'Theatre is about the words. I'm trying to create a canvas for those words to be spelled out visually.' -- Brian Sidney Bembridge Scenic & Lighting Designer

Brian Sidney Bembridge has amassed a collection of clippings from interior-design magazines'many of them pasted collages of living rooms, kitchens and decks that might inspire the look for a future theatre production. He also has accumulated stacks of interior-design coffee-table books from the bargain bin at Border's. But that's not to say the in-demand scenic/lighting designer's sets look like pristine photo ops for Architectural Digest.

He enjoys taking familiar objects from daily life and stretching them into a more suggestive hemisphere. 'Theatre is about the words,' Bembridge reinforces. 'I'm trying to create a canvas for those words to be spelled out visually.'

Those ideas include his ingeniously 'perfect' but, ultimately, toppling sitcom-style set for Naked Eye Theatre Company's The Idiot Box earlier this year'a set Bembridge describes as ''Friends' with a staircase.' Its faux-loft feel'with a hardwood floor, sleek furniture and a designer kitchen awash in primary colors'was both homage to and wry commentary on our Crate & Barrel/Bed, Bath and Beyond society.

Theatre and interior design informed a good part of his creative life. A native of Londonderry, New Hampshire, Bembridge acted in community theatre and summer stock shows. He also had a habit of re-designing his bedroom every month, which helped him express himself but drove his parents crazy.

'I painted a skyline all around my room,' recalls Bembridge, 30. 'I traced my shadow in different positions jumping all over one wall. I later did faux marbling around the room. And I painted a skylight on the ceiling.'

He originally wanted to be a lighting designer, and that's what he pursued at the North Carolina School of the Arts. But visual art instructor Clyde Fowler inspired him to focus on scenic design. So Bembridge received his BFA in scenic design. Yet, to this day, theatres ask him to either light their productions or design sets'or do a combination of both. As an artist who designs from his 'gut,' Bembridge calls himself 'naïve' when it comes to lighting: 'I don't give lighting cues until we're in tech. And I prefer no color in lights.'

Yet it's the intuitive simplicity he brings to his designs that makes them so compelling. One of the first productions he lit after moving to Chicago in 1997 was TimeLine Theatre's A Cry of Players'an in-the-round configuration with soft Elizabethan-style illumination and sepia shadows. For this staging, he convinced TimeLine to purchase 12 additional dimmers. More recently, his collaboration with Court Theatre's artistic director Charles Newell for James Joyce's The Dead (being remounted this holiday season) resulted in real candlelight and a raked, sparsely adorned stage that reflected the script's imagery of 'a slippery slope.'

Bembridge is all about clean, simple lines with quiet symbolism. So concrete settings, like a train or ship, are not wholly realistic. They look more like pieces of those objects, which audiences can solder together in their minds.

He mentions his set for Apple Tree Theatre's two-person play, The Unexpected Man, set entirely on a train. But his vehicle did not sport fancy windows or an elaborate frame'just some unusual stage angles that played with the perspectives of the actors' heights. And depending on where viewers were seated, they were either passengers on this metaphoric train or observers looking in. For Writers' Theatre's Rough Crossing (in its small bookstore space) set on an ocean liner, the designer highlighted a railing, portholes, a wooden floor made of thick caulking strips and deck chairs.

'I first came in with a crazy, realistic boat that would have taken out the front row [of Writers' Theatre],' he says of Rough Crossing. 'We stripped it down to a design that said everything 'ship,' but was not excessive.'

Bembridge works most closely with Lookingglass Theatre Company'an ideal setting for his philosophy that design is a cohesive element of the total theatrical picture. He also likes to experiment and work collaboratively. He first got involved with Lookingglass in 2000 as a scenic designer for the children's opera Brundibar. He received a Joseph Jefferson Award for his smoky-poetic Industrial Revolution-era lighting in Lookingglass' adaptation of Charles Dickens' Hard Times. And he was responsible for the surreal, gray-hued lighting in the troupe's Rene Magritte-inspired staging of Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis in 2001.

In Metamorphosis, the actor portraying Kafka's cockroach-like protagonist spent much of the play inside set designer Geoffrey Curley's massive Plexiglass box, which doubled as a bedroom and a jungle gym. Bembridge, therefore, was conscious of the Plexiglass' intensely reflective qualities'a challenge he turned into a creative advantage.

'I used the Plexiglass box once to shine light into the audience,' he explains. 'The box was spun around center stage in this one sequence in which I hit it with two instruments in a low position from the front of the house. The reflection moved through the audience and then throughout the entire theatre as I brought more instruments up. It was almost as if the box became the source of light.'

