JACKSON BERKLEY

Becoming Eve is an intensely beautiful and tragic coming-of-age story that weaves together timely commentary on faith and religiosity, gender politics, and the search for meaning among disparate cultures. This was my third show working with Arnulfo Maldonado, whose design similarly wove together a synagogue, community center, classroom, and apartment into one multi-faceted set.

Like Curse of the Starving Class, the volume of set dressing for Eve was immense. All 24 shelves of the upstage bookshelves needed to be brimming with hardcovers, and books found there way into almost every corner of the set throughout our tech process. While a couple of these pieces ended up being cut during preview rehearsals, tech found me designing and fabricating three unique rolling utility tables, each with their own dressing and practical light. As a result, I worked with closely with electricians during my time on Eve.

In addition to a massive props package, Eve featured puppets that “aged” over the course of the show, as they represented our protagonist, Chava, in her male body before she transitioned. Working with puppet designer Amanda Villalobos and her team was a highlight of this process: many of my props interacted intimately with Amanda’s puppets and the puppeteers, and we maintained clear and steady communication amid a torrent of notes and changes during tech.

The most fun and challenging props projects included: fabricating practical Torah scrolls complete with custom-sewn velvet covers, fabricating practical tefillin, fabricating two kinds of Kosher cookies and a fake challah loaf, sourcing and distressing 20+ stacking chairs, correcting a pair of misfired CNC panels within 72 hours, swaddling an eerily realistic prop baby, and 3D printing a ner tamid lamp among many, many other small scenic motifs.