Interview: Emmy Nominated Production Designer David Korins Talks GREASE LIVE!

Production Designer David Korins recently received an Emmy nomination for his spectacular designs featured in FOX's live broadcast of GREASE LIVE! The nod follows a recent Tony Award nomination for his innovative set designs for Broadway's HAMILTON. Today, Korins speaks exclusively with BWW about the challenges and triumphs of re-creating the 1950's for a live television audience.

Congratulations on this amazing year you've had and all that you have accomplished.

Well thank you very much, it's been an amazing ride.

Did you have any hesitations about taking on the massive task of designing for GREASE LIVE!?

You know I had hesitations for sure, but it wasn't because of the size of it, it was because I wasn't really sure what my personal contribution could be to the show. I had seen the other live television musicals before and I obviously knew the property that was 'Grease', and I just wasn't really sure what my version of that would be. And I was also coming off of the pretty phenomenal experience that was HAMILTON at The Public.

I think what ultimately led me to say yes to the project was, I had worked on a show called 'Broadway 4D' which was a big, huge, very ambitious $75 million production that actually fell apart. But I had spent two and a half years on that project thinking about how to make theater that was intentionally going to be filmed. And when I had thought about all the work that I had done on that show, I really found for me the way into GREASE LIVE!, and it really was about taking the very best theatrical story-telling methods and the very best film and television story-telling

methods and really exploiting both of those genres to the fullest. And when we talked a little bit about how those things would manifest physically in the story-telling, I then got really, really excited about doing it and I accepted the job. So my reservations went from being, 'eh, I'm not really sure' to 'yes, let's do this!'

One of the most unique aspects of GREASE LIVE! was that the audience was afforded a behind-the-scenes look during the live broadcast.

Well you know one of the things that theater does better than any other discipline is really showing you how things works, seeing the scene changes, seeing worlds transforming, seeing things happening right before your eyes, and it's really magical when you see that. And the thing that television does, is that it allows you to do things with this enormous revelation of space. So as an example, you can, through the lens and the camera, change the aperture and you can change the scale of things very easily. In the theater we're always talking about, 'oh it would be so great if we had another 30 or 100 feet of depth', but with television, you can do things like go outside and have a full blown carnival, which you can never do in theater. And so when Tommy [Kail] and I talked about really showing the public those things, it became a really exciting idea for me.

How did you even begin to come up with the concepts for this enormous undertaking?

Well Tommy and I were given and afforded this six-week gestation period, this ideation phase from FOX and Paramount to just sit and draw and sketch and come up with our concept for the show. And I would say at the end of that six week process, we had storyboarded through probably sixteen of the eighteen musical numbers for GREASE. And when we presented it to Marc Platt, the executive producer, and to FOX and Paramount, they flipped over it, they were so excited, and they instantly greenlit the project. And what was so amazing was that we now had this blueprint of what we wanted the show to be and then we just had to spend the next eight months really trying to find a way to manifest that realistically and physically in the world.

And then we decided to infuse the show with a live studio audience, and we had come up with what we called the 'Jessie J Pied Piper Moment' the concept for how we would start the show, where we show the viewing audience everyone backstage and we let them know that they we were actually going to be telling them a story and showing them a show. We introduced all the characters, we showed them all these theatrical storytelling inventions and all these different transformative moments. For example, in 'Grease Lightning ' we went from a realistic place and then exploded into a moment of abstraction and then back again to a realistic place. The same thing with "Freddy My Love", from the realistic setting of Frenchy's bedroom to this whole USO magical fantastical moment and then back to reality again. So it was really kind of amazing and very freeing.

It sounds like it was very different from your recent experience with HAMILTON.

It was very different than HAMILTON. You know that was such an honor and a privilege to work on HAMILTON, and that really did feel like Lin [Manuel Miranda] came to me and said

'I've got this huge, epic, sweeping story and I have no idea what it's supposed to look like or how it's supposed to move or anything. I can only tell you where the locations are' And as I said, it was an honor to be able to create that world for the show. But the thing about 'Grease' is that it is a very well known intellectual property, it's perhaps the most produced American musical, or one of them certainly. So as opposed to Lin's original epic work and score, with GREASE LIVE!, we had to find a way to eventize this well-known show and make it not just this over-the-top musical live experience on television, but to also really take a very elastic story and stretch it in a new way. And that was super exciting, and I found myself literally skipping to work each day. It was such a pleasurable experience to know that we had really moved the needle in that medium.

Can you talk about the collaborative effort with the other members of the creative team - costumes, choreography, the live television director and so forth?

Well obviously I have this incredible relationship with Tommy, he's a primary collaborator of mine, we've worked on many, many shows together in the theater and we've also worked together in television and live events before. So we already had this extreme shorthand between us. And at the beginning of our work on GREASE LIVE!, the creative team had a big summit meeting, a big, long weekend out in LA in Marc Platt's office and we worked through the show after Tommy and I had done our initial collaboration. We brought in Alex [Rudzinski], the television director, and we brought in Zach [Woodlee], the choreographer, and the brilliant costume designer William Ivey Long, who ironically was on that show Broadway 4D with me, and some of the other department heads. And we explained to them what the general vocabulary was and the way that we saw it.

