Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1546033
The spaces built for the Lydia Academy emerged partly from research images from women's colleges which showed a strong sense of female community. I wanted to include areas for informal gathering. The area designed for the girls hang their coats each morning served the directors well for blocking. I designed a sunken conversation pit area for sitting in a semi-circle, with a mezzanine above to provide sightlines for chance interaction and to create a sense of surveillance. The double height of the chimney breast adds a subtle churchlike quality. Every high school drama needs a lunchroom—a place for social hierarchies, catty gossip and friendship. Just as I was designing the dining hall, I received the script for Episode 5, which described the girls in a debutante ball observed by commanders from a mezzanine, like cattle being judged at auction. I got the script just in time to change the design and pop up a second story for these purposes. Adding a second story transformed the space into a grand hall, and as with much of the Lydia Academy, it was deliberately overscaled to make Agnes and the other girls feel small. Girls who are Agnes' age in Gilead grow up with no memory of the world before, so they don't understand what freedom and equality can look like. My role as Production Designer was to conceal the truth of their oppression behind a beautiful illusion. Girls who are Agnes' age in the United States today would have been five when The Handmaid's Tale began production and Trump was first elected. As the current political environment erodes women's rights and equality, how long until those changes begin to feel normal? One of the most important points Margaret Atwood's story makes has been that the most powerful systems are the ones that look, to those living within them, completely normal. As The Testaments' characters lift the veil on their limited perspective to see a world beyond, the role of the story is to expose illusion. ADG G. LYDIA ACADEMY BATHROOM. PRODUCTION STILL. H. LYDIA ACADEMY LOBBY. PRODUCTION STILL. Martha Sparrow, Production Design Kimberley Zaharko, Super vising Art Director Larr y Spittle, Jason Clarke, Art Directors Dan Norton, Monica Navarrete, Jane Stoiacico, Cher yl Wan, Etienne Gravrand, Mark Heinrichs, Set Designers Sean Scoffield, Theresa Shain, Melissa Cormier, Adrienne Turner, Graphic Designers Chris Penna, Michael Derrah, Concept Illustrators Patricia Cuccia, Set Decoration H G