Setting the Bar for Success

With all of the current hoopla surrounding the creation of Facebook and what extraordinary discoveries were made in a Kirkland House suite, it is worth noting that such breakthroughs may also come about in other on-campus spaces—for example, in the Leverett House dining hall. This is where, as a Harvard undergraduate, Tony-winning set designer Derek McLane ’80 got his first taste of his future profession, and was instantly changed. Now, in the midst of a fruitful career in the field of scenic design, McLane will be returning to Harvard to share his joy of the craft with current undergraduates interested in design.

He recalls the experience of designing for a production of “Guys and Dolls” in Leverett: “I really had no idea what I was doing, but I did it, and I was pretty taken with it,” McLane says. “I thought it was amazing, an amazing craft. I was very proud of what I did in the Leverett House dining room. I cringe now when I think about it, but at the time, I was kind of blown away by the possibilities of what you could do with space and storytelling.”

In a pair of workshops to be held October 14 and November 2 in the brand-new “arts lab” being called Arts@29Garden, McLane will speak to student designers about his own projects and career path and will discuss how a design should, as McLane puts it, “describe the world of the play visually.”

Thomas Lee, director of the Office for the Arts’ “Learning From Performers” program of which this event is a part, says that he and McLane collaborated to produce an effective learning experience for students. “We decided that we wanted it to be as hands-on and intensive as possible, to really take students through the process,” Lee says. “We thought that the best thing would be to have a product at the end.”

This product will be a set design for any play or musical—students who are working on a campus show this semester may bring in designs for those productions, and others may imagine designs for any play of their choosing. The students will work on their set ideas in the interim between the two workshops. At the second meeting on November 2, students will present their designs and discuss them as a group. “I’ll kind of play director,” McLane says.

The opportunity to talk through the designs is important, says McLane, as communication is essential to the craft. “Designers are not studio artists—we’re not painters, we’re not sculptors,” he says. “We have to work collaboratively, which can be great, and it also has its shortcomings...You have to have flexibility and be able to adapt, to come up with new ideas.”

McLane is deeply excited about having this opportunity to return to Harvard and speak to students and the wider community—the latter at an event open to the public to be held on the evening of October 14 in a slide lecture and Q&A co-sponsored by the Office of Career Services. “The thing I’m most curious about is what students who are interested in design are like now,” McLane says. “In some ways, they’re a version of myself 30 years ago.”

The buzz from student designers is equally palpable. Isabel Q. Carey ’12, the Co-General Manager of the Harvard College Stage Designers’ Collective—which is co-sponsoring the workshops—says that the reaction from the student design community has been enthusiastic. “There’s been positive response from people who read through and are just like, ‘Wow, this guy is really legit.’ Because he is. He’s really legit,” Carey says.

McLane is currently busy designing for a number of stage productions, as well as—something quite new for him—the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. He is returning to his alma mater as a now-bountifully laurelled artist, having garnered two OBIEs (Off-Broadway Theatre Awards), as well as three Tony Award nominations for scenic design—one of them leading to a win in 2009, for the play “33 Variations.” The hope is that a piney whiff of these laurels, and the wisdom of the man who bears them, will inspire and invigorate the set-design saplings of this school, in whose same environment McLane, too, once laid down his roots.