Ragtime - Shaw Festival Theatre

Design Notes
SUE LePAGE
talks about Designing Ragtime
Ragtime is easily one of the most complex plays that Jackie Maxwell and I have
encountered in our many years of working together. The musical has many settings
and our challenge was to depict the different locations in a dynamic way.
To avoid constantly changing scenery, we decided to use people, costumes,
and a backdrop of projected imagery to capture the flow of the story and to
indicate changes in location. The set is an open, simple structure - with a series
of levels and lots of exits and entrances to allow flexibility of movement
and staging.
There are many characters in Ragtime and the use of colour in the costumes
will help the audience identify the various family/societal groups. For instance,
the immigrants’ palette is cool and drab while the Harlem group is made up of
much more rich, earthy tones.
Click here for clips of Sue explaining the set and costume design:
http://www.shawfest.com/education/study-guides/ragtime/
FUN DESIGN FACTS
� over 80 hours of discussion were spent between designer Sue LePage and
director Jackie Maxwell to develop the design and staging to the play
� over 200 costumes were designed for 28 actors
� more than 50% of the costumes come from our costume warehouse and
have been re-worked for this show
� 17 racks were needed to store the costumes during rehearsals
� the set is a multi-level series of platforms and bridges which scale the
height of the Festival Theatre
� 176 quick changes (a costume change in under 3 minutes) occur during the
first act alone!
� one inspiration for the design came from model train tracks
ACTIVITIES
See pp 27 - 33
Before the show:
Post copies of these sketches around the classroom or distribute them to the
class. Ask the students to write a mini bio about one of the characters based
on what they can glean about that person by looking at them.
After the show:
ASK: How much of what you deduced based on the character’s appearance
was true? How might costumes help to tell the story of the play?
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C ONNECTIONS
Shaw Festival Study Guide