the family to New York at least once a year and saw a bunch of shows. It finally dawned on me that I could – through set design – combine my love of both theatre and architecture because I knew the performance side was not my end.
I had already finished high school and was in a college that had a good very small theatre program. It was very hands-on, which was exactly what helped me get into it. It was one of those things like, "Do you like carrying cable and back painting and doing all that stuff? If you can handle that, then this is a life for you." I did a bunch of summer theatre and went on to grad school and here I am many years later, still doing the same thing and still loving it.
LR: What drew you to I Need That? What resonates with you about this piece?
AD: I lost my father a couple of years ago and have been going through his stuff. Ideally, I love this idea of having clean, empty, minimalist spaces. Yet the reality of my own life as well as what I found in my father's life, is that was not the case. There were lots of things being kept.
I was really drawn to this idea of your things having sentimental value and sentimental weight that really sort of starts to hamper you and alter the existence that you would ideally like to have. I related to that struggle, and Theresa has written such a funny and also heartfelt script that I thought was just fantastic and it's such a great way of handling this. Also I haven't seen this story on stage before.
You throw in some great performers and it becomes really, really exciting. So when I was asked to do it, of course I'm going to do this. I'm more than happy to jump in on this. This is great.
LR: Can you talk a little bit how you're working with the props team on this? How are you collaborating since it is a show with so much stuff?
AD: We knew from the get-go that props and set dressing were so important. Having a really great team on board was key. I wanted to make sure that I worked with somebody that I trusted and felt confident with and I think Kathy Fabian, who's the props head, feels the same. We've done enough projects together over the years that we have a great rapport. She's great to hang out with. I thought that having that relationship is key because the amount of stuff is just overwhelming.
As we begin this week of rehearsals, we are still kind of wrapping our heads around how to manage certain things. Because we could probably have a props supervising team all on its own, tracking where the props go and what needs to be consumed every night, what gets destroyed and replaced, what can be used for the week and then needs to be replaced after that, what has to be completely fireproofed. When you start to peel open the onion, you're like, "Oh gosh, it's quite a lot." And we're in rehearsal, so things are fluid. It's sort of exciting. It's slightly terrifying, but it's also really exciting to see us. Everyone's like, "We signed up for this. It's in the title. We've known this for the whole time, and here we go." But even doing theatre as long as I have, it's a new one. I always love when there's something different or completely new on a show.
LR: Thinking about the overall scenic design, this play has some real humor and lightness to it and also some darker parts. How are you approaching the scenic design to bring out either of those or to balance them?
AD: I think the darker parts exist within even the funny parts. Everything kind of has a little bit of both. The way that Theresa has written the piece – some props that seem like childhood games, for example, take on profound sadness and profound sorrow in a way that is completely unexpected.
I think the power of the darkness and the sadness that comes out of the piece takes you by surprise, and it comes out of things that are unexpected. I think that in there lies the powerful aspect of them.
LR: You’ve worked with Theresa Rebeck many times, including here at Roundabout on The Understudy in 2009. What makes your collaborations successful?
AD: I don't know. We've become incredibly close friends over the years. We've done, I think, close to a dozen projects now, and I've worked with her in different capacities as a director as well as a playwright and in a couple of instances as director-playwright. We just click.
I know that she completely trusts me as much as I trust her. In the theatre you work with all sorts of different people, and that's what makes the work for me in the theatre so valuable. But also having the few collaborators that you get to work with multiple times, you get a relationship that becomes a very special thing. Working with Theresa over the many years has been that.
During the pandemic, we were all not working, and she actually called me to say, "Hey, do you want to design my house for me?" And I said, "Well, of course. But I don't think I can because I'm not an architect." But after doing some research, [I learned] you don't have to be a licensed architect in most states in the country to design a single-family home. So we did that, and they're going to move into this house in hopefully the next month or two up in Vermont. It was just a great experience getting to do that. We just really understand each other in a really terrific way.
LR: Speaking of houses, I understand that I Need That is set in Asbury Park, New Jersey. That’s not something that was explicit in the script when I read it. What can you tell us about that aspect of the production?
AD: I think that comes a little bit from my discussions with Moritz [Von Stuelpnagel], the director. He said, "Well, Danny [DeVito] is from Asbury Park, and we've always thought of this as being somewhere in the northeast in a smaller city or a suburb of a larger city." And he said, "We're sort of thinking of Asbury Park.”
And I said, "Well, I know Asbury Park. For many years we had good friends there, and we would go down there many times during the summer. I've driven around all those streets.” I thought, well, this is great. That helped me in terms of like, "Okay, well, I know what that architecture is," all that stuff. A lot of those houses were built in the very early part of the 20th century, and they've been renovated multiple times. You get this wonderful layered effect of a house that was built at a certain period, bought in another time, then renovated at a certain point, and now we’re in the time period of the play happening. You get all these layers that you get to show or refer to in the piece.
I love showing off the original part of the house and then the 1990s renovation, and maybe there's a 1970s renovation that there's still visible elements. Then of course all the modern stuff, from the present day. It makes a very rich, interesting world where there's bound to be Easter eggs and all sorts of things where people can be like, "Oh my God, look at that. There's that thing over there that I remember from the '90s,” or “I remember that from the '80s."
In addition to Asbury Park, a lot of the research we ended up doing was 1980s, 1990s sitcoms. It's like, "What was that aesthetic? Oh, right, yeah. That's what living rooms or sofas look like, or upholstery or gadgets or coffee tables." It was fun to do that deep dive.
LR: What advice do you have for people who are interested in a career in set design?
AD: My advice, and I teach students at university myself, is, "Go see as much as you can." Not just theatre, but also concerts and dance and ballet and opera and museums and installations. Because you're absorbing so much and then you process things, and you want things to trigger ideas and trigger different emotions and tap into things.
Yes, you can look at going into studying theatre in college and things like that, but I think it's sort of exposing yourself to culture and the arts and life as much as possible. And then sort of see, "Oh, that's what's out there." See Broadway shows, see local shows, go to smaller museums. Or if you're in a big city, go check out the big museums.
There's always something. You never know where inspiration will strike. I designed a set once based on a wrapping paper pattern because it was so cool. I'm like, "But this is what the show is," and we went with it. You never know. You never know.
LR: Is there anything I haven't asked you about that you want to talk about?
AD: I'm glad to see that we're kind of as a society sort of back [after the COVID-19 pandemic] and that Broadway is doing well. I get nervous about our regional theatres, and my hope is that [we encourage] the culture of going to the theatre and bringing young people, getting them used to seeing live events. We all love movies, we all love watching Netflix. But [in theatre] you get to be in a room with Danny DeVito. You are in the room with Danny DeVito. Isn't that amazing? I think that's amazing. Or whoever the person is even if it's not a celebrity, some great performer, you're there and there's something about that it's not a screen. That there's an electricity there that I think is always still super exciting.
I hope people come back and they realize that a great part of life is seeing live theatre.