Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 1991 - 14

Right: Sophocles' Ajax directed by Peter
Sellars (American National Theatre,
Washington, D.C., 1986).
Below: Ajax. Tsypin created a "monolithic
gray-white facade" that represented the
Pentagon, but also resembled a slaughter
house. When Ajax was released from the
booth, he was so soaked in blood that it ran
down the raked, steel floor. In the second
part, the floor was supposed to suggest a
beach, water washed over the stage from an
upstage trough for nearly an hour.

srrucrure.
I faced a purely technical problem: Because of the way me opera is
srructured only dancers are allowed
ro be on the floor-there is choreography throughout the whole
opera which means I have ro leave
the floor empry. Yet I've got hundreds of people-a huge chorus
that is very imporrant which means
I've got ro use all the verrical space.
So the result is as if tWO Islamic
manuscripts stretched into space
yet preserved the scale and verricaliry of it. And then make the light do
the job. [Jim Ingalls is the lighting
designer.] All the movemem, all the
changes, all the differem locales are
indicated with light.
mong the srriking things
about Tsypin and his
work is the thoroughness
with which he talks about
a prod uction. Most designers are arriculate-some might say
surprisingly so given that they work in a
visual medium-but Tsypin talks like a
direcror.
"I have ro know a lot about the play,
almost as much as rhe d i recto r," he
explains. "At the same time, I'm very sensitive ro it and I welcome their ideas. I
get very excited and it makes me do
something different. If you work by
yourself all the time you repeat yourself
or your rrain of thought tends ro become
fixated on something, while conversation
with the director could jolt you into
something else. I find it invigorating. In
fact, that's what makes your work differem all the time. I feel that a set designer
has the pleasure of collaborating which is
someming few fine arrists can do."
His description of a production covers
literary metaphor, dramatic srructure,
historical and architectural references,
and the relevance of play ro the world
roday; it could be a lenure ro a dramatic
literature or directing class. This qualiry
is equally rrue of Tsypin's NYU menror,
designer John Conklin. In fact, while
Tsypin ultimately discusses the visual
aspect of a production, that does not necessarily seem ro be the starring poim or
the focus for him.
Hem] IV, Parts I and II is a case in
point. Describing the serring, Tsypin
provides a brief dissertation on
Shakespearean production and the
themes of Hem] IV. "You know," he
begins,

"One shop came up with the brilliam
solution of flexible metal with applied
foam. The walls moved, they were completely alive, you know, like in a dream
where things move around you. They
could squeeze people then all of a sudden
open up and change configuration completely. Peter created this unbelievable
sculptural wall that completely rransformed the space all the time and the set
rook me abuse," Tsypin recalled.
The sense of scale and height and the
use of steel come rogether in a breamtaking manner for The Death ofKfinghojfer.
The opera is by John Adams, the composer of Nixon in China which was
designed by Adrianne Lobel. Peter Sellars
is direering. It is not meam as a documemary or realistic depiction of evems
on any level. As Tsypin describes it:
... the real conflier of that opera
takes place on a spiriruallevel. I was
rrying ro capture a sense of place
where nothing from this world
exists; nothing is recognizable. It's a
terrirory of the mind. What was
imporranr was ro create an architecture or physical world that is almost
immaterial, nonexistent. I srudied
some Middle Eastern and Islamic
architecture and it srruck me how
12

1991

SUMMER

TD&T

differem the approach ro architecrure is from the Western approach
which emphasizes structureemphasizing the column, the
beam ....
The whole point of Western
architecture is that you are supposed ro understand how the building is put rogether. Of course, in
Russian Constructivism, then in
me deconstructivism of the last few
years, it's all about srructure or
desrroying that srructure. What
Islamic architecrure is rrying ro do
is ro diffuse the srrucrure and make
an undemanding of how a building
is put rogether impossible. It melts
imo the air, and there are layers and
layers of parrerns that prevenr you
from understanding where the
building starrs and where it ends .
Or its sense of scale is completely
obscured. It was very shocking to
me ro realize that. And of course,
light plays a main role. The way the
light is reflected and kind of swallowed by the millions of patterns.
So, without actual references to
Islamic architecture-with the
purely modern means at my disposal-I was trying to capture that
whole different approach to the

Shakespeare is so difficult because it
has been done so much it's really

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 1991