In Broadway by Design, Broadway World takes a show-by-show look at the incredible design on Broadway this season, and today we're featuring set designer Robert Brill, creator of the Tony-nominated five-piece Hell's Kitchen.Projection Designer Peter Nigrini Lighting Designer Natasha KatzSound Designer Gareth Owencostume designer Dede Ayite.
Ali is a passionate 17-year-old girl searching for freedom, passion and a place in her world. Watching her find it all is a New York coming-of-age story like you've never felt before. Rebellious and oppressed by an overprotective single mother, Ali feels lost until she meets a mentor who opens her heart and mind to the power of the piano. Set to 90s rhythms, Hell's Kitchen is a mother-daughter love story about finding yourself, your purpose and a community that inspires you. Remember where your dream began.
So where did the design process begin? Set designer Robert Brill reflected on his own past. “I personally have deep ties to the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood. In the mid-'90s, I lived just north of Manhattan Plaza and my daughter Sophia grew up in that vibrant community,” he explains. “In fact, her kindergarten was in the basement of Manhattan Plaza and PS212 was her elementary school, in the same building as the Professional Performing Arts School that Alicia attended many years ago. Many of my daughter's closest friends lived in the Manhattan Plaza tower, so it meant a lot to me to work on this piece.”
“With music as the heartbeat of the story, director Michael Greif and I began by exploring how the band onstage could represent Ali's creative den and the community of artists and musicians that inspired her love of music. This evolved into a symbolic two-story building, the Manhattan Plaza Tower that houses the band. From there, we imagined a complex series of abstract structural elements that reflected the alternating rhythm and architecture of the balconies that make up the tower's façade. Working with Alicia, who was keen to evoke the gritty streets of New York, gave us confidence in this ever-shifting, densely layered collage of moving and sometimes disorienting elements.”
Projection designer Peter Nigrini was inspired by similar life experiences. “The story of Hell's Kitchen is a polar opposite: the story of New York seen through Ali's eyes, full of the excitement and aspirations of youth, the grit and brilliance of the city, the heartache and passion,” Nigrini explains. “Having spent my 20s in New York during the same era that Hell's Kitchen is set in, much of the design inspiration comes from my own experiences in Alphabet City, rather than Hell's Kitchen.”
“There's no doubt that my New York was very different to our characters' New York, but there is still so much that is universal: the struggles of youth and coming to terms with who you are as an adult, the thrills and dangers that New York offers, and the value of community wherever you find it. On the surface, these ideas may not seem particularly relevant to design, but they are actually important to it. The guiding principle for this design is not to represent the world as it is, but rather to represent the world as seen through the protagonist's eyes, colored by their memories and emotions. I often think about the idea that life has a soundtrack. In the same way that a film provides a score and a musical provides the songs, the projection design for Hell's Kitchens illustrates every moment of Ali's journey.”
“Music is the catalyst for the lighting,” explains lighting designer Natasha Katz, “intricate rhythms, vocals and orchestral sounds that are reflected in the lighting through movement, colour and shadow. The joyous tunes of the street are a constantly changing jumble of coloured lights, and the lighting feels like the cold grittiness of the city and the loneliness of a girl alone in her tiny apartment, longing to see the world outside.”
“I grew up in New York,” Katz continued, “and it holds so many personal memories for me. When I first saw the set, the projections and the costumes, I felt like I was in the city of my childhood. Robert Brill's skeletal sliding panels convey the atmosphere, the chaos, the love and ever-changing vibrancy of the city. The panels slide and rise in different configurations, just like the different streets of our city. The inspiration never stopped flowing while the process was continuous. With Peter Nigrini's projections of New York imagery, Dede Aite's period-colorful costumes, Gareth Owen's sound, intuitive choreography, story and direction, the stage was set for the addition of lighting.”
Sound designer Gareth Owen also had no trouble finding inspiration from Keys. “Inspiration for a show based around the music of Alicia Keys is easy to find. Ever since I got an iPhone, I've had every album she's written downloaded onto my phone,” Owen joked. “Not only that, but there are heaps of live performances available to watch on YouTube and I've seen her in concert countless times. As if that wasn't enough, a dinner with her and musical supervisor Adam Blackstone gave me all the information I needed and more…”
Costume designer Dede Ayte looked to the era. “I was inspired by the bold fashion of the '90s, the bold sense of self, and the ability for people to reinvent themselves through their clothes,” she said. “The bold sharing of identity through creative silhouettes, graffiti, and color. The energy of the streets in the '90s was a huge source of inspiration for me. It straddled danger, sweetness, and a love of music. Hip hop also dictated the mood of fashion, giving people permission to fully express themselves.”
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What was the design team's biggest challenge? “The biggest challenge was finding a way to capture the silhouettes and whimsy of the time while still allowing the dancers to really give it their all with amazing choreography. of “Camille Brown,” Ayte continued.
“Capturing the texture, the grittiness, the humanity of a city of brick, steel and glass,” Nigrini said. “The greatest challenge of the design (both the landscape and the projections), and what I feel is its greatest success, is capturing the energy and commotion of the street. Robert Brill and I made a very conscious choice to go in the exact opposite direction: the landscape is minimalist, devoid of color and texture, its power all in the complexity of lines and layers of form. All the lines are vertical, like Manhattan Plaza or the Manhattan street grid. The projections, in contrast, are a testament to the human making of these places our own – full of storefronts, signs, posters, graffiti and the objects of everyday life – and to the way light travels through the gaps between our built environments to fill our world with color and texture.”
“The stage is difficult to light because the set moves a lot,” says Katz. “This helped me a lot to express the grittiness of New York by using shadow as much as light. It also made it easier to separate scenes in different parts of the stage, emphasizing the loneliness of the characters. I used the low side a lot, a magical angle of light that can slip through the background and make the actors and dancers stand out. I used this to work on the staging and choreography by carving out the sides of the bodies, arms, hands, and movements. And when the panels opened, the lighting spread with joy, with color and brightness, as the community of our beautiful city came together. As so often happens, a drawback turned into an advantage.”
“New York City, and Midtown in particular, is a dynamic, constantly changing landscape, both visually and physically. It's a kaleidoscope of images, sights and sounds, an exhilarating, overwhelming collection of fragments, sometimes chaotically blending together to create an immersive, puzzle-like experience,” Brill added. “Working with an incredible design team, including projection designer Peter Nigrini, lighting designer Natasha Katz, sound designer Gareth Owen and costume designer Dede Ayte, our goal was to create a dynamic, changing landscape that reflects the vibrancy of the city.”
“Hell's Kitchen requires a very different design ethic than any other show I've done in New York,” Owen added. “Alicia Keys has an incredibly precise sonic signature. She demands absolute clarity and absolute precision, and frankly, she and her musical team pushed me to a level of precision I wasn't sure I could achieve. The Shubert Theatre was not designed for amplified sound, so we were on our toes getting the bass we needed for Alicia without disrupting neighboring shows. All of this, plus the relatively low weight rating of the theatre's roof, meant we had a tough job ahead of us. I really enjoyed the challenge and hope all the hard work pays off!”
Hell's Kitchen is currently playing on Broadway at the Shubert Theatre.
