Scene Design for Mrs. Mannerly

Last week, I sat down with Laurel Shoemaker, who is the scenic designer for Mrs. Mannerly.  What is really exciting and fascinating about this production is that it utilizes very little set design, and instead relies on projections, which Laurel has been creating and photo-shopping.

The director for Mrs. Mannerly, Rob Urbinati is interested in creating sets out of found spaces.   So, in the Spring, Laurel took pictures of the Studio Theatre to help give him ideas about how to use the space.  What they decided was to put the production in the back, right corner and use minimal sets.  The set is the outline of a basketball court, a basketball net, a chandelier that will drop down for the bar scene, and then props and furniture Mrs. Mannerly will arrange during the performance.  In the collage below, you can see Laurel's picture of the Studio and then her design for the set.

With a minimal set, a lot of the stage story is going to be told by projections.  For the projections, Laurel brought in lots of images from the internet, photo-shopped to create what she needed, or with the help of a former grad student, created original drawings.  Here is just a smattering of different types of projections you'll see in the show.

School Pictures:
In the production, Jeffrey and the other kids in the manners class are all played by one actor, Mark McCarthy.  Laurel created a class of five students using old photos and photoshop.  There are couple of different pictures of the class, but here is one that shows them all together.

Manner's Book Illustrations
One of the other projections in the show are original pictures illustrated by David Tousley, a former UNL graduate student.  Laurel had found pictures in old manners books, and David created pictures modeled after some of the images.  Here is an example of two of them:

Different Inspirations for the Gym:

Although not part of the projection series, before the production Laurel researched older style gyms and pulled a couple of pictures that she shared with me.  My favorite one was the picture of the dance in the gym.  In Mrs. Mannerly, the gym doubles as a manners classroom, so I thought it was neat to see all the ways gyms get to perform multiple functions and create many types of settings.   

There is lots of other things that Laurel talked to me about, but the rest of it is up on our Pinterest page, in the board called "NRT's Production of Mrs. Mannerly."  While you are there, you can also check out Pinterest board for "NRT's Production of Emma."