The design process for Atreus Dawn focused mainly on the creation of a total environment that was both Greek and futuristic while at the same time staying flexible enough to change with each new rewrite of the script. Working on a new play is hard enough, but designing for a new techno-musical in which the final script is not completed until half-way through the build schedule posed its own challenges. Beginning to work with the first draft of the script 7 months before the performance was to take place, many of our ideas changed, expanded, and spurred on others to follow different routes in their own processes. This lead for quite intense collaboration between not only all of the designers, but the actors and writers as well. From very early on in this process, all of the designers knew that we would need to work together in order to not only complete our designs and make them work as a whole - but to conceptualize this new world that we were creating.

I began my process with hunting for images that connected in some way to the script or that created space in a way that I felt was interesting. Compiling these pictures, I also began to research ancient Greek culture, art, and religion. Knowing that I would eventually need to combine technology into this world (the show being set in 'the past. the future. now.' and technology playing an important part in the plot), I began to look into other visionary set designs and conceptualizations of the future including those for Blade Runner, 1984, Brave New World, We, Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, Metropolis, and Things to Come.

Off of this research, we began to think about connecting ancient Greek culture to the future through apocalyptic notions of destruction and cycles. Looking into the Heaven's Gate movement, we also began to add in the ideas of cults and cult society. Using the destruction of an apocalyptic millennium, we began to focus on what we referred to as 'the abandoned warehouse aesthetic.' The future would be made up of broken objects and be cluttered with repair. As we worked more with the script and the clean technological beats of the music, the design changed to a more stream-lined vision of the future in which technology was not worshiped in visuality...but hidden to create the appearance of simplicity.

Designing now with cleanliness and form in mind, we simplified the color scheme. A reflective blue was decided upon for the floor to symbolize not only the water so important to the plot but to create the impression of a vast expanse of sterile land - the famine. This floor design was also chosen because as the light changed throughout the production, the floor could become reflective to the point of looking wet, brilliant blue, or a dark blackish color that gave the impression of objects on stage floating over an abyss. Silver was also worked into the set as a top for the alter which became a silverized slab of marble resting atop an overturned pyramid. This color was also used in the wardrobe doors. Using silver scrim allowed us to flash images of the wedding dress floating inside of the closet without having to physically open the doors. In order to create the look of sterility that we wanted to symbolize both the famine and technology, the design also included many straight, sharp edges and hard surfaces. This idea also affected our ideas about surfaces in both the plot and design and led us to begin thinking about what existed beyond what was visually accessible .

Working with a script in which there were a variety of different locals, short scenes, and virtually no scene change music, we decided early on that the set would be one unit (set in 3/4 round) containing pieces that would serve many different functions. Conceptualizing the play as occurring in the single moment before Iphigenia's sacrifice, the production became a memory play of sorts which allowed us to abstract from purely representational forms. We were able to take a much more visceral approach to the material and design from Iphigenia's point of view as well as from the motifs that appeared in the musical score.

Inspired by Mycean columns which are thicker at the top than at the bottom, I abstracted the shape that would become the basis for most forms in the set. The large white trapezoidal figures not only stand throughout the space, creating depth and scale, but they all serve functional purposes as well. In this way, we were able to get around set changes by having the individual pieces be used throughout the show while visually remaining coherent to the form and structure of the overall mise en scéne of the production. The columns become such varied objects as a coffin, a butcher's stand, a wind-sail, a wardrobe, a doorway, and a mirror.

From the beginning of the process, we knew that we wanted the central space of the stage to be sacred. Over time, this idea morphed from being solely an octagonal alter to a combination of form and function. In rethinking the ideas of ritual and alter spaces, the alter decreased in height and became more central to the movement of the actors. Designing the alter as a large back-raked platform just slightly off-center, the space becomes easier to navigate and more interesting to use for dance, movement, and blocking. This also becomes Iphigenia's main acting area, and when it is exposed as being the alter for her sacrifice in the last scene, it connects back to the idea that the entire play was taking place in this one moment of her life - she has been on the alter all along.

Using the idea of the Greek ekkeklema, the central upstage space became a level upon which a square wagon (controlled from backstage) could roll. This served not only as a mechanism used for the violent visions at the end of the play but also as the major entrance for Clytemnestra - symbolizing the curse of the House of Atreus through the family's recurring passage over this threshold. The central doors are designed with a combination of the abstracted column shape as well as the empty black circle surrounded with the water symbol (which holds the meaning of rebirth and life). The center of the circle is black/empty and undecorated unlike the images of circles found in various Greek art. This is because IphigeniaÕs story is unwritten - she spends the entire production trying to write it herself - her own story. The constant ebb of the royal family's entrances through this space is contrasted only with the ending image of the show as the ekkeklema rolls onstage from under the closed doors and then pulls Iphigenia back through the slowly opening doors to her sacrifice.

Designing the Oracle at Delphi proved to be one of the greatest challenges for my design. Although possessing a small, but recurrent role in the first act of the play, Pythia (the priestess imprisoned in the Oracle) plays the pivotal role in the production towards the end of Act II. Originally a projected image, the role of the Oracle became a more serious design concern when we decided for both practical and design issues not to use projections in the show. With a stage set in three-quarter round that was already pressed for space, I designed the Oracle to be a scrim cage that hung above the stage from the theater's catwalk structure. This allowed her image to bleed through when she was needed, disappear when not, and occur simultaneously with other locals without confusing space (because of her height in relation). Hanging the Oracle in space also allowed for a visually stunning climax when Iphigenia climbs up into the cage with the Pythia to breath the vapors of Apollo and see into the future.

The conceptualization of the space for this production also included using the full theater for the show. Audience entrances were used as well as aisles and levels constructed behind certain areas of the house. Having four entrances in addition to those on stage, the audience was thrust into the center of the action. Ultimately, all of the different designs connected to create an entirely new environment for this new world. With the ambient music, electronica, lights, costumes, props, and actors the show came alive, and the excitement of seeing a newly written show for the first time became an exciting event to end the design process for Atreus Dawn.