Transforming Space Over Time: Set Design and Visual Storytelling with Broadway’s Legendary Directors

Transforming Space over Time: Set Design and Visual Storytelling with Broadway’s Legendary Directors tells the stories of six diverse productions: five on Broadway and one Off-Broadway. Beowulf Boritt, theater designer and Tony Award winner, begins with the moment he was offered each job and takes readers through the conceptual development of the set, in collaboration with the director, the challenges of its physical creation, and the intense process of readying it for the stage. Since theater is at heart a collaborative art form, he includes details of his work with the many professionals-designers, technicians, producers, stage managers, and actors-who contribute their talent and ideas to each show. Boritt offers insight into the sometimes frustrating but unavoidable realities of the biz part of showbiz: budgets, promotion, reviews, and awards, and he provides enough detail to interest aspiring and seasoned theater professionals and enough spice to satisfy passionate theatergoers.

Boritt includes extensive conversations with the directors of the productions, theater legends such as James Lapine, Kenny Leon, Hal Prince, Susan Stroman, Jerry Zaks, and Stephen Sondheim. Each takes a very different approach to theater, which necessitates a different approach to collaboration. By focusing on a variety of specific shows Boritt has worked on, he attempts to peel back the curtain on the creative and intellectual process-in particular, the way his designs develop over time, in concert with the director and other members of the creative team. Transforming Space over Time is about the creative journey of a production.