The Drama Behind the Scenery : Talented set designers with a keen eye for detail leave a mark on the stage as clearly as the actors

If recent pop culture can be succinctly described, it might be called the Age of the Designer.

It started with designer jeans, and now it’s extended all the way to designer hand vacuums. The demand for designed goods, cars and living spaces are all telling signs of an ever-growing interest in how things look, and diminished interest in what’s inside the package. We have all heard the dangers of form over substance in many areas of society, and it’s also discussed in the theater.

“If everyone was aware of what we do, it would be a theater of design rather than a theater of plays,” says Cliff Faulkner.

While a typical theatergoer won’t recognize his (more seldom, her) name in the program, the set designer leaves a mark on the stage as clearly as the actors, playwright or director.

It’s certainly true among four of the major designers who live and/or regularly work in Southern California--Faulkner, D Martyn Bookwalter, John Arnone and Robert Israel.

For Faulkner and most of his peers, the stage designer’s ethic requires serving the play. They are also one player on what Faulkner calls “the team”: the director, the lighting and sound designers, the costumer, the composer (if there is a score), the playwright (if it’s a new play). Given this, the stage designer’s role remains a kind of unofficial secret for most audiences.

This leads to misconceptions. A popular one: Bigger is better. We expect big things from a set by John Napier (“Nicholas Nickleby,” “Starlight Express,” “Cats,” “Les Miserables”), Ming Cho Lee (“Traveler in the Dark”) or David Hockney.

Most elements of a good set, however, are in the details.

Take, for instance, the task facing Bookwalter in designing the set for British playwright Donald MacKechnie’s “Meetin’s on the Porch” at the Canon Theatre earlier this year. His job appeared spelled out by the title. “With a play about three women who get together on a porch,” says Bookwalter, “the set almost speaks for itself.”

Almost. With theater design, nothing is ever so clear-cut. Bookwalter learned, for instance, that the original London production had placed the porch far up-stage, cutting off actor-audience contact. Besides, “The design wasn’t at all in the American Midwest style. I had to explain this to Donald, who was co-directing (with Richard Olivier).”

Bookwalter also wanted a porch that spoke to the characters, not just another porch.

“I designed it with three posts, one for each woman. Probably no one but me ever noticed this. But maybe it got into the audience’s subconscious. That’s where a lot of my work plays itself out.”

This is a craft that demands mastery of the subtle detail, which is usually associated with intimate scale. (The craft is also associated with the work of men: fewer women belong to the ranks of set designers, for example, than those of lighting and costume design.)

Israel, however, consistently works in large scale, because he spends much of his time designing for epic visualist Martha Clarke or for opera, where he has become famous for his grand, post-modern gestures (examples include a much-praised, much-cursed design scheme for the Seattle Opera’s “Ring” Cycle and “Mahagonny” at the Music Center). The rest of his time is spent teaching design at UCLA, so Israel can afford to be choosy about job offers.

He is rare. Most designers take as much work as their schedules permit. Faulkner, for example, is typically jumping between three or four projects, mostly at South Coast Repertory, where he is resident scenic designer. Arnone and Bookwalter, like a lot of theater people, split their time between television and stage. When Arnone isn’t preparing a set for a future show at La Jolla Playhouse, where his work is frequently seen (recent shows were “Macbeth” and “Lulu”), he is busy in production for “The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd.” You’ll more often find Bookwalter, one of Los Angeles’ most prolific set makers, at NBC studios than at L.A. Theatre Center, where he designed the just-completed “Strong Man’s Weak Child,” a play by Israel Horovitz.

“In our field,” says Arnone, “you spend a great deal of time doing research. You can’t clock that time like a lawyer. I don’t even want to think about what I make in the theater, if I broke it down to an hourly basis.”

Nevertheless, at something under TV standard wages, the best set designers are coveted and wooed by stage directors--a great advantage, designers say, since a successful set depends on a sound relationship between director and designer. “If they really want you,” says Bookwalter, “you’re off to a good start.”

In some cases, the demand for designers has forced directors to sign up the likes of Israel and Arnone well over a year in advance of production. Israel is committed to Clarke, his most frequent collaborator (“Garden of Earthy Delights,” “Vienna: Lusthaus”) for an October opening of her “Endangered Species” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, after which he has the ballet of “Romeo and Juliet” for Florence (summer 1991) and a “Traviata” for Toronto (September 1991).

Arnone worked with La Jolla artistic director Des McAnuff on “Macbeth” for a year, and planned far in advance for La Jolla’s current production, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.” His 1991 plans include “The Illusion” with director Sharon Ott at Berkeley Repertory, and 1992 has him working with composer Steve Reich on “The Cave” in Stuttgart and at UCLA’s Next Wave Festival.

“The need to plan in advance,” says Arnone, “isn’t only tight schedules, but the fact that the more directors want to work with certain designers, the earlier they need to contact them.”

With tight schedules come budget constraints, especially for such non-profit theaters as the Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles Theatre Center and the Grove Shakespeare Festival. At the Grove, the average set construction cost (with non-union labor) is between $13-15,000, plus a $2-3,000 wage for the designer. LATC pays a similar wage, with an average set cost (also non-union) of $18,000. The Taper pays a heftier $6,000, and budgets between $40-70,000 for a set’s cost (using a union crew).

