Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 2018 - 15

(1969) Wall Street (backdrop). Act II, Scene 5. This modern downtown cityscape evokes a Renaissance perspective painted in luxurious hues with translucent
windows on the buildings.

my excitement. Then I get my ideas.
I relate very emotionally to music.
Now for a play. I don't like reading auditions. I read it alone quietly,
in a room at my own speed. I think
that it is a totally introspective experience. Working with a musical is
more gregarious.
For dance first you listen to the
music. That gives you the mood.
Commissioned scores are very exciting. When we were doing Fancy
Free, Leonard (Bernstein) played
great sections of it as he was composing. For Rodeo, I went up to hear
Aaron (Copland) playing it on the
piano. If it is Mozart, you just get a
good recording and listen to it over
and over. I play it when I'm working.
I can never hear enough of it. The
music tells you what to do (MacKay
1982, 69).
Smith usually conceptualized a set
design in 1/4 inch scale drafted form before handing the drafting over to an assistant, who would replicate the rough
drafting in construction-ready 1/2 inch

scale technical drawings. Smith said, "I
can do that myself, but I don't feel that's
my role in life anymore. All the elevations
are then put on boards for me to color. I
do my own coloring" (MacKay 1982, 69).
Smith favored the painters Turner,
Constable, Vuillard, Bonnard, and particularly Matisse, whom he used to cheer
himself up, as influences on his own
work. He said that West Side Story was
a Renaissance palette and that, "A designer with eyes and a memory gradually sifts through the visual vocabulary
that has accumulated and finds an affinity. It is not all derivative. But I believe
that all designers who are honest are
extremely eclectic, or else they would be
painters" (MacKay 1982, 59). When he
designed On the Town (drop elevation
from the 1963 London revival, rough
sketch and Diazo prints from the original 1944 production in this exhibit), he
was influenced by Kandinsky, Klee, and
Mondrian, and it is reflected in the exuberant orange and blue palette. Smith
remarked, "I hadn't been in the big city
very long, and I was influenced by the

advent of neon lighting" (MacKay 1982,
66). He credited costume designer Irene
Sharaff for influencing him through her
cool, intellectual sophistication in the
show drop rendering for High Button
Shoes in the exhibit, which evokes 19th
century American folk arts and Currier
& Ives. His versatility as a designer led
the producer David Merrick to say of him
in 1965: "Most designers are masters
of a single color. So if the basic color of
your show is red, you get so-and-so; if it's
green, you get somebody else. You can
get Smith for anything" ("Oliver Smith,
Set Designer").

Finding a Home

Sinisi had searched for an institutional
home for the Smith material for many
years after Smith's death in 1994. One of
the problems she encountered in placing
the collection was its size; the acquiring
institution needed sufficient resources
(e.g., space, funds for preservation, and
curatorial support) to make the material available to researchers. Storage
space was a large issue for many instiWINTER 2018

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