BY LUCIA MAURO
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Prolific scenic designer Joey Wade–originally from Atlanta, Georgia–draws an immediate analogy between his theatrical vocation and his father, a Southern Baptist preacher who was intent on saving everyone’s soul. In his ongoing quest to actively unite theatre audiences in a true communal experience so that they have a similar spiritual epiphany, he found his own "religion" in set design.
"Theatre is all about the audience," says Wade, 28. "People go to the theatre for the same reasons they go to church or a ball game–to feel togetherness; to share something unique with others.
"If I can help heighten this community feeling so that the performance can take the audience on an emotional ride together, then I have done my job."
Anyone who has "experienced" Wade’s opulently-minimalist, mega-immersive designs will attest to being not only totally embraced by the environment of the play but getting thrust into the action.
My most memorable encounter with one of Wade’s living sets was Gilead Theatre’s ferociously real 1998 production of the Holocaust-themed drama, Bent, at the Athenaeum Studio Theatre. Wade ripped out seats, installed a new floor and reconfigured the room to move from a Berlin nightclub–where actors portraying Nazi soldiers yanked tables and chairs from under patrons–to a grim and desolate concentration camp, where male and female audience members were separated and ordered to sit on uncomfortable wooden benches surrounded by barbed wire.
Since arriving in Chicago with his wife, actress Laura Scott Wade, in 1995, the designer has worked on a staggering range of productions. They include Of Mice and Men and Born Yesterday at Bog Theatre in Des Plaines; Suicide in B-Flat at Center Theatre; Chekhov in Yalta for Seanachai; Thanatos and The Possessed at National Pastime; The Cairn Stones and A Month in the Country at Bailiwick; Marat/Sade for The Hypocrites; The Duel and Woyzeck for European Rep; Uncle Vanya at the Steppenwolf Studio; The Price at Writers Theatre; Liquid Moon and Blue Moon at Chicago Dramatists; Quills at Trap Door; and The Grey Zone at A Red Orchid Theatre.
Current Chicago design projects are The Dazzle in the Steppenwolf Studio and Calamity Meat for Seanachai.
He also has designed sets for the Tom Ramsey Theatre in North Carolina, Pistarckle Theatre in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Nottingham Playhouse in England, Scottish National Opera and Italy’s Teatre de l’Orange, as well as a retrospective exhibition on legendary scenic designer Ralph Koltai at London’s Lethaby Galleries. In addition, Wade has translated his kinetic theatrical vocabulary into corporate-design projects, ranging from the North American Spine Association in LaGrange to Chicago’s soon-to-open Willy’s Barbecue restaurant. Plus he teaches stage craft and drama tech and design at Lincoln Park’s Francis W. Parker School.
Wade–who also builds and paints most of his sets–is immersed in the design process on a daily basis, making his commitment to audiences’ visceral engagement in the world of a play all the more plausible. Not surprisingly, design took over his life at a young age, and he has been a pioneer in scenic-design education as far back as elementary school. He remains adamant about designers receiving the monetary rewards they deserve for their multilayered work. His approach is one of limitless possibilities, evoking rich detail within an enticing realm of abstraction and suggestion.
As a child, Wade suffered from dyslexia, which limited his expression via written language skills. So he turned to drawing. He recalls his excitement, and ultimate frustration, during the requisite first-grade Thanksgiving art project involving tracing his hand to form a turkey. The turkey he envisioned was extremely life-like–a goal hampered by being limited to flat dimensions.
"I have spent countless hours since that time trying to develop an ever stronger link between my hands and my mind," says Wade. "For years, it seemed impossible to attain, mainly because the ideas in my head were alive, and the paper was not."
His mystery, however, was solved, when his junior high teacher asked him to audition for Oklahoma! He landed a role and also found himself painting the cornfield-inspired sets.
"Suddenly that canyon between mind and hand was possible to bridge," he stresses, "because–unlike the paper on which I traced my six-year-old hand–the stage was alive. It teemed with life: the actors, the lights and the words of the playwright. Part of my problem with art had been that I felt trapped by that lifeless paper because that kind of art existed only in the three-dimensional world, frozen at its completion.
"Theatre added what was, to me, the essential life-giving element: the fourth dimension of time."
Shortly before his senior year at Morrow Senior High School in Atlanta, Wade marched over to the Board of Education office and demanded the addition of a stage craft class. The drama instructor agreed to teach it and, at that same time, the nearby Clayton County Performing Arts Center opened its doors. Wade designed sets and ran lights for numerous professional shows, including theatre, dance and music productions.
This pattern of integrating theatrical design into the curriculum has become a prominent driving force throughout his career. And even though he entertained the possibility of becoming an actor, Wade realized his true calling when colleges to which he applied expressed greater interest in his design talents than his acting.
