3 ways to create a space that moves you from a Broadway set designer David Korins
You’re sitting there,
and it’s incredibly frustrating.
It’s maddening.
You’ve been sitting there for hours,
filling in those little tiny circles
with your No. 2 pencil –
this is a standardized test.
You look up, half-erased chalkboard,
you can see that perfectly
written cursive alphabet,
the pull-down maps,
you can hear, tick, tick, tick, ticking
on the wall, that industrial clock.
But most importantly, you can feel
that oppressive fluorescent light,
that death ray over your head.
Bzzzzzz.
And you can’t take it anymore,
but you don’t have to,
because Miss Darling says,
“OK, boys and girls, you’re done.”
So you jump up – I mean, there is nothing
left of you but a vapor trail.
You move so quickly, you slam
that little molded plastic chair,
and you sprint down the hallway;
you go past the Lysol smell
and the BO smell and the cubbies,
and you push the door –
(Inhales deeply)
and finally, you’re outside.
Oh, you can feel the wind on your face,
then the sun on your skin
and most importantly, the big blue sky.
That is a revelation of space.
Making revelations of space is what I do;
I’m a designer and creative director,
and that’s what I do for a living.
I do it for all sorts of people
in all kinds of different ways,
and it might seem
complicated, but it’s not.
And over the next couple of minutes,
I’m going to give you three ways
that I think you can
move through your world
so that you, too, can make revelations
of space, or at least reveal them.
Step one: therapy.
I know, I know, I know: blah, blah, blah,
New Yorker, blah, blah, blah, therapy.
But seriously, therapy – you have to know
why you’re doing these things, right?
When I got the job
of designing “Hamilton,”
I sat with Lin-Manuel Miranda, writer,
Tommy Kail, director, and I said,
“Why are we telling
this 246-year-old story?
What is it about the story
that you want to say,
and what do you want people to feel like
when they experience the show?”
It’s important. When we get that,
we move into step two: the design phase.
And I’ll give you
some little tricks about that,
but the design phase is important
because we get to make these cool toys.
I reach into Lin’s brain,
he reaches into mine,
this monologue becomes a dialogue.
And I make these cool toys,
and I say, “Does this world
look like the world
that you think could be a place
where we could house your show?”
If the answer is yes –
and when the answer is yes –
we move into what I think
is the most terrifying part,
which is the execution phase.
The execution phase is when
we get to build this thing,
and when this conversation goes
from a few people to a few hundred people
now translating this idea.
We put it in this beautiful little thing,
put it in the “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids”
super-sizer machine
and blow it up full-scale,
and we never know if we did it right
until we show up onstage and go,
“Is it OK? Is it OK?”
Here’s the thing:
you don’t have to be Lin,
you don’t have to have a book
that you want to turn into a show
in order to do this in your real life.
You’re already starring in a show,
by the way. It’s called your life.
Congratulations. (Laughter)
But seriously, Shakespeare said it:
“All the world’s a stage.”
He nailed that part.
What he screwed up royally
was that part where he said,
“And we are merely players.”
It’s ridiculous. We’re not merely players.
We are the costume designers
and the lighting designers
and the makeup artists in our own world,
and I want to get you to think about
being the set designer in your world.
Because I think you can leave here
if you do these three steps
and a couple of little tricks,
as I said, I’m going to tell you,
and you can begin to change the world
the way you want to.
You want to do it?
OK. Everybody write a show.
(Laughter)
No. Just kidding.
OK. Step one: therapy. Right?
How are you feeling?
That’s what the therapist says:
“How are you feeling today?”
It’s important to remember that,
because when we design the world for you,
the therapy is important.
It tells you that emotion
is going to become light and color.
A good example of that light and color
is a show I designed called
“Dear Evan Hansen.”
(Cheers)
“Dear Evan Hansen” exists – oh my God –
“Dear Evan Hansen” exists in a world
of almost all light and color.
So I chose a color: inky-black darkness.
(Laughter)
Inky-black darkness is a color
the way that sadness is an emotion.
And this show transforms people,
but not before it wrecks people.
I bet you’re wondering, “How expensive
could the set possibly be to transform you
if you sit for two hours and 20 minutes
in inky-black darkness?”
The answer is: cheap!
Inky-black darkness,
turn the lights on at the right time.
Seriously, think about leaving
Miss Darling’s class.
Inky-black darkness gives way
at the right moment,
we fly away that wall and reveal
a beautiful blue sky.
It blows people away
and it transports them,
and it makes them feel hopeful.
And we know this because color is emotion,
and when you paint with color,
you’re painting with feelings.
So think about that emotion, the one I had
you file away in your mental Rolodex.
What color is it?
Where in your wardrobe does it exist,
and where in your home does it exist?
