Creating The Spider's Web...A Look Into Scenic Design

Today Artes de la Rosa takes a few minutes to blog with Scenic Designer Oliver Luke. You may remember Oliver’s STUNNING work from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and for Kiss of the Spiderwoman he is pulling out all the stops. Oliver, Lighting Designer Matt Wasson, and Costume Designer Justin Kailer, promise to bring you a visual world that is more then just escapism, it is a full on sensory overload! This is what Oliver has to say about his scenic creation...while sharing a couple early sketches with us...


In approaching this design I wanted to go outside of my norms of creating just a realistic world. I wanted to draw the audience in to this gritty, dirty, and dangerous world of the prisoners. The goal is to make the audience truly see the filth of these prisons and the life in them but also show how their true escape comes from the prisoners mind. The whole process started with lots of research into the show, into antiquated prisons and methods of torture. Looking at other interpretations of the show and prison life in movies and television shows (ie: movie version of Kiss of the Spiderwoman, The Shawshank Redemption, Oz, etc.)
After I had a firm idea of the path I wanted to take, I started with sketching ideas of how I would like the walls to feel and look of the prison.
Dilapidated, dirty, crumbling, great stress and neglect…this would act as a parallel to how the prisoners lives are lived as well. Once I had the ideas on paper, I then started thinking in another direction, about how our unlikely Molina viewed his world and how he escaped into his mind.
My interpretation was all about the character of the Spiderwoman herself and how she is Molina's escape and torment, so how could I work that into the design? His world becomes a fantasy so I needed to make the audience feel this as well. So I had the idea that as the prison crumbles around them it would break away into the fantasy of Aurora's world of the spider.
This is where I think my designs truly differ from other productions of Kiss of the Spiderwoman, most interpretations seem to be of a more literal world, I wanted it to be more than just that. I also wanted it to be visually stunning - a true feast for the eyes. Everywhere the audience looks they will see that Molina/Aurora's world starts to surround them.
The colors used in the set are lots of grays, some moldy greens, and rusty reds…again, very gritty and dirty broken bricks and concrete. As the walls crumble into fantasy we'll see blacks, purples, and shimmering heavily saturated light colors. The goal being the complete emersion into a surreal feeling for the audience with the juxtaposition of the two worlds…and the question remains the one Molina has already answered for himself, “Which world are you more comfortable in?”