He attended high school with his future wife Laura, and they got married shortly after graduation. Both attended Georgia’s Gainesville College. Wade had received a scholarship to the college’s Gainesvile Theatre Alliance, a two-year associate's program that brought in professional theatre designers to work with students. But there was no formal scenic-design program. No problem. Wade designed his own and even recruited a few actors to take classes.
"My lack of a rigid program early on has helped me," he says. "Sometimes intensive training can be limiting. I have the freedom to design based on each individual experience rather than a certain institution’s or instructor’s preconceived notion of what design should be. I let my imagination run wild and tailor my creative style to the director and other designers for each project."
For Wade, "Set design is not about filling the space with objects. It’s about forging a connection between the audience and the actors."
Wade is typically inspired by one strong–often climactic–moment of a play. He then builds on that one image and tone. The shape of that moment extends to the actors, as well as to the viewers. In European Rep’s Stars in the Morning Sky, a dying Russian prostitute is carried out to view the passing of the Olympic torch. The stage directions called for what Wade considered a weak exit toward the back of the stage. Instead he suggested that the actress be carried "sacrificially" toward the audience.
Wade had a chance to workshop his craft during a 1994 summer stock production of Unto These Hills (a reenactment of the Native American Trail of Tears) in Cherokee, N.C. In between this show, he and the other artists would put on their own productions. An artist there later referred him to the Virgin Islands-based Pistarckle Theatre, where he designed Private Lives and Arsenic and Old Lace.
Through word-of-mouth and inspired by the late Chicago designer Michael Merritt’s interview in the book, "American Set Design 1 and 2," Wade relocated in 1995 to Chicago–where he and Laura have become lively fixtures in the local theatre community. After being in the Windy City a total of two days, the designer went stage-door-to-stage-door with portfolio in hand. The Goodman Theatre hired him immediately as a carpenter in its scene shop.
He was deeply inspired by the fanatical detail of famed designer Santo Loquasto during Goodman’s staging of The Three Sisters. Wade says it took him three weeks to make an authentic grandfather’s clock according to Loquasto’s specifications. Wade then applied a similar exacting touch to European Rep’s Ivanov.
The young designer continued to get experience. But he insists he did not acquire a "design aesthetic" until he met Ralph Koltai–the designer for Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s Michael Bogdanov-directed 1997 production of Timon of Athens, with its artfully strewn detritus. Through much persistence, Wade became Koltai’s second assistant. Interestingly, Wade had been inspired many years earlier by Koltai’s designs reproduced in a classic scenic-design book for a production of Back to Methusaleh.
He and Koltai forged a deep connection, and Wade eventually built several models for the designer’s retrospective exhibit in London. Wade stayed at Koltai’s home in France. The two would work 16-hour days building these models, then sit around the fire and play Scrabble at night.
"I realized that I saw someone as famous and respected as Ralph Koltai," says Wade, "in the golden years of his life, still having to hustle. It made me really want to prioritize. He helped me come to terms with the fact that, if you’re always seeking perfection, you’ll never find it. I also would look for plays that I was attracted to."
Wade soon found a stability and vitality in teaching grades 9 through 12 at the Francis W. Parker School, where he has been a stage craft instructor since 1998. He guides students but does not limit them. The program he developed is very hands-on, with students designing all elements of a show (sets, lights, sound and costumes) from the ground up.
"Working with the fabulous Ralph Koltai," reiterates Wade, "I saw that I was destined to a life of hustling for the next job. Teaching has grounded me in a place where my creative energy can be focused on empowering the students to accomplish anything they set their minds to.
"My philosophy is that it’s much better to try to succeed and fail than to not try because you think it is not possible to succeed. In return, this youthful exuberance re-energizes my own creative self."
Almost four years ago, he started with five students in drama tech and design. Now he has over 40 students in two stage craft classes as well as 8th grade wood shop at the Parker school.
Wade also enjoys designing creative work spaces outside the theatre realm: "It’s the same approach," he quips, "only the people [in these corporate environments] don’t realize they’re in a play."
His belief is that an actor performs better on a well-designed set. He carries that idea over to employees whom he thinks can be more productive in comfortable surroundings. For example, the North American Spine Society office is like a home with a big kitchen, patio on the roof and a rubber-ducky shower curtain. The same is true for restaurant patrons. Willy’s Barbecue will sport Astro-Turf and a weathered white-picket fence.
For Wade, art and life forge an exhilarating symmetry: "Theatre refuses to stagnate," he states. "It has a beginning and an end; a birth and a death. It lives on, of course, in the memories of both the audience and its creators. But essentially it is unique to every moment in which it is witnessed. This element thrilled me [early on] and continues to exhilarate me today–to not only be able to create tangibly the images in my mind, but to see others actually inhabit that vision as if it were their own reality."