Even those who haven’t attended any productions at Juilliard may be vaguely aware of the behind-the-scenes activity that goes into them—thanks to the appearance of odd objects (such as a shopping cart full of papier-mâché cakes and pastries, or a woolly sheep) in the elevators and hallways. This year, Juilliard’s Production Department brings some of that mystery out into the open, with a series of lunchtime seminars for the Juilliard staff and others in the Juilliard community that offer a glimpse into different aspects of the complicated process of bringing a production to life.

Eve Shapiro.

Set informally in the lobby of the Juilliard Theater (with staff encouraged to bring their lunch), the November 15 seminar was a lively conversation with stage director Eve Shapiro, moderated by the Production Department’s director, Carolyn Haas. As Haas drew the production shop heads into the dialogue, Shapiro—a Drama Division faculty member who has also directed a number of operas at Juilliard—revealed the thought processes and interactions behind Juilliard’s production of Carlisle Floyd’s opera Susannah, which she directed in November.

“I’m one of those people who works very slowly, because I enjoy the research and I need time to decide how I’m going to do something,” explained Shapiro. “But I start off, if it’s an opera, by listening to the music even before I read the libretto, because the music tells you what the production should be.” She was struck by the accessibility, drama, and beauty of Susannah—qualities that were apparent as soon as she began listening to a CD.

Set designer Chris Barreca, with whom Shapiro had previously collaborated, had worked for a couple of years in Appalachia, the region in which the opera is set. “He sent me a lot of photographs, and then I rented every film that everybody ever mentioned,” said Shapiro. “Things like Coal Miner’s Daughter were very helpful for the accent. I really did learn the accent myself—because, when you change your dialect, you really change who you are.” Over the phone, Eve and Chris began tackling the immediate difficulties the opera presented. “Number one, there is absolutely no music between each scene, and the scenes were short. So it was imperative that things moved seamlessly from one scene to the next.”

The next Production Department Lunch Seminar is scheduled to take place in the Juilliard Theater on February 22 from 1-2 p.m. Benjamin Harvarvy, director of the Dance Division, is to talk about what goes into producing the annual February Dance Concert. All members of the Juilliard community are invited; bring your lunch! RSVP by February 18 to ext. 215

“We also both agreed that the set should be simple,” added Shapiro, quoting the end of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets to describe her ultimate aim: “A condition of complete simplicity costing not less than everything, and all shall be well.” What makes this so difficult, she explained, is that “there’s nothing to hide behind. It’s either there, or it’s not, so it’s a calculated risk.” The resulting set, massive and simple, is naturalistic and expressionistic all at once: a big, giant curve of wood, with windows and doors that open and a wall that flies up, at various times suggesting the front porch of a modest Appalachian dwelling, the interior of a church, and an outdoor setting.

“In the Juilliard Theater, it’s very difficult to hear, strangely enough,” Shapiro said. “And also, with the orchestra pit, you feel as if the action is a hundred miles away. Hence the rake, or slant, of the stage, which practically puts the whole set in the audience’s lap. And it also serves as an acoustic shell; all that is very deliberate.”  Though massive in appearance, the set changes very simply. Working out the mechanics of this, however, was complicated by the fact that the set bows dramatically; nothing is presented in straight lines. This effect suggests the slightly ramshackle tilt of many old Appalachian buildings. “If you look at some of the photos,” explained Shapiro, “everything looks as if it’s falling down. It’s a very poor area.”

The forward placement of the set also facilitates the intimacy of the scenes, most of which are for two or three people at a time. The rake—which Shapiro described as creating a wonderful effect she called “coming down the hill”—is continued architecturally by the slant of a net covering the orchestra pit. The effect of the set being cantilevered over the orchestra pit also helps to tone down the sound a bit, Shapiro noted. “It’s a very, very heavily scored opera.”

From Barreca’s model of the set, scenic charge artist Nancy Horne deduced the paint color and worked up a number of samples demonstrating the effects of various glazes and paints for Barreca’s and Shapiro’s approval. (The resulting gray actually combines six different glazes.) Technical director Steve Rosenberg explained how he constructed the set, utilizing a number of shortcuts for ease and cost effectiveness while achieving the desired effect. “On the model, Chris had glued on individual strips of wood. The set itself is all done in 4 by 9 sheets of plywood with lines routed in, so we could cover larger surfaces in a shorter period of time with the same look. Once the painters get to it and they light it, it looks like a lot of individual pieces. Our job is to get the look the designer wants, the best way we can.”

