Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 1982 - 6

CONTEMPORARY
AMERICAN
DESIGNERS:

Eugene Lee
by Arnold Aronson

Designers shouldn't be so eclectic. Artists have styles that you can
recognize instantly, and I have always thought that that is what the
stage designer should have. At base we're artists and craftsmen
with a tradition. I have always thought there should be a point of
view.

Many designers working today have a recognizable style-it
is easy to spot their use of color, texture, pictorial sense, or
even, as Santo Loquasto noted, the particular way in which they
design a bannister. But Eugene Lee has more than a style-he
has a point of view. He does not change, chameleon-like, from
show to show; he has definite, strong ideas about what theatre
should be and what it should do for an audience. This has led to
a more total concept of design than found in most contemporary
designers and has resulted in some of the last decade's most
daring and innovative productions: Siaveship, Dude, Candide
(for which he won a Tony), a stunning, if relatively traditional
Sweeney Todd (another Tony), and a host of iconoclastic
productions at Providence's Trinity Square Repertory Company.
Current tastes and economics, however, do not mesh with
Eugene Lee's ideas. "There are so many possibilities," he
explains, "but [traditional] theatre, with its little, confined stage,
is so limiting, so boring. That's why I'm going to do films. I'm
having more fun." This past fall he finished Francis Ford
Coppola's Hammett and there are two films among his current
projects. And, of course, there were six years as designer of
television's Saturday Night Live. More recent ventures have
included Steve Martin's last television special and Simon and
Garfunkel's Central Park reunion.
Such a record should have made Lee's name a household
word in theatre, film, and television. But look in Notable Names
in the American Theatre (1976), the list of "Broadway Stage
Designers" in Lynn Pecktal's Designing and Painting for the
Theatre (1975), or Contemporary Stage Designers USA (1974)
which even has examples of student work, and there is no
mention of Eugene Lee. (Pecktal's book does, at least, have
some examples of his work.) The closest thing to public recognition is a 1980 People magazine article about him and his former
wife and collaborator Franne Lee and the creation of Saturday
Night Live's Coneheads.
© 1982, Arnold Aronson

Part of the problem may rest with Lee himself who is
somewhat reclusive, keeps few records, is genuinely disinterested in past accomplishments, and is totally unable to recall
dates. Trying to reconstruct his patchwork college career he
states vaguely, "I don't think I have a degree from any place.
Maybe I have a degree from Yale, I can't remember." He is not
being facetious. What first seems like an affectation is confirmed
by others-his memory is poor when it comes to his own
accomplishments. He is genuinely uncomfortable talking about
himself and will not dwell on the past. "I don't know what I do,"
he says when asked to discuss his work. Echoing the Fortune
Teller in The Skin of Our Teeth he continues, "I only have a
sense of the future. I can't tell you about my past, only what I'm
working on at the moment or what I will be doing tomorrow."
In the past Lee's best known work has been environmental, or
at least audience involving. And the bulk of this work was done
with Franne Lee. While the division of labor was generally
"costumes by Franne Lee," "sets by Eugene Lee," the work was
often collaborative with credit for sets going to both. Because
the words "environmental" and "audience involving" tend to
have specific, perhaps negative, connotations for some people,
it should be pointed out that Lee's work is meticulous, technically sophisticated, and highly conceptual-always evolving from
ideas he finds implicit in the script or scenario. "I hate those
theatres where people come up and talk to you," he says, in an
attempt to distance himself from certain types of environmental
production in which actors directly engage audience members
physically or verbally.
Although Lee's concept of involvement is more one of psychological participation, he hates a passive audience. He becomes
excited when describing the atmosphere at Trinity Square and
the production of Billy Budd in particular: "We would roll big
cannons out at the audience and they would climb out of their
seats because they knew the cannons were going to fire. I love
to shake them up, see them on their feet and moving-theatre
that's outside and inside at the same time." One of Lee's first
productions to do this was Alice in Wonderland (1969-70)
collectively created by Andre Gregory and the Manhattan Project. The performing space was basically a thrust stage but the

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