When we design the show for you,
we’re going to use that color
to tell you how you feel in certain times.
But also, you know this exists
because you put the hero in white,
you put the lead character in red,
you put the villain in all black.
It’s typecasting. You know that.
So think about it.
But there’s also something else
that happens in the world
that helps us move through
the world in a safe way.
They’re called architectural standards.
They make us not fall down and go boom.
Doorknobs are all at the same height.
Light switches are all at the same height.
Toilet bowls are always –
thank God – at the same height,
because no one ever
misses the toilet bowl.
But seriously,
what would happen if we started
to tweak those architectural standards
to get what we wanted?
It reminds me of the stairs
I made for Pee-Wee Herman.
Pee-Wee Herman is a child,
and his entire world is created
so that we perceive Pee-Wee as a child.
The architecture and the furniture
and everything come to life,
but nothing more important
than those stairs.
Those stairs are 12 inches high,
so when Pee-Wee clomps
up and down those stairs,
he interacts with them like a kid.
You can’t fake that kind of interaction,
and that’s the exact opposite
of what we ask people in opera to do.
In opera, we shrink those stairs
so that our main characters
can glide up and down effortlessly
without ever breaking their voice.
You could never put an opera singer
in Pee-Wee’s Playhouse,
(Sings in Pee-Wee’s voice)
or they wouldn’t be able to do their job.
(Laughter)
But you couldn’t put Pee-Wee
in an opera set.
He couldn’t climb
up and down those stairs.
There’d be no Pee-Wee.
He’d be like James Bond slinking
elegantly up and down the stairs.
It wouldn’t work.
(Laughter)
Now think of your set, your home,
what you exist in every single day.
If you’re anything like me,
the trash can is just too small
for the amount of takeout
that you buy every night, right?
And I find myself jamming
like I’m kneading dough at a pizza place,
I’m jamming it in
because I don’t understand.
Or, maybe the light switch in your foyer
is just stashed behind too many
precariously placed coats,
and so you don’t even go for it.
Therefore, day after day,
you wind up walking in and out
of a chasm of darkness.
(Laughter)
It’s true.
But what would happen if the space
revealed something about yourself
that you didn’t even know?
Kanye never told me specifically
that he wanted to be God.
But –
(Laughter)
when we started working together,
we were sending images back and forth,
and he sent me a picture
of the aurora borealis
with lightning strikes through it.
And he sent me pictures
from a mountaintop looking down
at a smoke-filled canyon,
or smoke underneath
the surface of water –
like, epic stuff.
So the first set I designed for him
was a huge light box
with the name of his record label.
He would stand triumphantly
in front of it,
and it would flash lights
like a lightning bolt.
And it was epic, but, like,
starter-kit epic.
We moved on to a large swath of sky
with a tear down the middle,
and through the tear, you could see
deep parts of the cosmos.
Getting closer.
We evolved to standing
on top of an obelisk,
standing on top of a mountainside,
standing on top of boxes.
You know, he was evolving
as an artist through space,
and it was my job to try and keep up.
When we did Coachella,
there he was,
standing in front of an 80-foot-wide
by 40-foot-tall ancient artifact,
literally handed down from God to man.
He was evolving,
and we were all witness to it.
And in his last show,
which I didn’t design but I witnessed,
he had self-actualized.
He was literally standing
on a floating plexiglass deck
over his adoring fans,
who had no choice but to praise
to Yeezus up above.
(Laughter)
He had deified himself.
You can’t become Yeezus
in your living room.
The space told him
who he was about himself,
and then he delivered that to us.
When I was 20 years old,
I was driving through a parking lot,
and I saw a puddle.
I thought, “I’m going to veer to the left.
No – I’m going through it.”
And I hit the puddle, and – ffftt! –
all the water underneath my car,
and instantly, I have an aha moment.
Light bulb goes off.
Everything in the world
needs to be designed.
I mean, I’m sure I was thinking,
“The drainage needs to be designed
in this parking lot.”
But then I was like, “Everything
in the world needs to be designed.”
And it’s true: left to its own devices,
Mother Nature isn’t going to carve
an interesting or necessarily helpful path
for you.
I’ve spent my career
reaching into people’s minds
and creating worlds out here
that we can all interact with.
And yeah, you might not get
to do this with fancy collaborators,
but I think if you leave here,
those three easy steps –
therapy, who do I want to be,
why do I do the things that I do;
design, create a plan and try
and follow through with it,
what can I do;
execute it –
I think if you add that
with a little color theory –
(Laughter)
some cool design choices and a general
disrespect for architectural standards,
you can go out
and create the world
that you want to live in,
and I am going to go home
and buy a new trash can.
Thank you.
(Applause)