Bembridge has designed sets for Lookingglass' La Luna Muda and lights and sets for Summertime (which harkened back to his New Hampshire childhood, including wicker furniture on pulleys that had to be raised during high tide). He's currently the scenic designer for Lookingglass' Philosophy of the World'Joy Gregory's new musical based on the ill-fated 1960s girl group The Shaggs'to debut here in the spring. He worked on the Power House Theater production of Philosophy in Los Angeles and describes the set as 'a sad doll house.' The design concept'similar to the 'peeling onion' idea behind the multiple prosceniums of La Luna Muda'is centered on a series of stages that open onto other stages, including a puppet theatre. The marionette imagery references the manipulation of these girls' and their lack of choice.

Bembridge's path in theatre design, while prolific, mirrors the ongoing self-generated nature of the freelance world. He first worked at an interior design firm when he moved to Chicago. Shortly after, the designer received a call from North Carolina School of the Arts regarding a film project. He got his big break designing sets (including a jail cell and a rat maze) for the Jim Henson Company movie Muppets from Space'a gig he believes opened doors for him as a stage scenic and lighting designer when he returned to Chicago.

But the process of getting recognized took some time. Instead of moving to New York, where there are more opportunities to assist an established designer on larger shows, Bembridge wanted to challenge himself and pour his energy into actually designing sets and lights. Since Chicago is not what he calls 'a producer-driven' theatre scene, he has been able to team up with a range of companies to hone his skills. The major challenge? Small or no budgets.

His lengthy resume demonstrates that Bembridge works constantly, with credits he has built over the years at Steppenwolf (Jesus Hopped the A Train, Wendall Greene); Chicago Shakespeare Theater (Romeo and Juliet, Sunday in the Park with George); American Theater Company (Tintypes); Next (Measure for Measure); Famous Door (Cider House Rules, Parts 1 and 2); TimeLine Theatre (Hannah and Martin); Writers' Theatre (Our Town); Apple Tree (The Birthday Party); Bailiwick (Gypsy, Being Beautiful); City Lit (Alice in Wonderland); Luna Negra Dance Theater; Civic Ballet of Chicago and various colleges. He also has set new standards for lighting dance concerts, going beyond mere colored backdrops: 'When I design for dance, I like to create shafts of light so that the dancers can move in and out of the light, as if it's another character for them to partner.'

Bembridge established a relationship with Peninsula Players, where he has created a series of non-literal sets for standards like Arsenic and Old Lace, Cash on Delivery, The Cherry Orchard, Bob Almighty and Radio Gals. He says he shook up the visual sensibilities of Peninsula Players more traditionally minded audiences with The Cherry Orchard, whose designs included ominous trees that were up-lit and a metaphoric separation of the walls and ceiling. For Lookingglass' high school touring production of Hamlet, he united ladders, sheets and suitcases (arranged in a reverse pyramid and containing various props). At one point, sand was poured into the suitcases to symbolize the king's murder.

Even as a student at the North Carolina School of the Arts'where teachers urged students to push the limits of visual stagecraft'he designed a set for the Benjamin Britten opera Albert Herring which required reconfiguring  the orchestra pit and the auditorium to accommodate large pieces that morphed into different-colored Victorian rooms and a gazebo. To add character and wry in-jokes to the décor, he photographed faculty members in Victorian dress. He then framed and hung those sepia pictures on the walls of the set. Ideally, although he defines himself more as a scenic than a lighting designer, Bembridge prefers to do both for each production. After all, he points out, 'No one will ever know that set as well as you do.'

In addition to Lookingglass' Philosophy of the World, Bembridge's upcoming scenic design projects include Benefactors at Writers' Theatre and Far Away at Next. He still harbors dreams of designing his 'blue set.'

Bembridge also teaches scenic design at the Theatre School at DePaul University and guest lectures on design at Northwestern University and Lake Forest College.

'People say that I work too much,' he notes. 'But I can't afford to turn down work.'

So the accolades, as most local theatre artists realize, don't necessarily add up to financial security'one of the main reasons Bembridge might be moving back East. He's considering New York and is interested in designing for both film and theatre. He finds that it's tough for designers to survive in Chicago unless they have regular projects with big theatres or supplement their income by working on shows out of town. Yet, despite the money challenges, he is attracted to the 'provocative work' being done here and the abundant opportunities for designers to develop their craft.

Bembridge calls himself a low-tech designer who draws his images by hand'a rarity at a time of computer-generated everything. 'There's something about putting pencil to paper,' says the designer, his voice trailing off with an air of nostalgia. Although his concepts are contemporary, he longs for a time when the design process was intricately mapped out in hand-made sketches and models. 'I think theatre has lost its edge of scenography,' adds Bembridge. 'There was a better conversation before [between designers and directors] than now about what a production was going to look like on stage.'

Despite the challenges of being a freelance scenic and lighting designer, he forges ahead. 'It's all I've ever known,' Bembridge acknowledges. 'Since I was a kid, I made haunted houses and decorated my room. It excites me to create those crazy worlds actors live in.'

Home

Stage Personae Archives