ARTicles vol.5 i.2bc: Creating the Onion Cellar

 The Dresden Dolls have been called a lot of things – from campy cabaret rockers to gloomy bohemians – but set designer Christine Jones is the only one to refer to the duo as a centrifugal force. “I started thinking of the room as a centrifuge,” Jones says. “The Dolls are the centrifugal force, so they have to be in the center. Everything else radiates out.”

Jones has designed a set for the Zero Arrow Theatre that allows the action of The Onion Cellar to “swirl around” the band. She adds quickly that the audience will circulate too. “I want everyone to feel as much as possible as if they inhabit the same space. They more fluid the relationship between actor and audience, the better.”

What should the audience expect when they enter this metaphorical whirligig? “It’s a club more than it is a set. I did a lot of research on night clubs,” Jones says, “but it doesn’t pretend to be a club at the exclusion of being a theatre.” The audience will settle into cabaret-style seating, rather than the rows traditionally found in theatres. This will encourage audience members to interact with one another as well as facilitate actor-audience relationships.

Jones’ desire to create cabaret atmosphere stems from discussions that began when the show was in its conceptual stages. Although The Onion Cellar is theatre, Jones emphasizes that her set is “a place where something real can happen.” While Zero Arrow is not literally a cellar, Jones considers that entering it should feel like a departure from the outside world. “The lobby leads to a threshhold, which leads into the space. There is an experience of being led and guided.”

Although Jones has never designed a theatre as a club before, she drew on her rich variety of artistic experiences. “When I was younger I wanted to be a dancer, but ultimately I knew I didn’t want to be a performer, because I wanted to be involved in projects from the point of conception.” As a young student, Jones was not aware that “set designer” was a profession. “One of my teachers said that I might like to think about being a “scenographer,” and I thought he said “stenographer,”” Jones laughs.”I didn’t know what he meant.” Jones soon learned about the art of stage design, and she has also worked as director on a project called “Theatre of One,” in which an actor performs for a single audience member. In recent years, she has developed an interest in creating visual art. She is quick to explain, however, that her work on non-theatrical projects is a means towards improving her set design dexterity. When a set designer works, she bows to the needs of the play’s text and the director, but a visual artist is her own boss. Jones believes that “it’s important to do something where you are the closest entity to whatever is being created. By pursuing an art form that isn’t collaborative, I strengthen my collaborative muscles.”

A.R.T. audience members may recall that Jones’ collaborative muscles are in excellent condition. Her design for Nocturne in 2000 created a haunting, surreal world in which a bathtub overflows with books and a child’s corpse lingers in the background. Her set for 1999’s The Cripple of Inishmaan represented the impoverished and isolated landscape of the Aran Islands, while The Taming of the Shrew in 1998 featured an onstage 18-wheeler. Though Jones has enjoyed working with many directors, she has a “simbiotic relationship” with The Onion Cellar director Marcus Stern, who also directed Nocturne.

For The Onion Cellar, Jones helped Stern determine both the narrative and ambience of the evening; the show began as a concept rather than a fleshed-out plan. In December 2005, when cast and artistic staff gathered for a two-week workshop to develop the project, Jones came prepared with dozens of images to spark everyone’s imagination. They ranged from stark portraits of prison cells to color-streaked abstractions. “I have a large personal collection of pictures,” Jones says. “For every project, I choose images. Usually I don’t do this until I’ve done an extensive script breakdown and distilled the text down to poetic form. I have to plant enough seeds so that there will be vibration.” For The Onion Cellar, however, no text existed when Jones began to work. She looked to the Dresden Dolls instead, focusing on their music and lyrics. “That was all I had,” she says. Because these visual images predated the script, they influenced the narrative, rather than the other way around.

Images and design may be Jones’ primary work, but she knows that they don’t exist in a vacuum. “If I weren’t a theatre designer,” she says, “I wouldn’t be any other kind of designer. Design is interesting to me as it relates to narrative: the design has to support the narrative. Storytelling is the most important thing.”

Neena Arndt is a second-year dramaturgy student at the A.R.T./MXAT Institute for Advanced Theatre

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