theatre — art — landscape
SKELETON CREW
by Dominique Morisseau
Yellow Tree Theatre and New Dawn Theatre, MN, January 2020
Director Austene Van
Scenic Design, Charge Nicole DelPizzo
Lighting Design Courtney Schmitz
Costume Design Samantha Fromm Haddow
Sound Design Jeff Baily
Properties Design Josephine Everett
Professional photos credited to Justin Cox Photography
Tension builds between the four characters of Skeleton Crew. The show takes place at the start of the Recession in one of the last auto stamping plants in Detroit. My design needed to convey the harsh reality of the characters’ break room, but also the resilience and the attitude of the characters who inhabit it. This was achieved through the selection of set dressing and distressing to all the surfaces. The play has strong themes of collaboration and support, but also of desperation and subordination. To provide a sense of pressure and decay, the walls crumbles at the edges, and the skeleton of the building looms overhead.
Beyond the break room is an abstracted display of pipes leading to other parts of the factory. Corrugated windows distort what lies on the other side.
Between scenes set in reality, Interludes fill the windows with metaphorical dance-like moves representing both the automated machines and the workers of the factory. The corrugation adds an eerie and distopic effect to their forms.
1/4” Scale model
“The fantastic four-person cast, along with the director and design team, beautifully bring this story to life...
The entire play takes place in the factory break room, well represented by Nicole DelPizzo’s scenic design of industrial gray, complete with lockers, a bulletin board littered with signs, and even a working coffee pot. Scene changes are made more interesting by the use of music and repeated sounds, and lighting effects which turn windows and doors into boxes in which we see the robotic dance-like movements on the line.”
“Nicole DelPizzo’s set design and Josie Everett’s prop design give this space a sense of familiarity. If you’ve ever worked a labor-type job you’ve seen this room, with a small fridge under a table, a coffee pot, and papers covering a cork board and jammed inside lockers. ”
“Nicole DelPizzo’s scenic design succeeds in creating the authentic look and feel of a factory break room. Her plastic panels along with Jeff Bailey’s sound design and Courtney Schmitz’s lighting design succeed in creating the feel of the characters melding into the mechanical assembly line during the periods between scenes – eerily reminiscent of the film Metropolis.”