SIMPATICO
Scenic Designer & Technical Director
Variations Theatre Group
The Chain Theatre
May – June 2024
Directed by
David Zayas Jr
Lighting Design by
Michael Abrams
Props Scenic:
SJ Reynolds
The Chain Theatre’s 2024 production of SIMPATICO is a straight-forward adaptation of the Sam Shepard play, staged as a mid-1990s period piece. The play jumps between four unique locations, each a representation of the characters that occupy those spaces.
My challenge as Scenic Designer was to create four visually distinct sets that could all live on a very narrow (roughly 21′ wide) stage, and be navigated by our actors with minimal furniture movement during scene transitions. Accordingly, I designed the two sets where our play spends the most time — “Cucamonga” and “Midway” — as permanent installations onstage with relatively small footprints, a single flat wall for each with one or two key pieces of furniture. The remaining “minor” sets — “San Dimas” and “Lexington” — share the DSL corner of the stage; the former transforms into the latter during the intermission.
SIMPATICO is my first Scenic Design credit, and it was a joy working with the team at the Chain again, who I began working with in early 2023 as a TD/Production Carpenter.
Highlights of this project included: working with LD Michael Abrams to design custom go-bo units for use during scene transitions; fabricating a shabby, mid-century kitchen counter unit (shout out to SJ Reynolds for a beautiful scenic treatment); designing and fabricating a Rococo-style equestrian landscape, and several mid-century newspaper front sheets for a conspiratorial collage; creating a cohesive visual aesthetic combining a few choice pieces of stock furniture with additions from Amazon and Wayfair; creating renders in Photoshop and seeing them come to life during the build and tech process.
