Broadway By Design: JOB

In Broadway by Design, BroadwayWorld is shining a spotlight on the stellar designs of this Broadway season, show by show. Today, we continue with the creatives from Job- Scenic Designer Scott Penner and Costume Designer Michelle J. Li.

After being placed on leave following a viral incident, Jane would do anything to return to her Big Tech-company job. But as the therapist who needs to authorize it, Loyd suspects her work might be doing more harm than good.

Where did the design process start? "I was inspired by the intersection between the real space that Lloyd and Jane occupy and the liminal space of Jane’s psyche. Max’s script includes these really unsettling and surprising moments where the session between Jane and Lloyd is interrupted by seemingly absurd sounds and sudden flashes of light . Finding a set that allowed these moments to shine was central to the design process," explained Penner.

"Michael Herwitz and I experimented with various interactions of the set until we landed on the concept of a platform floating within a black void. At that point, it became imperative to collaborate with Lighting Designer Mextly Couzin’s to craft an exciting upstage image using lighting fixtures as the visual language for these moments."

Li looked to make changes between the show's off-Broadway run and its Broadway transfer in July. "I wanted to hone in on what our characters would feel like if their contrasts were exaggerated a bit further," she explained. "For example, if Jane adopted something that was slightly more professional looking, and if Loyd looked and felt a little more laid-back. I wanted to maintain a visual relationship between them despite the characters seemingly being polar opposites. There’s so much shared subtlety in their costume design such as buttons, watches, earrings, and the color palette they wear. 

"For example, Loyd’s costume features woven bracelets in pinks and purples, as if his kids made one for him, and a San Francisco MoMA shirt, which signals he’s cultured — maybe even a donor of the museum. One of my favorite easter eggs is his single silver earring - I love how it catches the glint of the lights only when he's turned downstage during a pivotal moment of the story. 

"For Jane, I wanted to make her feel put together for this therapist session, but in a way where she’s approaching it like a job interview. She's in a stretch blazer, which is as "professional" as her outfit can be given that she works in tech. Her striped socks, the cracked Apple Watch, the chipped nail polish — these details all point towards a deeper frenzy and sense of unsettlement. Her silhouette also purposefully toes the line between Millennial and Gen Z because so much of her experience is related to being terminally online. She also has some location-specific pieces are her Cotopaxi rain jacket, which gives a sense of weather, and her Baggu tote bag, which features a Topo Design keychain as well as pins from Discord and PAX West 2019. Her shoes are Allbird, a tech startup — and they’re actually the original ones all the way from our first run of JOB off Broadway at the Soho Playhouse." 

Where did the designers' biggest challenges arise? "The biggest challenge I faced on JOB was how deceptively difficult designing for a two person play is," continued Li. "I almost had a TV-like approach to the costumes — the director, Michael, was interested in having many costumes to play around with so that Sydney (the actor playing Jane) would be able to explore multiple avenues that were different from our previous iteration. I created a closet of clothing stocked with different versions of Jane — dressed up all the way to dressed down -- and let it live in the rehearsal room. This non-conventional approach to figuring out what her look was going to be made for an intense tech process -- which was already truncated at 3 days!"

"My biggest challenge was creating a room with clear boundaries that conveyed a sense of entrapment," added Penner, "while also keeping it open and porous enough for the upstage lighting wall to interrupt the action in Lloyd’s office in a sudden and abrasive manner."

Job is running on Broadway at the Hayes Theatre.