Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 2018 - 27

Josafath Reynoso |

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Photo by Josafath Reynoso.

In this production of Tennessee Williams'
play, the space is hollow, hermetic, and
overflown with the silent ghosts of memory-the character's unfulfilled dreams,
constantly looming behind them in the
translucent reflections of the glass-onglass walls. Familiar shapes evoke a sense
of dread. The bed in the middle of the room,
exalted to the epic proportions of a pagan
altar, forces the characters to communicate while putting their sexual impulses on
display. The front wall encloses the space

Jesús Hernández |

and turns the audience into voyeuristic witnesses of the surgical violence, like watching animals in a glass box, tearing each
other apart.
Brick stares deep into the space but
instead meets the reflection of his father;
an ominous premonition of what he will
become. Maggie's ghost is sad under the
golden lights. It roams around the exquisitely furnished room and it squirms lustful
on the bed in one last desperate attempt
to spark her husband's desire, but what we

see is but the vanishing image of a woman.
We see right through her.
Josafath Reynoso is a Mexican scenographer currently working as an assistant
professor at the University of Richmond.
He holds an MFA in scenic design from the
University of Tennessee and a BFA in scenography from Escuela Nacional de Arte
Teatral (ENAT). In the U.S., he has designed
for Virginia Stage Company, Triad Stage,
Alice Jepson Theatre, Clarence Brown Theatre, Lexington Children's Theatre, Donald
Bedell Performance Hall, among others,
and internationally for Teatro del Borde
(Argentina), Escena 8 (Venezuela), KCDC
(Israel), Teatro Salvador Novo (Mexico),
among others.
He was awarded the Gold Medal at
World Stage Design 2017 in the emerging
category, the 2015 USITT Scene Design
Award, 2014 SETC Scenic Design Award
for his design of The Hairy Ape, 2013 BroadwayWorld Award for Our Country's Good,
and the SETC Ready-for-Work Award for
The Threepenny Opera.

Psico/Embutidos

The scenery is designed as a digestive system, consisting of 20 cabins, each inhabited
by a character. Characters communicate
with each other by sets of three to six
cabins via stairs and slides as intestines. In
them, the viewer moves from cabin to cabin
and is digested by the living organism, like
the human body enters as a food by mouth
and is sent off at the end by a black dark
tunnel like the rectum. The whole piece
is made up in times of 2 minutes; every 2
minutes there is a change of light, every two
minutes the viewer changes cabin and is
related to a different character, every two
minutes the actor repeats its dynamics in
front of a different audience, and every 2
minutes there is an audible alarm-much
like an industrial production line.
Jesús Hernández was born in Mérida,
Yucatán, México. He is architect from the
Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán. As a
set and light designer, he has worked in
more than 100 projects, including opera,

Photo by Samuel Padilla,
courtesy of Jesús Hernández.

theatre and street theatre. He was selected to participate as an exhibitor at the
World Stage Design 2009 in Seoul, South
Korea and the World Stage Design 2013
in Cardiff, Wales, UK. He was also part of
the Mexico's National Exhibition at the 11th
Prague Quadrennial (2007) and the curator

of the Mexico´s participation in 13th Prague
Quadrennial (2015). Between 2014 and 2017
he was a member of the national system of
art creators of the national fund for culture
and arts of Mexico. He won the Gold Award
in Space Design of the World Stage Design
2017. Visit www.jesushdz.mx.
SPRING 2018

THEATRE DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY

| 27

http://www.jesushdz.mx

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