Working with Sonya on her set was awesome for (at least) three reasons:
1) The rhythmic precision of staining, painting, and all that fine detail work (even the most meticulous of paint jobs!) is just what a desk-bound, textbook-tied, bleary-eyed college student needs. I mean, sometimes it just feels like the work we do in school is just so unproductive, by which I mean it’s not often that we produce anything. I suppose we crank out essays, proofs, and powerpoints… And we can physicalize these things by printing them out… But sometimes it was just so refreshing to stand in the audience and say, “Hey, I actually painted that part!” Cleaning brushes, laying down painter’s tape, and paint-rolling the underside of a beam underneath the stairs that nobody really was able to see anyways – these jobs are enjoyable because of their repetitiveness, their pleasant tedium.
2) I came into the shop not having a solid understanding of what Sonya’s choices really meant for the production, so having the opportunity to talk with Sonya really cleared a lot up. I thought I was complimenting the design when I said that the various pieces of the set felt as if they were the aged artifacts of a local community theater, repurposed for a production, recycled… But actually I committed a faux-pas! Sonya helped me understand that the set is/was not so rag-tag and jumbled, there’s an internal structure and coherence of color across all pieces. Furthermore, the furniture wasn’t meant to look like the forgotten leftovers of a “community” theater… Rather, they were chosen to evoke the history of all Vanyas past, the changing interpretations of the Chekhov classic. They are still artifacts, but they originated from the deep recesses of a professional theater’s storage unit.
3) I’m big into electronic music / weird alt stuff, so I’m pretty sure I Shazammed (as a verb that word freaks me out) Sonya’s whole playlist. Highlights include:
Stop Talking – Memory Tapes
Medical Insurance – Levintina
Le Goudron – YACHT
So High – Ghost Loft
I Miss You – Bjork
FDB – Young Dro feat. (etc)
Default – Django Django
Sonya’s got great taste all around – in music, theater and set design.
