JACKSON BERKLEY

The Pushover is a new play by John Patrick Shanley that how good and evil manifests in three women who struggle — together, and alone — with their idea of the soul. The play takes place in three locations: an upscale New Mexico spa resort, a divey Chinese restaurant on Queens Blvd, and a neutral “void” where our protagonist’s session with a male therapist bookends the play. My main goal in designing the set was to provide a set that could easily serve as a backdrop for all three of these environments using a shared scenic vocabulary and minimal scene changes.

The breakthrough in my brainstorming came when I realized how much visual languages spa resorts in the Southwest borrow from Asian/Buddhist art and architecture; features like pagodas, exposed timber trim, and rice paper screens are commonplace to the Southwestern spa aesthetic. To bridge the worlds of New Mexico spa and Queens Chinese spot, I chose a light clay color for the wall paint finish, and framed the set with a header of lattice panels stretched with muslin, and two returns of muslin “canopies” leading upstage. The space transforms from New Mexico to Queens via a major scene change midway through the play: the reveal of the restaurant’s kitchen, the crux of the scene change, occurs via an actor-operated folding lattice panel that splits the center of the upstage wall.

As I have done in my past work with The Chain, I also served as the TD and led the build of the set, and provided maintenance during the tech process. The build went smoothly, aided by a great load-in crew and some excellent paint treatments by my colleague Saye Oyama. We were even able to repurpose a couple of large prop boxes that I had built for The Chain on a previous project as the restaurant kitchen’s “stove” and “refrigerator”. I love the challenge of getting creative with a limited budget, and was very pleased that we were able to deliver a clean, sophisticated set for The Pushover that both actors and audience could navigate with ease.