A Radically Different Kind of Set Design

This fall, Abington Friends will be putting on the 2019 musical adaptation of the novel Alice by Heart. The story, a take on Lewis Carroll’s classic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, follows a teenage girl amidst the London Blitz in World War II. Alice, the protagonist, uses her fantastical sense of imagination to comfort her friend Alfred who is dying of tuberculosis. Meanwhile, they hide like many Londoners in an underground tube station. 

This interesting premise could be interpreted in countless different kinds of set design styles. For Technical Theatre Director and Facilities Manager Seth Schmitt-Hall, the idea of using AFS’s brand new state of the art projector for this particular show was a given. The design process began in the summer for both him and theater teacher and director Kittson O’Neill. 

When asked about the beginning of the process, Schmitt-Hall said, “the show comes first, and so Kittson talked about wanting it to be a very physical show –a circus– so there’s going to be some climbable silks. Then I came up with the idea, I was literally like driving down a highway and the first or second song was called ‘Down the Hole.’ It’s about Alice falling into Wonderland… I thought about how with the curvature of the London underground which is where the play is set and with the possibilities of using a very nice projector, we could use a sloped wall to bend the reality and gravity of Wonderland by creating a floor that turns into another dimension.” 

The day of the interview, I was able to assist in the cutting of the many curved pieces required to make the giant slide structure. The other physical components include one giant and one smaller staircase and likely a large ladder to be used for the Cheshire cat.

Many other physical elements are left incomplete due to O’Neill’s desire to figure out design choices as the rehearsal process progresses. In the meantime, there are some place holder items like acting cubes and pieces of wood, but many parts of the set will be decided later.

There is a lot of promise in this season’s physical design, but what sets it apart is the use of projections. 

Schmitt-Hall said, “I think the heart of this set design is going to be in the use of the projector. So, Josephine Zemsky [‘26] is the projection designer for the show. We just recently invested in a brand-new laser projector; our last projector was 6,000 lumens. This projector is 22,000 lumens. So, Josephine is going to basically animate, bring us into the world of Wonderland, what will physically be a drab or grey set into the vivid cacophony that will be Wonderland.”

The school invested in a top-of-the-line projector and, accordingly, the production value will be that much more innovative. With a show like Alice by Heart, with the many nonsensical and dreamlike components that make up the original Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, tools like a 22,000 lumen projector will help execute the many intricacies of the musical. 

 When asked about the design inspirations, Zemsky said, “We’re right now drawing a lot from the original designs of the book like the drawings and everything. That’s officially from Seth and then Percy [Kent ‘26] the stage manager and I have been talking about some cool projection lighting stuff… We’ve been thinking a lot about the caterpillar scene which is a lot of swirls and lighting. One of the main design elements right now is this swirly kind of hole thing… Obviously it’s in the London underground during the Blitz. And so there’s the whole tunnel for the train, during the Blitz people would lay down that’s where they would be, in the track… So the comparison between that and the hole she falls down to Wonderland spiral…[is] in our design.”

There were many exciting possibilities that Zemsky mentioned, like how the projector and the lighting together can make colored shadows on the actors as well as the potential to animate background characters like the lobsters in a song called “Those Long Eyes” or the guests at the Mad Hatter’s tea party. 

There are endless ways to incorporate the projector that will be explored in this show, though it is too early in the process for a lot of the specifics. In the coming weeks, the projection development will be ramping up, and the physical design choices will become more concrete, but one thing is clear; AFS is in for a completely new kind of viewing experience when the show is unveiled in the late fall!