Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1546606
3 6 P E R S P E C T I V E S E P T E M B E R / O C T O B E R 2 0 2 6 Even before Ponies was fully developed, before it was greenlit, before I was (technically) hired, the creators and I were aligned. We had a clear mandate: Show the vibrancy of the people, and the world they build, despite oppression. It felt germane to the present state of the world. Our human desire to come together and share joy, to convey happiness outwardly through self- expression, is not squashed by regimes, no matter their goals. Sure, it must be easier to lead a populace that resembles cogs in a machine. But who knows any cogs? In Ponies' Soviet Union, we celebrated each character's unique voice, no matter how dark, while they worked for governments that propagandized their relationship to their citizens in ways that overlapped more than we cared to see at the time. That hindsight and mandate combined to put a new lens on the aesthetic relationship between America and the Soviet Union in 1977. After the greenlight, I hightailed it to The New York Public Library's Art & Architecture and Picture libraries, a resource not to be missed! It was a rare treat to spend three months researching Russian and Soviet history, politically and architecturally. It gave me a foundational understanding of the country and culture that came in handy upon landing in Budapest, where the show was produced. Standing in for Moscow in 1977, I knew Budapest wasn't a bad match, but everything reorients when sitting in a scout van. Missing were the wide and empty Moscow streets, standing instead were buildings decrying the Austrian side of the past Hungarian Empire. It took a couple weeks to begin to parse the language of the streets and find pockets where Budapest's decades-long oversight by the USSR was visible. Thankfully, the architectural offerings were broad and could offer more than a brutalist sensibility, I could also catch hints of the Tsarist Neoclassical Revival. A N e w L e n s o n t h e S o v i e t ' 7 0 s P O N I E S B Y S A R A K W H I T E , P R O D U C T I O N D E S I G N E R A. US EMBASSY OFFICE BULLPEN. SET PHOTO BY DÁVID LUKÁCS. B. EMBASSY OFFICE SKETCH PLAN WITH FINISHES, PENCIL AND DIGITAL BY SARA K WHITE. C. US EMBASSY OFFICE BULLPEN. PRODUCTION STILL. D. US EMBASSY OFFICE KITCHENETTE. PRODUCTION STILL. A