In this interview, Pipeline projections designer Kelly Colburn discusses her work, her training, and the most exciting design aspects of the show.
This is a really tough and delightful question! I, like any other designer in the room, am here to tell a story. Projections Design is fluid and fascinating because it can take on many forms. It can be scenery, it can be light, but it can also embody those things that are more difficult to see—like memory, or emotion, or history. Because it can take many forms, it is difficult to assign one description to it. But I’ll take a stab and say that a Projections (or Multi-Media or Video Designer—this is a conversation for another day!) uses technology and the combination of cinematic and theatrical principles to enhance the visual and emotional landscape of the story.
I started experimenting with filmmaking and multimedia creation while studying theatre in undergrad. I continued to experiment and design for theater throughout college and a few years afterwards, but I spent most of my time honing my skills in grad school at University of Maryland. There I was able to focus time on learning animation, better filmmaking techniques, familiarizing myself with equipment like projectors, TVs, and cameras, and most importantly crafting my process: learning how I approach a script (or a dance piece) and how I can better communicate what’s in my head to my artistic team through research and mood images, storyboards, demos, and a lot of dreaming. Because projections design is a little bit of theater and a little bit of cinema, it’s been important for me to be a student of both. We are so incredibly lucky to live in a time where technology is pretty readily available and affordable to your average Joe/Jane/Jay that you can begin to explore and experiment on your own if you have a smartphone and access to a computer.
Awoye and I connected on how all of Dominique Morisseau’s pieces are challenging to identify a hero. Each character is so multi-layered, complex, and the events they find themselves in are equally challenging and deep. We also talked about pipes; they are dark, dirty, and contain the detritus of what has passed through. While the end is inevitably in sight, you’ll likely see it through messy and muddy layers. You’ll see these themes in the spirit of the design: layers through which characters are attempting to break through and be seen wholly.
We’ve added a live feed aspect to the show [a camera at an off-stage station that then projects onto the stage]. Since projections design can sometimes rely heavily on pre-recorded content, being able to live record in the theater and project it simultaneously adds a new dimension to this already multi-layered show. I won’t spoil it for you, but it’s gonna be exciting!