For all the long-term planning, the key elements of a set design can occur in an instant. Bookwalter recalls that “on the same day I was doing the (installation) for ‘Meetin’s on the Porch,’ I sat down over lunch with Peggy Shannon, the director of ‘And Baby Makes Seven,’ and drew out the basic set on a napkin. I’ve never had an easier time with a director in my life.”

Bookwalter also notes that easier relationships do not necessarily lead to better work: “Some of my most difficult collaborations have made very successful theater. Charles Marowitz, for example, who wants to put his stamp on whatever he does. We’d clash on the plans for ‘What the Butler Saw’ (at LATC) but I’d work with him again in a second.”

But perhaps not with playwright/director Edward Albee, whom Bookwalter didn’t always see eye to eye with on the “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” set at the Doolittle Theatre. “I wanted to move the play’s time frame into the present; he wanted things untouched. I didn’t find him to be an exciting director. The set suffered because of it.”

The difference is good and bad communication. “Sometimes,” says Israel, “you have no idea where the director is coming from.” That can be fatal, for, in Faulkner’s view, “the director’s job is to be my guide.”

But, after he has been hired, the designer’s first step on the journey of a play production comes before the first meeting with the director. Arnone, Bookwalter, Faulkner and Israel stress the primacy of reading the play, which, Israel says, “isn’t the same thing as reading a novel.”

Even at this early stage, the work styles of these four vary greatly. Faulkner scribbles sketches on a note pad while reading. Israel reads the text, ignores any stage directions and takes no notes. Bookwalter takes many notes.

Arnone’s process makes him sound like a researcher at the Library of Congress. “I read the play over and over, and then I study the political, social and cultural background of the play’s setting, or the author’s own time. Too much knowledge at this stage is not a bad thing.”

Bookwalter’s study in his Eagle Rock home, like Faulkner’s in Long Beach and Israel’s in Brentwood, is lined with books. “Set designers are in love with words and research,” says Bookwalter. “But the research has a very practical purpose: If you know the play up and down, you’ll never get lost during production.” He adds with disarming frankness: “By the time of the first meeting, I find that I know the play much better than the director.”

These meetings are often brainstorming sessions, although these, too, vary from designer to designer. Israel, for instance, has worked so long with Martha Clarke “that we’ll say the same thing at the same time. More than anything, we have a great friendship that’s focused by our work. She’s intuitive; I’m very intellectual.”

Arnone has developed a similarly intense interaction with La Jolla’s McAnuff. Like Israel-Clarke, it’s characterized by lengthy discussion and drafting and re-drafting. “With ‘Macbeth,’I looked for inspiration at the ancient stone monoliths at Stonehenge and Avebury. Then I thought of what today’s architecture would look like when it was the ruins of the future. I conceived of glass buildings in decay, then sketched out Celtic structures.

“Melding the two created this neutral, prison-like structure, with eroded concrete columns which suggest the ancient monoliths. Among some studies I did of Macbeth’s castle at Dunsinane, Des picked out one drawing of a wood castle on fire that he wanted expanded to the look of the whole show.”

Directors will take charge of a design if they feel the need to. Arnone: “I don’t know of a director who doesn’t have a strong visual sense and prejudice.” Bookwalter, on the other hand, says that director Robert Egan, for whom he designed the ivy-infested South African boys school for “The Film Society” at LATC, “isn’t a visual person, but his productions always have great designs.”

In the eyes of one director for whom Bookwalter and Faulkner have both worked--Grove Shakespeare Festival artistic director Thomas F. Bradac--the designers themselves are as different as the sets they make. “Cliff seems to work very methodically. He may make scene-by-scene sketches. He thinks in ordered sequences. Martin likes to jump on an idea and run with it as far as he can, and if it doesn’t work, leap to another one.”

“I like to think that there’s a range to my work,” says Faulkner. “My approach is always to think that the play has never been done before. I try to avoid looking at past productions.”

One that was hard to avoid and re-invent was South Coast Repertory’s “Sunday in the Park With George,” with its centerpiece as Georges Seurat’s huge painting, “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.” With this show, design ideas and dramatic ideas between director and actor became identical: “We tried out an endless number of ideas for how George’s model-girlfriend, Dot, steps out of the painting she’s posing for in the first scene to establish her own character. In the New York staging, she bursts out of her dress. We thought that was too much of a gimmick.

“Our problem was that we were struggling with this too much, trying to come up with something spectacular. Our solution was simplicity itself: Dot would stand for George in a pool of light, and then move out of it into her own world.”

Simplicity has become a watchword for much of the most acclaimed recent designs. John Napier’s gritty, sooty structure for “Nicholas Nickleby” virtually melted into the background. Arnone cites the minimal designs for Ingmar Bergman’s “Hamlet” and Georgio Strehler’s “The Tempest” as classic cases where “the most stripped-down work is the best way to serve the play. It’s wrong to think that an elaborate-looking set is in anyone’s best interest.”

Indeed, Arnone’s working credo is “finding the simplest expression.” For Bookwalter, “even though I’m hired by the producer, I work for the director, so I try to give the director everything he or she wants.” Faulkner claims a style rather than a credo: “I search for what is intrinsically emotional in a theatrical sense.”

Israel, by contrast, distrusts emotions: “Don’t forget that anything you feel in the gut has to go through the brain. But every good design emerges from some non-verbal connection with the drama. If my work isn’t dramatic, there’s no use for it. Because I’m a supporting player--just like the actor, I would emphasize--I’m there to support the drama. Anything else isn’t design; it’s decoration.”