Summer Set Designs from Academy Designers Alexandra Lord & Michelle Tracey

Our two Academy designers, Alexandra Lord and Michelle Tracey, are working on the next two Summer shows Bed and Breakfast and Sisters. Both sets they’ve respectively designed are homes to two, but each home tells a very different story.

Bed and Breakfast Set Design by Alexandra Lord

The set design for Bed and Breakfast is the essentialized architectural structure of a turn of the century home. This familiar frame is filled out by one unconventional couple who learn to love each nook and cranny of this house, the small town it is in, the townspeople around them and, at the center of it all, each other. The set itself contains all they need to tell the story of the year it takes to make a house a home. There are doors that swing both ways, hidden storage closets and front and back stairs. Brett, played by Gregory Prest, and Drew, played by Paolo Santalucia,  move us from multiple locations in the city to a small town and evoke everyone they meet along the way as they prepare to open their Bed and Breakfast with open arms and open hearts.

– Alexandra Lord

Sisters Set Design by Michelle Tracey

The set design for Sisters is at once a representation of the physical home of Anne and Evelina Bunner, their shop, and a transitory space that allows us to jump quickly through time, to flow seamlessly from location to location, and from reality to fantasy. The scenic design is also a physicalization of Anne’s internal world. At the heart of the play is Anne’s mission of self-sacrifice for the benefit of her sister; the audience has a chance to follow her emotional journey in addition to the story through the transformation of the space.

– Michelle Tracey

Bed and Breakfast, by Mark Crawford and directed by Ann Marie Kerr, begins August 11 and runs through September 1.

Sisters, written by another academy member Rosamund Small and directed by Peter Pasyk, runs August 23 to September 16.