Saturday Night Sunday Morning - Scenic Designer & Carpenter

This was my first time designing a set for a show that was being actualized, rather than paper projects. The process for this show had a much shorter time than usual for Coastal productions, so most of my deadlines were much shorter. For this show, I wanted to ensure that we told the story as truthfully as possible. This was especially important to me since this was a historical fiction play about race, war, and love. I was entering the process as a white person with no prior experience with black beauty salons, so I knew I had much research ahead of me. Surprisingly, finding historically accurate black-owned salons from the 40s ended up being very difficult due to the focus on reporting on white people and white businesses during that time.

To me, the most important scenes in this show took place in Gladys and Leanne’s bedroom and I wanted to find a way to separate those scenes from the rest of the hair salon. I chose to do this with a sheer white curtain that stretched across the stage. I liked how it brought everything behind it out of focus while emphasizing the confessions of love from Gladys.