Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 1982 - 10

Richard Schechner's Dionysus in 69 (1968), the first modern
production generally identified as environmental, Lee says he
was not directly influenced by "Dionysus." He did, however, see
Jerzy Grotowski's Polish Laboratory Theatre at the 1968 Edinburgh Festival and admits that this influenced his design for
Robert Penn Warren's Brother to the Dragons at Trinity Square
later that year. Grotowski, of course, was a major influence on
Schechner. Lee also remembers his fascination with medieval
theatre and especially the drawing of The Castle of Perseverance, a morality play performed on a series of "mansions"
amidst the audience in specially constructed earthen "rounds."
Lee rejects the tradition of pictorial scenery. "I've never been
terribly interested in stage design as pictures. I remember
seeing The King and I in Chicago when I was in high school and
I love that kind of scenery-but not for me. It's just pretty
pictures passing by." His designs come from the dual impulse to
provoke the audience and to create an environment that is right
for the play no matter what form that may take. It was for this
reason that he enjoyed working with British director Peter Brook
in Paris: "He was interested in more than just the picture." Lee
had worked with Brook in 1971 in Iran on Orghast, an ensemblecreated ritual-style work performed in found spaces-mainly
tombs and monuments-outside Persepolis. Lee's contribution
was primarily in the creation of the fire implements including a
ball of fire lowered by crane in front of Ataxerxes' tomb. More
recently he worked with Brook on Kaspar at the International
Centre for Theatre Research. Because of Brook's approach to
theatre, Lee enjoyed working with him, but ultimately, he notes,
"its Brook's experiment." As with most visionary designers Lee
has a desire to create a piece of theatre unencumbered by
compromises or deference to other wills and states a desire to
direct if he ever gets the time. Among the directors he has
worked with most successfully besides Brook are Adrian Hall,
the artistic director of the Trinity Square Repertory Company,
Andre Gregory, Lome Michaels, and Harold Prince (whom he
refers to as "Mr. Prince").
Similar to his feelings about space are his feelings about
materials used onstage. They must be "real." "I don't mean
painting things to look real," he explains. "Once you start
painting, it has a painted look. What pleases me are real
textures used in the way nature left them. There's nothing like a
real piece of rusted tin-really rusted-put up on the stage. I
don't care how heavy it is, how dirty it is. Everyone says, 'we can
paint it, we can make it.' You know they can't." The back panel
of Sweeney Todd was made from real, rusted metal, and the
foundry itself was reconstructed from a real one being torn down
in New England.

Film and Television
It is in part his fascination with real things that has kindled
Lee's interest in film. Although he has done about a dozen PBS
"on location" films, Coppola's Hammett was his first Hollywood
production. As Lee talks about the money available for scenery,
the crews, the editing equipment, and general facilities he
sounds like a child in a toy store. "You want a 1928 crane, they
get you one! You want concrete streets? They bring in the
cement mixers and pour them in the studio!" The movie is about
mystery writer Dashiell Hammell and is set in 1920's San
Francisco. Hammell's house was constructed almost as a real
piece of architecture down to the name plate on the stove. It was
to be the first production by Zoetrope Studios but after it was
about ninety percent completed Coppola set it aside to do One
From the Heart. When he resumed production Lee was brought
in. His job was to build San Francisco in the sound studio.
Concrete streets were poured and San Francisco Bay, with real
water was also created. Lee refers to it as "summer stock at
Zoetrope." He approached it as television scenery-"a combination of Playhouse 90 and a film set"-describing the creation
as "an hommage to telephone wires, poles, and streets; but not
a lot of detail."
Real material, Lee discovered is more difficult in television. He
had never done television prior to Saturday Night Live and he is

still not sure why he was hired, other than the fact that producer
Lome Michaels wanted an "outsider." Because Lee brought
with him his penchant for real materials, he wanted to use real
brick for the basic warehouse set of SNL. But "on television,
stick-on wallpaper reads the same as real veneer." He had to
learn on the job and, because of the summer stock atmosphere
created by the weekly demands of the show, he learned quickly.
At first there were struggles with the NBC management and with
the unions-Lee likes to work on the sets himself, to paint and
weld, but this was not possible.
When he cannot be real, Lee likes "tacky." The settings for
the various sketches, of course, bordered on kitsch and were
often marvelous parodies of sit-com box sets and talk show
milieus. This may have been enhanced by the generally lastminute approach to the show. Rather than plan skits well in
advance, Lee explained, the writers wanted to do every1hing in
one week which made it all "artificially hectic." But it was this
very approach, Lee felt, that gave the show its particular quality.
One of his curent projects is a movie, 1985 being produced by
SNL producer Michaels. One of Lee's tasks is to convince the
producers that the scenery cannot be built in a week.

Detail of Agnes of God set.

Background and Training
Lee was born in Beloit, Wisconsin in 1939 and notes that he is
a twin. As far as he remembers he always wanted to be a scene
designer-not simply to go into theatre, but specifically to
design. His parents were active in community theatre-his
father as an actor, his mother as a designer. And he remembers
that his high school theatre was unusually elaborate, Lee
Simonson having been the consultant when it was built. His
problem growing up with this ambition was to learn the craft. He
did some summer stock and enrolled at the University of
Wisconsin which at the time did not have a theatre design
program. The summer after his first year at Madison he saw a
television documentary on Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon University). According to Lee he put his meagre portfolio in
his Volkswagen and drove to Pittsburgh where he stayed three
years. "I don't think I ever enjoyed it too much at the time," he
recalls. "I left in a traumatic state." He went from there to
Chicago where he enrolled in the Goodman School for another
two years. While there he joined the union and did some work at
the opera. From Chicago he went to Yale. From the beginning
he had difficulty at the various schools because of his unconventional approaches to design. He claims that he was stifled with
excuses such as, "If we let you do it we have to let everybody do
it." The best thing about school, he feels, are the acquaintances
you develop. "You learn nothing in school that you couldn't learn

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 1982