Interview: Scenic Designer Vincent Mountain Sets Alley's MIDSUMMER on a New Stage

Get ready to see the forests, its trees, Athens, fairies, young confused lovers, a traveling theatre troupe, everything really, in IMAX. Not on the silver screen, but the wooden plank floor of the Hubbard Theatre stage.

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM is the first Shakespearean staging for the new, renovated version of the Hubbard Theatre. So, while the Alley's previous Shakespeare stagings were already impressive, A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM means to top them. There's a 20-ft wide moon, a 19 member cast, 43 costumes, original music with live musicians. And the story unfurls across a 65-by-60 foot space. Below, scenic designer Vincent Mountain tells us how these staggering numbers amount to a staggering play.

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What approach have you taken with A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM set design for the Alley?

Vincent Mountain: One of the ideas Shakespeare deals with in A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM concerns theatre-making. Oberon announces "I am invisible" and he is. The Mechanicals worry about the need for a prologue for their play to warn the court audience no harm will come from their swords, Pyramus will not actually be killed, and in fact, Pyramus is really the actor Nick Bottom. They discuss stagecraft when deciding how to bring moonlight into the chamber, or how to represent a wall.

This production embraces the play's theatricality by openly showcasing the newly renovated Hubbard Stage, revealing the stage machinery and using it to our advantage. A traditionally painted image of a 19th century forest appears in the court scene, where we see it as both a piece of stagecraft, a soft drop, and as the means to conjure the magical idea of the "woods". A large painted moon is seen simultaneously as a theatrical flat, and an alluring celestial body.

How will you use the design to make a connection with the audience?

Vincent Mountain: The actors are in a large black space, the main playing space is on the thrust, where they are intimately engaged with the audience. There is no attempt to trick the audience or to create a false place to set the play's story in. If you listen, the play says exactly what is happening and you must take it at its word.

The staging?

Vincent Mountain: The play exists for 120-plus minutes on the stage, but really in the whole theatre and in the imaginations of the audience members. The play is performed in a theatre, acknowledging the presence of the audience, engaging their imagination through the use of language and movement by the highly skilled resident company of actors. There is nothing up our sleeve.

What are the considerations you have to make for the set? How has the space made your job easier or harder?

Vincent Mountain: Every production is a unique collaboration between the director, designers, actors, production crew, text, and theatre space. Change one aspect, and it is an entirely different result. In some ways, the play is more than its performance. What we see onstage is a living embodiment of the many weeks of hard work put in by many dozens of people. When we say the "theatre", we really mean the physical building, the offices, the shops, the rehearsal rooms, the administrative, production, and artistic staff whose expertise and labor is fused into the temporal experience the audience comes to see and hear. This organic combination of experience is what is unique, and also what creates the personality of the Alley Theatre.

VINCENT MOUNTAIN has worked professionally as a designer for a range of theatres, including small experimental companies, regional theatres, opera companies, commercial theatres and television/film. Previous designs for the Alley Theatre include Macbeth, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Devil's Disciple, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Orpheus Descending, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and Sherlock Holmes. See more from Mountain at http://www-personal.umich.edu/~vincemtn/.

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM by William Shakespeare, directed by Gregory Boyd, begins performances Friday, October 7, opens officially Wednesday, October 12, and runs through Saturday, November 5 in the Hubbard Theatre. For more information, please call 713-220-5700 or visit alleytheatre.org. Tickets start at $26.

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM is suitable for general audiences ages 12 and up.

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