Although I consider myself a puppeteer I also do quite a bit of set design. Even when it's for "straight" theater you can still see the influences that puppetry has left on me. (If you're not familiar with the play you can check out the brief summary)

In Marvin's Room the director, Cynthia McGean, and I had the interesting challenge of trying to create multiple locations on a very small stage. Not only did we have to go from Bessie's house to various Doctor's offices, we also had to go outside. How to do this? Shadows. They provide versatility and also some symbolic benefits.

The shadow technology was quite effective for the scenes happening in Marvin's, her father's, room. We were able to place a sharp light upstage of the actor and project his shadow on the wall of Bessie's house. The script refers to "Marvin lies in a bed upstage, barely visible through a wall of glass bricks." I don't know about you, but a wall a glass bricks was not particuarly appealling. But- walls of muslin gave us a whole range of possibilities. You can see how easily we could change their color. We were literally painting with light. This seemed the natural choice not just from the practical reasons but also symbolically. As Bessie comes to face the fact that she has leukemia the very walls around her become less substantial.

Now- how did we actually execute this. Lance Woolen, my TD (technical director), made simple frames for the shadow screens. Then he canted them forward at a slight angle so that the shadow figures would rest against the muslin. We stapled the muslin down, just as you would stretch a canvas, and voila! Shadow screen. The upstage side of the screen has fishing line hung so that the various peices can just hook in place. Our lighting designer carefully shuttered all of the lights so there was minimal spill on the screens. (There was actually more light onstage than these pictures show, but we've adjusted the levels for my photos.) All of this led to a very lovely, and simple set onstage. But the upstage side was quite a different story.

You can see how utterly simple the figures are. They are cut out of foam core, or cardboard. The colors are simply tissue paper, scotch taped on. We painted the downstage side of each black, so that it wouldn't reflect light through the screen.