MEDEA

August 2015

 

The internship program at David Korins Design culminates in a presentation to the studio of a paper project single-set design, chosen by the intern and theoretically staged on the Playwrights Horizons mainstage.

 

This adaptation of Euripedes’s play focused on Medea’s non-Greek status and how she is forced to adapt and react to a frighteningly alien and masculine culture. Since the entirety of the play takes place outside of the house of Jason and Medea, it was important to reflect their crumbling marriage in the exterior architecture. Inspired by the ancient ruins of the palace of Knossos on Crete, the final design abstracted the traditional Greek architectural iconography of columns, geometry, tiles, and white marble into an unsettling and open playing space.

 

As this is a Greek play, there is a lot of “telling, not showing” when it comes to major dramatic moments. This problem was solved by a theoretical collaboration with the lighting designer. The most prominent scenic elements were a series of massive light boxes that used interior-mounted LED bulbs to quickly and dramatically change the mood onstage. Additionally, an upstage projection screen used a combination of silhouetted actors and designed projections to illustrate the flashbacks and violent moments highlighted in the play. For the final scene of the play where Medea murders her children, the murders were shown in silhouette, immediately followed by a reveal where the projection screen sinks into the deck, leaving Medea standing alone onstage with the consequences of her actions.