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Set Design |
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Eastman designed sets for the following plays of Maria Irene Fornes: Evelyn Brown (A Diary) , A Matter of Faith, A Visit, Sarita, Enter The Night, Abingdon Square, Fefu and Her Friends, It Is It Is Not, The Summer in Gossenssas and Letters From Cuba. He also produced the set designs for Fornes' direction of Uncle Vanya and Hedda Gabler. 'Every set I design with Irene is an opportunity to design a heaven room. They are always interiors. No matter what the theatre, we design and build our own walls to cover the existing walls. When I say heaven, I'm speaking of a purity. It's all based on reality and research, but captured in a golden moment. There is a purity and honesty of materials. The woodwork is well oiled like a church pew or left alone like Vermeer stripped of color or stained a pure red. A warehouse space will have a fresh coat of whitewash. An unpainted plaster wall can have the texture of a Monet. If we think of marble, it's alabaster. In everything there is a spirit of housekeeping. I will always remember Irene's big note when I was designing Abingdon Square. "In this house there is always fresh cream to feed the cat." When we're in the theatre together it's all about work. We're so serious and so butch and we laugh a lot. At any moment Irene will lean over and say sotto vocce "I tell you, we are gorgeous." If you're being as "artistic" as we are, the idea of recognising it is a secret pleasure. Because, before all, Irene has taught me that hard work is our duty and our first pleasure.' Donald Eastman in Conducting a Life: Reflections on the Theatre of Maria Irene Fornes, p.105. Our thanks to Donald Eastman, the editors, and Smith and Kraus Publishers for their kind permission to use this. See Publications. Donald Eastman interviewed Interview granted when Donald Eastman spoke with Mala Renganathan in New York, April 1 1996. Mala Renganathan: How did you come across Maria Irene Fornes? Donald Eastman: I was assisting a designer, Randy Barcello, and he was designing at INTAR and from that was offered a design job at INTAR. INTAR was the Hispanic American Theater where Irene was playwright-in-residence. She was a playwright-in-residence and helped then to produce a lot there. And that's the way we met each other ... she decided to have me do the scenery for 'Evelyn Brown: A Diary'. at the Theatre for the New City, and that's our first time working together. MR: How was your experience? DE: It was interesting. I was personally struck with specially the design process. It's basically a theater-piece that was created from the diary of a twentieth century housekeeper who cleaned people's houses where they were living and also had her own part of the house. It was literally the diarist's way of describing just everyday things she would do - mop up, scrub floors, made bread, just on and on like that. And Irene was so impressed with the simplicity and the beauty of the whole idea of elevating hard work to the standard of art or someone's life of hard work. And so scenically there were two women who were playing both the same characters, with the name, of kind of Abong 1 and Abong 2, or something like that. I don't remember anything having numbers, just two women in double roles. Giving images she described to me that of kind of mind chat, or kind of coal-hide something, like that of people doing work but mixing with that the vocabulary of a house; also the idea of something being work and unpainted wood, all very simple. And what came out of the design was a wood box, with perhaps many doorways - doorways to the left, doorway to the right, doorway in the back, sort of double doors in the back. The feeling is there was a hallway running across from one side of the stage in the middle of this room. What you have is, you open a door and there'll be another hallway and another door. There was this constant depth of doors upon doors, upon doors, upon doors. All of this was built. All of this, wood walls, fine plank. MR: And I've heard that for Irene the performance script gets ready as the performance is being done. How was your experience with set designing? Is it a well-planned thing or ...? DE: It's funny ... that Uncle Vanya existed before we started working on it. I mean the scripts existed in some form or the other. Because I don't know I could work there, you know during the day. I remember there were times when there were scenes written the night before the rehearsal. But may be it was always ideas about ten scenes, or there'll be a scene with a couple of close-ups, and then you find a play. So it was really ... Irene was really involved in the work but scenically that was how it was established, because I guess you know, certainly someone like Irene is especially a visual person. You know, coming of visual artist ... the dialogue comes to her. I think she always imagines the person in an environment. She knows, it's not just about a person talking, it's about a person talking in a basement or talking on a porch or talking in a bed box. MR: So it almost sets the scene already? DE: Yes. For Irene, very totally well controllably, talks about the set even though it might not be what some one else would call as a complete script. It just comes, the day the characters come, that day the Broadway women come. MR: The picture and then the word ...? DE: It's right. On top of each other. And then funny things happen, you know, with the given idea the space generally dictates ... you know - 'can we have this?' 'can it be very tall?' 'can it be very wide?' 'can it be very deep ..?' And so that's definitely a fault, if it got faults with this set. Irene and I really kind of design it together. We like to sit down together and talk and change and talk. Then she'll add a piece or take away a piece. I think it becomes very good together looking at two-dimensional piece of paper in terms of plan - you know, what you call ground plan - and evolving a set along a glamorous plan. MR: I understand, because as she's also a painter, it must be very interesting to do it. And specifically another thing ... when you read the published text, the text is almost like, the set is there and you can't make any changes in it. DE: That's the way Irene enjoys doing it. When I read the play, something that was done together is as exactly as I told you that there aren't any choices. What the choice is like, you know, where you have to put the furniture like this (laughs), which is something we worked out together. ©2005 Marla Renganathan. Many thanks to Mala for allowing this interview to be used on this website. For Mala Renganathan, Maria Irene Fornes' Theatre: A Study see Academia.
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As with Gabriel Berry and Anne Militello, an understanding of Donald Eastman's collaboration with Fornes is essential. Eastman studied at the California Institute of the Arts moving on to the Yale School of Drama with Ronald Chase and Robert La Vigne. As he acknowledges in the interview which follows, early recognition of himself, Berry, and Militello, by Fornes, has helped each of them to launch themselves into the US mainstream. The Village Voice awarded him an Obie in 1989 for Sustained Excellence in Set Design. Still working within Off-Off Broadway Eastman also designs for mainstream theatre and opera and has worked with film.