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Feature By Evan Henerson
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A Designer as
Co-Pilot
David Cooper
Christopher Acebo, associate artistic director at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, talks
Christopher Acebo
about his design work, and what it’s like for a designer to be involved in casting.
The path to a top post at a major regional theatre is
circuitous. Most often, though, directors segue into
the artistic director role, generally after a stint as an
associate artistic director. It isn’t often that a regional center’s
number two guy is trained in designing sets and costumes.
Christopher Acebo, associate artistic director at the Oregon
Shakespeare Festival, knows this. But when Bill Rauch took
the reins at OSF, he encouraged artists to think outside the
“We're trying this experiment and
it seems to be working really well.”
—Christopher Acebo
box in terms of trying new roles—and this would prove especially
true for Acebo, Rauch’s longtime colleague and artistic
collaborator.
“I thought having a designer as the link between the production
and artistic departments would be a great thing for
the organization,” says Rauch. “More than that, I wanted his
great theatre mind and wonderful taste at my side.”
“It’s very cool for me, I have to say,” adds Acebo, who
arrived at OSF in 2008. “There are very few designers in positions
of artistic leadership like this.”
Cohesive, Unsettling, Designs
We caught up with Acebo during a busy time just before
two of his designs— Hamlet, directed by Rauch and Cat on a
Hot Tin Roof directed by Christopher Liam Moore—were set
to open nearly back to back. Later this summer, Acebo will
Acebo’s design for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was meant to be
more of an emotional landscape than architectural.
design sets for Ping Chong’s commissioned adaptation of
Throne of Blood, which travels to Brooklyn Academy of Music
for the 2010 Next Wave Festival following its Ashland run.
In Acebo’s view, Hamlet and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof both deal
with “balancing the membrane of public and private spaces”
which offers the designer a common thematic link.
“In Cat, the whole play takes place in a bedroom, where
very public conversations are taking place in a private space,”
Acebo says. “The characters have lots of secrets and ulterior
motives. It’s interesting to explore that, and I’m trying to do it
without any walls or without any doors for that matter. That
was the jumping off point. I was looking to create something
that felt like more of an emotional landscape than necessarily
an architectural landscape.
“That bleeds through in Hamlet, where it’s kind of like
the audience is spying on the production in some ways,” he
continues. “There’s a lot of spying and eavesdropping in the
play. We’ve created a place of fear and subterfuge. Our set is
a large room that we’re able to bisect with a variety of walls
and doors. So we’re able to create both a big open space and
break the down the set into smaller spaces.”
“In a way, it’s a little unsettling—which is appropriate for
this play,” says Deborah M. Dryden, resident costume designer
at OSF, and former instructor of Acebo from his grad school
days at UC San Diego in the late ‘90s. “This is not your basic
Elsinore castle. Another thing is his very bold color choice
in the stage floor, a very deep azure, it’s like you’re looking
down into this incredibly blue green water pool. It’s just a
paint effect, not a direct literal reference to the water images
in play. Both of those things create bold visual statements
that support the nature of the play, but are very confident,
clean and very clear.”
16 June 2010 • www.stage-directions.com