The challenge of designing a set that is both monumental and intimate is no small task. We spoke with Studio Director of Design Deb Booth, the production set designer, to learn more about her process and approach.
How has the content of this production influenced its design?
The Hard Problem is episodic, a series of relatively short scenes in various locations. The very practical challenge is to hold things together in a kind of 'world of the play' and to allow things to flow and move with what happens in the story. It sounds easy, as I say that, but getting the balance right is difficult. The design must act as a kind of super efficient container—with mechanisms that allow the scenes to change quickly and efficiently because the flow is important to how we perceive the story. And then there are a few pieces that tell the audience the ‘where' and the ‘what'. These pieces must be very specific and precise because they are telling that major part of the visual story within the machine. There is something interesting about the power of the Krohl Institute, where many of the scenes take place. Science, in general, is massive and powerful—yet so much of the story focuses on the individual strength of the human being. The Hard Problem is a very human dilemma. So there are design elements that deal with this huge scale but at the same time it is, after all, a simple journey about one person—Hilary. Hopefully the audience just sees it as a flow of story and doesn’t worry about machines and precision and any of this.
How did the intersection of art, technology, and philosophy influence your design of this production?
In The Hard Problem, Tom Stoppard wraps the world of the intellect around an essential human story. There is that larger context, then there is this undeniable human being that is the bit of grit in the story. For design, the challenge is to hint at the complexity of that intellect but not to overpower or overtake the human story within it. It's tough because Stoppard is a very smart guy with an enormous appetite for intellectual and verbal complexity.
The world of images is a different language altogether and often difficult to articulate. In the process of designing a play, certain images fit and become important and some drop away, we don’t always know why. In the end a picture can stick and remain a kind of flashlight into the world of the play. It can be the image itself, its color, its size, its proportion—we don’t always know the why but the creative team has come to think of it as a kind of visual “hunch," a kind of entryway that can aim at the intellect but not explain it. There was one image created by Bill Viola that stayed with us. This single image fed the design and in retrospect, pulled things together. It was mysterious and maybe it represented the intersection of the science, the spiritual, and the philosophical—yet only suggested it. It didn’t become too heavy handed. It kept a kind of wonder that can unite those things together. In a way, I think that that is Hilary’s journey—for herself and what Stoppard wants us to follow. She is looking for something that can do that too—she wants more than a single stream of thought, she wants her life to balance her science and spirit.