In preparation for scenic design for my first mainstage in Spring 2027, I wanted to strengthen and regain my skills and approaches as a scenic designer, since I haven’t designed in two years. With this idea in mind, fellow theatre artist Oliver Twitchell and I chose to mock costume design and scenic design a production of The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams.

I was drawn to Williams’s works, and specifically wanted to design the memory play in the three-quarter thrust to communicate the proximity the family feels living on top of each other in a small apartment in St. Louis.

In my design, I wanted to give actors room to move throughout the space and place furniture in triangles to create strong stage pictures for the director and actors to explore. I felt the climactic moments of the play were the dinner party with Jim and Tom’s final monologue at the end of the play. With these two moments in mind, I placed the dining table on a 1’ level in the bottom corner of the platform, drawing the audience’s eyes to this location, which for some looks like a display. For Tom’s final exit, I make the fire escape a trap door that leads to the theatre's basement, placing the audience in the high-rise, small, cramped apartment the actors play in.

For color, I chose to stick with muted tones to see the world through the eyes of the characters, mundane and sorrowful. The walls resemble a very pale blue, like glass, reinforcing that the environment they are in is just as fragile as their emotions and personal stakes. On the upstage left wall, the portrait of their father hangs as one of the only decorative pieces in their home. I wanted to focus on this portrait as a force that lingers over each character and always draws the audience's eyes.

The father’s portrait shows a clearly painted torso with a messy and unrecognizable face. This choice was made to stay true to the context of a memory play. The father is a character never seen by the audience and a distant memory for the family. With distant memorizes comes forgetten features and foggy context, like a painting smeared by an artist’s hands.