AN INTERVIEW WITH NOISES OFF SET DESIGNER, TODD ROSENTHAL

By Mark Jacob Chaitin, Geffen Playhouse Manager of Education

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NOTE: This interview has been edited for length and clarity

MARK JACOB CHAITIN
How did you get your start in set design?

TODD ROSENTHAL
I went to college to play basketball. That was my passion. I went to a very small liberal arts school in Gambier, Ohio called Kenyon because I wanted to be a journalist. After my freshman year, I took a year off…and my mother was on the board of a theatre in Massachusetts called Stage West. I had a lot of experience in carpentry: I framed houses, I knew how to build things. So I walked into the shop [at Stage West], and I walked up to Daniel Culhane, the TD (Technical Director), and said, “I’d like a job”. He said, “Do you know what a flat is?” I said, “No”. And he said, “Then you're hired.” I actually bring that philosophy to recruiting students: the people that have no preconceptions about what [theater] is supposed to be…sometimes that’s an asset. After I graduated, I went down to Philadelphia and worked at the Walnut Street Theater as a carpenter and a welder and took art classes at night. Then I moved to New Haven, Connecticut, and I went to art school in New York City. Then I went to Yale, and then I came to Chicago, where it all happened.

MJC
In the early stages of working on a show, when you first get a script, what is your process? What kind of research do you do?

TR
The first thing I do is I buy books, because books are more scholarly. Books have better quality imagery. I try to introduce myself to new artists on every production, somebody that I'm not familiar with. I find my early inspiration from books, and then I can start to supplement that with the internet. I also have a kind of mental library of stuff. I think the older you get as a designer, the more you rely upon your experiences. I still do research, but not as extensively as I used to. I also draw upon artists that I've already explored.

Some directors are very much involved in the early stages of design and the blue sky parts, while some are much less prescriptive and react to what I give them. I work with directors in Europe who send me ground plans and I find that really helpful. Other directors have storyboards, so there's less flexibility, but then I'm empowered to make choices. What I do like about being at this stage in my career is that I can explore an idea that may not work. The only way you innovate is by doing something that you feel uncomfortable doing. Coming up with an idea – and - maybe that idea is terrible –- but the terrible ideas often fertilize the good ideas. You can't be afraid to show that stuff. You really have to be comfortable not knowing, because you spend most of the time not knowing what something is. I always say to my students, “Date an idea, don't marry it.” It's a transitory relationship with that idea. Ultimately that idea might lead to a better one, it might even be a really good idea for something else, or it will get revised because of budgetary restrictions. You have to revise, and 90% of the time, it turns out to be better.

MJC
Noises Off is kind of a love letter to theater-making. What do you love most about working in theater?

TR
What I love most about working with theater, at the end of the day, is the people that I work with. I get to work on all these different productions with all these different directors and designers from all over the world. It's like every day is something completely different. I work with so many directors who are vastly different. I love that we're working with different materials. We're taking chances on things.

MJC
The actors have to be very interactive with this set, so it's almost like an additional character in the show, adding to the chaos between the cast. Director Anna D. Shapiro said of working on Noises Off, “It was about designing a space that really helped create all of that collision…” How did that help shape your design process for this show?

TR
A driving idea behind the design was to show off the directing, the acting, and the physicality & precision of the choreography. Anna thought we needed a rug. I said, “You're going to cut the rug”. She goes, “What do you mean I will cut the rug?” “Because there's so much physicality and it's like you can't have anything more on stage than you really need.”

This is the third time I’ve done this show, and one thing I do know is that you can't mess with the ground plan. Michael Frayn has a very specific ground plan in mind. It doesn't make any logical architectural sense, because there's rooms upstairs, and yet downstairs you look out over the English countryside…but you have to go with it and start with that. Fitting that many doors in that tiny little space was challenging. The set also has to rotate so you can't have fully furnished rooms up there because when it spins around, what do you do with all that stuff? We're in the theater. If you see some theater convention, if you see some things backstage, that's all part of the experience of this show. Anna said “I want this to show off the craft of making theater.”

The plays I've been doing recently have been very didactic and very serious, set in a trailer park and some type of hovel of a motel room, things like that, where it's all very realistic. So this was a real, palate cleanser, and I think some people just want to have a good time.