And everyone had their input, it was a very wonderful collaboration with those guys, we were all excited to cross-pollinate with each other's departments. And again, what was so great about that was that we had this sort of bible of drawings that we had done earlier which allowed us to say, 'this is the look and the feeling and the flavor of each one of these numbers, so how do we do this?' And I think the proof was in the pudding with that show. You can see things like the choreography and the costumes and the production all working so seamlessly and hand in hand.

What was it like to watch the broadcast air live on January 31st after all that hard work?

I recall that night perfectly. I was mostly in the truck with Tommy, but at times I would jump out of the truck and go to certain locations to see things happen. You know at that point, it was out of our hands. We were so well rehearsed, so well prepped for the experience, so really when I stepped out of the truck it was just to feel the energy of the crowd and really take a moment during the thing to just breathe in the excitement and the energy. Because it really was such a live, amazing event happening on the lot, and it was just an exhilarating experience.

And I remember the weeks leading up to the live broadcast, thinking to myself that when someone who had worked on one of the previous live events on television watches GREASE LIVE! on January 31st, they were going to have an 'oh wow' moment. And for someone who will be working on the next one, which will be "Hairspray", they are going to have to take a lot of the things that we did in our production and they are going to have to infuse their production with those ideas or else they will be seen as a less successful production. I knew

that we were moving the needle completely. So it was really like dropping a boulder in the water and then watching the ripples culturally and artistically and see how it was landing.

So what was cool about the live broadcast on January 31st was that I knew this was going to happen and then I got to watch it happen in real time and to read the tweets and the internet and all those kinds of things and know that people were experiencing an event that we knew for so long was in the works. So it was just a wild ride. And then after the broadcast, we had a party and the network re-aired it that evening and I was able to watch the cast watch the show, and that was a remarkable, super cool experience. It was all so satisfying and a very celebratory moment.

What would you say was the biggest take away you got out of the whole experience?

I think for me, my big take away is that I've had a very varied and diverse and nuanced career over the last eighteen or so years, and I feel like every professional experience I had up to that point really added up and prepared me perfectly to production design GREASE LIVE!. I really did wind up flexing all sorts of weird design muscles and managerial muscles and all different things that really added up. It was a very lovely kind of feather in my cap to that point. I really feel like I accumulated all these skill sets and even ones that I wasn't 100 percent aware that I had accumulated, and really it tested me in many, many ways, to be able to manage a team that big, to be able do a live event, to be able to know enough about television and film and production design and theatrical design and all sorts of storytelling methods and really my whole career up to that moment, so it was great. I really felt like I was the only person who could do that job at that time for that production, and it was very satisfying.

And would you do another live television musical again if given the opportunity?

Oh absolutely, I think the medium is incredibly powerful and I'm dying to do another one. If you know someone, give them my number!

David Korins is a multi-award-winning scenic and production designer based in New York City. He is founder and principal designer of David Korins Design - a multi-faceted firm that designs everything from theater, film, and television to rock concerts, photo shoots, custom furniture, and private, commercial and public spaces.

His Broadway credits include Hamilton, Misery, Motown, Annie, Bring It On, Chinglish, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, An Evening with Patti LuPone & Mandy Patinkin, Magic/Bird, Godspell, The Pee-Wee Herman Show, Lombardi, Passing Strange and Bridge and Tunnel. Opera credits include world premieres of Bel Canto at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, The Gospel of Mary Magdalene at San Francisco Opera and Oscar at Santa Fe Opera. He has worked extensively both off-Broadway and in regional theatre. He designed the Off-Broadway production of Dear Evan Hansen.

Mr. Korins served as creative director for Kanye West, designing his concerts both in NORTH AMERICA and abroad. He has conceptualized and executed sets for artists including Andrea Bocelli, Sia and Mariah Carey. He has designed installations across the country for music and arts festivals including Coachella, Lollapalooza, South by Southwest, Bonnaroo, and Outside Lands. He is also engaged in an ongoing partnership with the Fireman Hospitality Group.

As production designer, David's credits include the feature films Winter Passing starring Will Ferrell, Zooey Deschanel and Ed Harris, Coach starring Hugh Dancy, and the film version of Adam Rapp's Blackbird starring Gillian Jacobs and Paul Sparks. In television David has designed multiple series and specials on networks such as NBC, CBS, HBO, Bravo TV, IFC, Comedy Central, Lifetime and the Game Show Network. David Korins was the production designer for Fox's broadcast of Grease: Live. His commercial work includes spots for Target, World Mastercard, McDonald's and Friendly's.

Mr. Korins has received a Tony Nomination, Emmy Nomination, Drama Desk Award, a Lucille Lortel Award, and three Henry Hewes Design Awards, and an Obie Award for Sustained Excellence in Design.

Set design images courtesy of David Korins Design