Stage Design: Making Everything Work
Make it Sparkle Video with Rachel Hauck
Broadway Set Designer
4:29 (runtime)
Director’s Notes
In the rich world of stage design, every detail counts and the collaboration between various designers forms the core of the creative process. In this insightful video, renowned Broadway Set Designer Rachel Hauck sheds light on the nuanced dance between holding space for one's creative vision and yielding to collaborative insights. With a focus on trust, emotion, and creating a safe artistic environment, Rachel paints a picture of the journey to finding the "nut in the center" of a truly immersive stage design.
Collaborative Synergy: Rachel emphasizes the value of collaborative synergy among designers, likening a well-coordinated team to the "five fingers on a hand." By spending ample time together, designers can foster mutual understanding and work towards a shared goal.
Balancing Ego: An essential skill for designers is maintaining a delicate balance between holding one’s ground and being open to others' inputs. This requires enough ‘ego’ to believe in one’s ideas while being receptive to potentially better suggestions from others.
Emotional Design: The essence of stage design is often grounded in the emotional undercurrents of a production. Directors and designers communicate in the language of feelings to sculpt the character's journey and the overall narrative—through meticulous attention to the space, the world, and the costumes.
Safe Creative Space: Rachel underscores the necessity of a safe creative space where designers can freely express their raw, "dumb" ideas, which often pave the way for brilliance. She describes the best days as those where divergence from specific requests can lead to something more profound and resonating.
Shared Vocabulary and Trust: Building a shared vocabulary with trust at its cornerstone is vital. While it is a challenging endeavor prone to missteps and disagreements, finding the right collaborators who can genuinely listen and understand each other fosters a process that can bring the best ideas to life.
About Rachel Hauck
Rachel Hauck is a set designer based in New York. She designs new plays and musicals on Broadway, Off Broadway and for regional theater, frequently working on world premiere productions.
Rachel recently designed the Broadway production of Latin History for Morons written by and staring John Leguizamo, Hadestown for the National Theater in London, and Othello and Twelfth Night for the Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park. She also regularly designs for such Off Broadway theaters as the Public Theater, New York Theatre Workshop, Playwrights Horizons and the Signature Theatre as well as for ground breaking downtown companies such as Ars Nova and Soho Rep. Ms Hauck has also designed extensively for regional theater including an extended relationship with the Oregon Shakespeare festival and the Mark Taper Forum, and work at the Guthrie Theater, Arena Stage and the McCarter Theater among many, many others.
Rachel was the Resident Set Designer at the O’Neill Playwrights Conference for ten years. As such, she worked with more than 70 playwrights, focusing on their work dramaturgically from a design perspective. For many years, she was also a regular designer at the Mark Taper Forum’s New Work Festival in Los Angeles. She has taught at Brown University, Vassar College, NYU, Cal Arts and currently teaches at Princeton University. She remains dedicated new play development and the education of young artists, and continues to work with students at the National Theater Institute at the O’Neill whenever possible.