The real challenge for Noises Off is do you want the set to look really good, or do you want the set [of Nothing On] to look like it's falling apart and not so great? I’ve done both in previous productions, but I finally said, “Listen. It should look good.” Because otherwise, [laughs] it reflects poorly on the designer. So our idea was that it was a well-designed set that travels. We had a lot of fun with it.

MJC
The actual set has to travel as well. It started in Chicago and is now in Los Angeles. How did you approach designing a set that would be used in two very different spaces?

TR
Ultimately we designed it to fit in the Geffen: the shape of that set is dictated from the Geffen stage, more than it is from Steppenwolf. When Anna saw the Broadway production, she felt the set look too grand, so we came up with what I call “retroactive dramaturgy”, where we had to make the set smaller to fit at the Geffen, but we were able to justify it, because ultimately we wanted the set to look like it was a touring production.

[For Noises Off] we thought many times about: “Do we feature the spinning of the set, or do we just sneak it in there during intermission?” There's something really fantastical about turntables. They're surprising, and if people don't expect them, they can be just a delightful transition. Featuring it helps the audience realize you're changing your perspective and you're going backstage; it's a wonderful transition.

When I first started designing, I had no idea about transitions. I did another show with Anna [Shapiro] on Broadway called The Motherf*cker with the Hat. We did it with Chris Rock and Bobby Cannavale, and Anna taught me the importance of transitions. We wanted the transitions to feel like a game of 3-Card Monte, like, “You think I'm going to do this, but [instead] I'm going to do this.” So the whole set was a kind of kinetic toy that changed and altered, and I thought, wow, the way something moves needs to be thematically in keeping with the overarching design. The idea that scenery moves was just a huge eye-opener for me. It's kinetic. It has a life. Like characters, scenery has an arc.

It's amazing to me that Michael Frayn also wrote [the play] Copenhagen. I mean, what an incredible breadth of and diversity of work he’s had.

MJC
I could say the same about you!

TR
[Laughs] Well, thank you.

MJC
You have designed a lot of really beautiful sets on Broadway, and all over the world. What was the set that was the most fun to work on?

TR
I recently just did a production with [director] Mary Zimmerman. It's a scaled-down version of The Magic Flute that I had a wonderful time doing. That kind of baroque theater technology is right up my alley. I love that. There's a theater outside of Prague called Český Krumlov. It's in a castle, and it's this old Baroque theater. It's all hand-painted perspective from Italian opera designers and imagineers. I find it enchanting and fantastic.

But I think my favorite set was… I was one of the founding members of the Notre Dame Summer Shakespeare Festival. When they started, they had massive budgets. They had no idea what things were supposed to cost in the theater, because it was a very well-funded university [laughs]. So the first three or four years were like honeymoon years, and I did a production of Romeo and Juliet with William Brown, and it was this very simple set that accommodated all the different scenes. We had a staircase that went out of the audience, so it felt like the plaza of a street, and it became a church, it became the crypt… the color of it and the shape of it, and the proportions of the room…I know people would be looking at it like, what's the big deal with this? But I just loved that set. I think it's the only set I ever did where I didn't want to change anything from the design.

MJC
What advice do you have for anyone who wants to pursue a career in set design?

TR
I think it's a combination of persistence, andI think there's a bit of luck involved. I recommend targeting directors and other collaborators. What I did as a young designer was I just saw everything, and then I reached out to directors and said, “Hey, listen, I just saw a production you did, and I would love to talk to you about it and show you my work.” I think targeting people as opposed to targeting buildings, that's what I did.

As a young designer, you also need to figure out what to do with your downtime, because at some point you're going to have some periods where you're not working, and you need to enjoy them because when it hits and you start working and building momentum, it never stops.

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Noises Off

JAN 29 – MAR 09, 2025
GIL CATES THEATER

Written By Michael Frayn
Directed By Anna D. Shapiro
A Co-Production with Steppenwolf Theatre Company
Featuring Vaneh Assadourian, Amanda Fink, Audrey Francis, Francis Guinan, Beth Hawkes, Rick Holmes, Ora Jones, David Lind, James Vincent Meredith & Max Stewart

Doors slam, sardines fly, and trousers drop in Michael Frayn’s side-splitting British farce about a theater company desperately trying to get their act together. Both onstage and backstage, chaos reigns for a troupe of floundering actors whose forgotten lines, misplaced props, and steamy romantic entanglements make it nearly impossible for the show to go on. An uproarious love letter to the theater, Noises Off is a peek behind the curtain—where everything that can go wrong, does!

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