Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1332040
The Josephine Baker dance number was also rooted in history. I found fi lms of her dancing on stage in Paris in the 1930s and showed them to Misha Green. We settled on a Versailles theme, as it allowed for more spectacular costumes, with a staircase as the focal point. I knew from my experience of designing Smash (Season 2) how important and helpful stairs could be when choreographing a dance number. The big wrinkle for us was that after we had built the set for the period-appropriate Macon Opera stage, we had to change theaters. Two weeks before shooting, we found ourselves in a modern high school auditorium, which we then had to turn into the Champs-lysées Theatre. To accomplish that, the production added a period fl y system, footlights, new draperies to create a wing space and many more period details to help transport the audience to backstage 1930s Paris. It was now time to tackle Hippolyta's multiverse journey. All the scripts were ready before the start of preproduction, so the environments were well mapped out in advance. Developing the many worlds she travels to was an entirely diff erent matter, which took months of drawing and imagining. The central theme of a woman made to feel small' who then fi nds her true self, spoke to me as an artist, a mother and a political refugee. I grew up in a drab communist country, and as a teenager often daydreamed about living in a world of color and joy. So I channeled that young Bulgarian dreamer to embody Hippolyta's creative, curious and intelligent mind. The goal was for the audience to put themselves in the character's shoes, and experience strange and magical places the same way that she did. I wanted the colors to grow more shimmering with each succeeding place Hippolyta visits. Planets are spherical, and that round shape became my primary template for designing "I AM," which is fi rst revealed in the Kansas observatory set. Misha Green and I settled on 1930s art deco architecture for the interior of the abandoned building. I designed the fl oor to look like a sky with stars, both to bring the universe inside and to foreshadow the time-travel G F. OBSERVATORY INTERIOR. CONCEPT ILLUSTRATION. G. OBSERVATORY FLOOR. PAINT ELEVATION. D E F