Production electrician Johanna Wagner explained how a ground plan of the set enabled lighting designer Matthew McCarthy to begin determining lighting angles, figuring where each light needs to go and creating his own plan; additional paperwork notates the colors required for the different moods of each scene. In this case, the placement of the set so far downstage limited the positions in the theater where lights could be hung. (Each light, explained Wagner, covers only an 8- to 10-foot diameter. Around 300 lights were used in this production; one in which the set reached all the way to the back of the stage would require around 450 or 500 lights.)

Juilliard Opera Center’s production of Susannah, directed by Eve Shapiro. Shown above are Olin Blitch (Matthew Burns, standing) and Townspeople (chorus). (Photo by Nan Melville)

Carolyn Haas pointed out that planning, organization, and communication at all stages is the key to keeping everything on schedule and within budget. “By the time Eve starts working with the singers,” she said, “we need to know exactly what the set is like. If Eve began blocking the show without knowing how the set functions, then everybody would be in trouble.”

“You have to do a lot of work beforehand,” agreed Shapiro, “because if you’re not prepared, you’re holding everybody up and wasting people’s time. Not that there aren’t some changes along the way.”  But the schedule is very tight; unlike the Broadway houses (which have the luxury of presenting just one show, in one space), Juilliard juggles some 650 performances a year—“and that translates into about 60 events that the production department puts their hands on,” explained production manager J.B. Barricklo. “We can’t open the opera any later than scheduled, because a dance concert or something else follows. So we try to get all the information as soon as possible, to feed it into the individual shop schedules.”

Properties shop supervisor Kate Dale, for example, kept so on top of things that even Shapiro was sometimes amazed. After the request went in for an eight-foot table for the picnic scene, Shapiro came down to the shop the next day and said, “I’ve been thinking about the table…” and it was already built. “So we had to put in a leaf to add two feet,” laughed Dale.

There are 32 chairs in the opera; about 17 came from production stock, supplemented with finds from antique stores. All needed to be stripped and sanded; then a little bit of paint was rubbed into the grooves and crevices for a weathered effect. Rubber tips were applied to the feet, so the chairs would not slide on the raked stage. But only the lectern, which is leaned upon by the preacher and must be straight up and down, was counter-raked to compensate for the angle of the stage. (The idea of having the chairs carried to and from church—facilitating seamless scene changes—came from the film The Songcatcher, noted Shapiro.)

The trees revealed against the sky when the wall flies up were all gathered in the Poconos, in a collaborative effort with the scene shop, and brought back in a Ryder truck. (“They were all fallen trees, picked up from the ground, so no trees were killed for the production of this opera,” said Dale with a laugh.)

After determining what was required for the “business” at the picnic, the properties shop located antique picnic tins on eBay and constructed apple pies from industrial felt. “We have some real food in the show, too; there’s chicken and cornbread,” said Dale (whose hesitancy when asked to reveal what happened to the chicken every night brought gales of laughter).

Costumes and make-up also presented unique challenges. A well-known book of Appalachian photographs by Doris Ulmann taken in the 1930s guided Shapiro and costume designer James Scott in their choice of what they called “the clothes, because they’re not costumes. J.B. and Johanna went through the stock, and everything onstage—with the exception of three dresses that were built—is vintage,” said Shapiro.

“This was an interesting opera to work on,” commented wig and make-up supervisor Anne Chambless. “Normally with opera, we’re trying to make everyone look beautiful, but that was not the idea here. These people needed to look like individual characters who couldn’t afford make-up and didn’t go to the salon; maybe some of them were lucky enough to have an old, cracked mirror at home.” There are no wigs in the production (except for a small piece needed to provide a bun to disguise one singer’s short, modern haircut). False eyelashes, normally worn by every female principal in an opera, are worn only by Susannah in this production. “People do talk about how pretty she is, and she needs to stand out a little,” explained Chambless.

Asked about the differences between directing for theater and opera, Shapiro noted that she has more freedom directing in the theater (where, unlike in opera, she is also involved in casting). “You can take all the time you want for a pause, or play to the side and still be heard by the audience. And in the theater, you don’t have to worry about filling eight bars of music without taxing the singers.” Yet, because Susannah has such a strong story line, when Shapiro first met with the singers, she decided to spend the first week staging  without  a note of music—“just as if I were doing a theater piece, which made Julius Rudel very nervous,” she laughed. “But I knew the music very well by then, otherwise I wouldn’t dare. And it turned out to be a very economical way to work, and the singers wondered why people don’t do it all the time.”

“Opera is a real challenge, balancing what is emotionally correct with what will be possible for the singer to do,” concluded Shapiro. “But it’s also wonderful, because I’m a really frustrated musician. Now I’ve got the best of both worlds.”