Broadway By Design: Adam Rigg, Montana Levi Blanco, Yi Zhao, and Palmer Hefferan Bring THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH from Page to Stage

In Broadway by Design, BroadwayWorld is shining a spotlight on the stellar designs of this Broadway season, show by show. Today, we continue the series with Adam Rigg, Montana Levi Blanco, Yi Zhao, and Palmer Hefferan, who acted as scenic, costume, lighting, and sound designers for Lincoln Center Theater's revival of The Skin of Our Teeth.

Recipient of the 1943 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Thornton Wilder's visionary masterpiece The Skin of Our Teeth illuminates the endurance of the human spirit as it follows the Antrobus family of Excelsior, New Jersey as they persevere through an Ice Age, a biblical flood, and war.

Where did the design process start? For Rigg, it was with the project's leader. "I think the biggest inspiration was Lileana Blain-Cruz's joy," they explained. "It feeds the process and colors every decision I made. When looking at any piece of research or sitting with the model, her rigorous playfulness as a collaborator results in such breathtaking turns that I would be remiss to talk about mid century home catalogue color palettes or destroyed theaters in Western Europe after World War II when her brilliance was my biggest inspiration throughout the process."

Montana Levi Blanco began his process with the play's central characters. "The Skin of Our Teeth is first and foremost a story about the strength and resilience of a family. In this production, our family is black. It was central to our interpretation of these characters that they would be based on real imagery of the black family through the ages.

"One of the requirements of designing this play is that you must craft three very distinctive choruses over three very different periods. In many ways, this project is a dream for a costume designer. We focused on specificity, iconic imagery, and playful character development to reinforce the massive shifts in time and world building."

Lighting designer Yi Zhao drew from extensive experience working with this design team. "Everything from the color arc of the entire evening to the pop music-scored, pink and green-drenched interludes, the strobe-filled storm sequence, and the painterly stillness of the final act-these are all variations on vocabularies that we've established and refined over the years and through many productions," explained Yi. "Lileana's vision is eclectic, so we draw inspiration from Miami clubs just as much as we do from paintings and art installations."

Hefferan integrated contemporary music with classic works as a part of the show's sound design. "Though The Skin of Our Teeth takes place in the 1940s, my research playlist started with contemporary hip hop, trap, and electronic dance music," she explained. "When Lileana decided that we would introduce the Atlantic City boardwalk with a dance sequence I knew that Act Two was where the playlist would find its home. The choreography (inspired by 1920s era dances like the Charleston and current hip hop moves) syncs with the music to create a joyful anachronistic moment with Montana's gorgeous 1920s-inspired costumes and Adam's 1880s boardwalk adorned with mid-century modern colors."

Where the teams biggest challenges? For Rigg, dealing with the size of the theatre was difficult in itself. "[The Beaumont] asks for such large gestures. We really wanted the audience to be hyper aware of the proscenium and the theater in general, to make Sabina's breaking of the fourth wall feel unexpected, (we had to give her a real fourth wall to break) so we needed to draw the audience attention to the edges of the space. But it was a delicate balance about giving them a chance to take in the frame, while not distracting from the bodies."

"The biggest challenge for sound is actually the shape and size of the theater itself and more specifically, delivering an equal sonic experience to every audience member filling the 1,200 seat house," said Hefferan. "Sound lands differently depending on where you are in the theater. The goal is that the sound system is transparent, meaning you are not localizing to the speakers as the source of sounds, but instead creating the illusion that the sounds are emanating from people and objects onstage. All the voices need to localize to the actors (or dinosaur and mammoth!) onstage and likewise for sound effects such as the roaring fire in Act One or creating the swirling hurricane from above in Atlantic City."

"The biggest challenge in this project was stewarding the ambitious and out-sized scale of the show," agreed Blanco. "With a cast of 28, all of which change three times (some four or five times) - me and my superstar team were never short of work to accomplish. Once the design and dramaturgical aspects of the design are set, we embark on the labor heavy phase of the work - swatching, meeting with drapers/artisans, pulling from rental stocks, shopping and schlepping."

Zhao struggled most with creating a conhesive, yet distinct look. "A three-hour play demands a lot of an audience, and this play takes a kaleidoscopic approach to many seemingly disconnected topics. The challenge is in finding the connection between all these disparate references-because they are absolutely intentional. Lighting at its best ties all the elements of a play together: it's the often unnoticed connective tissue. It shouldn't tell people what to think, but rather organize a series of events so that each audience member can interpret the whole for themselves; and if I can make it stimulating, or at times downright pleasurable to take it all in, I hope it helps to make the experience more inviting and memorable."

The Skin of Our Teeth concluded its run at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre on May 29, 2022.