ARTicles vol. 3 i.3a: David Zinn: Designing Olly

Amy Nora Long talks with David Zinn, the set and costume designer for Highway Ulysses, who returns this spring for Olly’s Prison. ANL: What are your goals as a designer? DZ: Design is always about creating an environment in which the story can be received in the clearest way. ANL: How do you use the space for Olly’s Prison? DZ: I’ve never designed a show before where I have included the audience as much as we do here. We put the audience and the stage in the same room. I am just making a background, I am not trying to make a big statement. It should feel like the fuzzy stuff behind your parents in every snapshot you’ve taken of them. ANL: What will the costumes look like? DZ: They are very simple. It should feel like these people just showed up in some clothes. ANL: What is it like working with Robert Woodruff? DZ: Robert questions everything. It’s always a process of paring away so there’s not anything in the space except what you need. One of the things I like about Robert is that we don’t have to articulate what we are afraid of because we are both afraid of the same thing. ANL: What are you afraid of? DZ: Cliché. We try to get away from gestures that don’t have meaning anymore. There’s nothing unfamiliar in this space but what might be unfamiliar is the air around them, the isolation. There was nothing in Ulyssesthat was not real. It’s that the objects collided in a way that gave them new meaning. Amy Nora Long is a second–year Dramaturgy student at the A.R.T./MXAT Institute for Advanced Theatre Training.