BWW Blog: Designer Thomas Murphy On Sewing University of Houston's INTIMATE APPAREL Together

INTIMATE APPAREL, a play described by Lynn Nottage as a "quiet play" in which "every scene takes place in some sort of boudoir," is in it's heart about the private relationships between those close to us and those we wish were closer.

Though there are challenges in every production, our playwright Nottage has truly helped us in the first step by crafting a beautiful script. The play is centered on the personal and professional life of a 35-year-old African-American seamstress in Manhattan in 1905 who is so passionate about her work--sewing corsets and other intimate apparel for her friends in her rooming house and the brothels in the city--and who has such a desire to be loved that she works hard to create great beauty for the people around her.

For this production I am the scenic designer and it is my responsibility to design the world of the play as revealed to the audience. I begin the process of doing this with a conversation with the director, Sara Becker. In this meeting we discuss our initial ideas and concepts for the play. We speak of how we would like things to look and what is important for this play and makes it special. We may even bring forth inspirational images of the time or of artists that inspire us; I brought old pictures of New York City and watercolors of skylines, and Sara brought pictures of art pieces by Teresa Barboza and photos of fabric and beds. We both take all of these ideas and think about what the other has said, and during this time, I start making sketches.

I was incredibly lucky to get to work with a group of designers that I had already worked with prior and know well. This allows us to bounce ideas off of each other in a comfortable setting and share our ideas about each other's designs. These designers are Jean Gonzales, Lighting; Rebecca Callan, Costumes; and Jonathan Middents, Sound. In the sketch and ideas stage I was able to put out a great many ideas on paper, as well as find more image research, and bounce ideas off of the designers and other people on the creative team. It is this collaborative part of theatre creation that is the most fun to me, and the most unique to the art itself. When so many people create something, there is always a chance to share.

It was at this point where we were able to figure out the most important parts of the research to our team: we wanted to highlight the costumes and place in pieces of the cityscape that would situate us in New York City at the time (fire escapes, clothes lines, brick walls, and of course, fabric and thread). All ideas past this point were based in these two main ideas. I brought my sketches and renderings to Sara and we had more conversations. Then more renderings, and more conversations, and after we felt we had really honed in on the setting of this play, I took those renderings and drafted them out in scale to what the set would actually be. I made a three-dimensional model of the set, and I created paint renderings of what each piece of the set would look like. After turning in the drawings for the scenery to Josh Jacobs, my technical director, he facilitated the build of the scenery. Ellen Mizener, the props master, and I found and built all of the scenic properties with the help of our crew, and Lauren Davis, the scenic charge artist, painted the set with her crew. All of these elements required a great deal of conversation, collaboration, and give and take between team members.

In the end, when the set is built and the show goes up, it is my goal to do justice to the work, to create a world in which these wonderfully real characters can exist together, a world as beautiful as the story written and the costumes made, one that is cohesive and sits together as if it was always meant to be that way, something bigger than reality and maybe better, and in the end, something beautiful. Now I can't say, being too close to the material, if we succeeded in all points, but I can say that when I took my girlfriend to see the show, after already seeing it myself about a dozen times, I felt the emotion of the characters and their space, and when the curtain closed and the actors came out I couldn't help but stand and clap with the rest, and smile, and truly feel we had created something beautiful.

INTIMATE APPAREL will be my last main stage production at the University of Houston but the goal is no different than it always is: to create something beautiful that will make the audience feel something. An emotional experience for an emotional play.

INTIMATE APPAREL. Through Feb 28. University of Houston Jose Quintero Theatre, (Entrance 16 off Cullen Boulevard in the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts). For information, please call 713-743-2929 or visit uh.edu/news-events/. $10-$20.