GALLERY

Production Photos

The final product with integrated lighting and props, the traces of those early iterations are still visible yet filtered through months of conversation and problem-solving. I am very happy with the result of the great collaboration with this talented team. We have arrived at the world of Mother Tongue, a crossroads, a judgement place. Our characters are halfway, like all this waste, irreconciled between where we come from and where we are. Keep or Toss?

Tech Photos

These were taken during tech rehearsals so not everything may be finished. Some of these ideas made it to the final result, some were cut here. We see the elements begin to come together, LX, video projection, music, scenery, and cast. I am very proud of everyone involved, it was a smooth and productive process, and we put this show together with love, elbow grease, and gambiarra.

BTS Photos

Behind the scenes photos showing the installation process and the context of the venue. The pillar of soda cans had to be redesigned, the original plan was too expensive and heavy so instead of building a wooden core upwards I suggested we slide soda cans down a wire, stacking them, and then suspending several strands of these, like a beaded necklace. This idea was very effective and saved us a lot of money on lumber. We ran a campaign to collect all the soda cans from students saving over 1000+ aluminum cans from reaching a landfill, at the end of the run they were taken to a recycling center.

Props Package
Props were a vital element of this production so I arranged seven tableaus of props throughout to set. Each tableau was meant to communicate it’s own story and mood depending on the combined objects and its location next to a character. These props were sourced from UNCSA’s prop storage and assembled by the incredible props team, huge thanks to Amy Laliberty, Cas O’Neal, and Cameron Hayes.

Paint Elevations
Special thanks to paint charge Anah Galinski for faithfully bringing all the show elements to life with delicious texture and color. We ran light tests to make sure the colors on stage were cooperating as well as holding paint calls to bring out highlights or bury shadows. Everything needed to feel like it was oxidized by the tropical rainforests of Sao Paulo so all surfaces were given a patina and flaky rust.

Scale Model

Special thanks to Houston Odum and Nathan Bowden for assisting with the build of this 3/8” scale model. This project required laser cut pieces for the truss and certain props and all the scenery had to be hand-painted. The venue is the Freidman Theatre which is architecturally in a thrust-stage configuration, problem-solving was required to convert this proscenium into a black box.

Drafting Package
The setting of the play is the workspace of a cooperative of catadores, waste flows through and is sorted here every day. A judgement place of sorts, like biblical Gehenna, where objects full of memory are either tossed or kept. Each catador had their own table which was mobile and could be reconfigured in the space to fit the actors’ needs. The walls were all recycled soft goods which enveloped the playing space, hung backwards and backlit they would reveal ghostly disembodied landscapes. The entire room would breathe with the motion of the actors and you could feel protected, but also smothered, along with the characters. Four pillars made of different materials, metal, wood, soda cans, and textiles hold up the clouds of billowing fabric, or is all this waste raining down from the city above? Precious objects are kept in jars above, lost heirlooms, old photos, legal documents, an unborn child, broken gadgets, illuminated with sentimentality and history.

Renders/ Early Visualization
These renders were informed by the most preliminary parameters and the loose concept of the show, before there was even a script. I knew I had access to used materials and UNCSA’s entire prop storage so I knew I could really illustrate the excess and accumulation of waste the catadores pick through. We had a few solid elements on-hand that we knew we were going to use such as the corrugated plastic panels, old drops to enclose the space, and an abundance of old metal and wooden props. The pieces of broken furniture, equipment, and random objects gave us the ingredients we needed to demonstrate a core concept of the play, the Brazilian idea of gambiarra, using unconventional items in an unconventional way to achieve the same function as a conventional product that may be unavailable for any reason. Our budget was very limited so gambiarra was not only a theme but a practice in the production of the show. These early renders show where I was in my process emotionally, when I knew there would be musicians on stage, but throughout the process the looks became more gritty and realistic than colorful and psychedelic.

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Joelle Gonzalez is a scenic and props designer working within the live performance industry. She is currently based in Brooklyn, NY.