An Actor's Perspective on Theater Design

Interview with Holly Twyford

By Martin Moeller

Blueprints Winter 2006-07
Volume XXV, No. 1

Holly Twyford has been acting professionally for over a decade, appearing in more than forty productions in the Washington area, plus others in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Santa Cruz. Twyford has been nominated for nine Helen Hayes Awards and won three, including two Outstanding Lead Actress Awards—for her portrayal of Juliet in Romeo and Juliet at the Folger Shakespeare Library and as Evelyn in the Studio Theatre's The Shape of Things—and an Outstanding Supporting Actress Award for her performance in The Two Gentlemen of Verona. She has appeared in several independent films, including John Waters' Pecker, and on television in Homicide: Life on the Street. She most recently assisted Joe Banno in the direction of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Folger.

Martin Moeller: I assume that the physical character of a given theatrical space directly influences an actor’s performance.  How consciously do actors react to different venues?

Holly Twyford: I think it’s pretty conscious. If you go to the first reading of a play and there are actors who have never worked in that theater before, watch their faces when they walk into that space for the first time, and you can see all of the wheels turning: “Okay, how can I use this? What do I have to do to reach the audience in this house?”  If it’s theater in the round, for instance, it’s something completely different from what you have to do on a proscenium stage. “Is there a balcony? Do I have to pump it up a little bit, to make sure that the folks in the cheap seats are getting everything?” There are lots of technical adjustments that have to be made. 

That goes to the director, too. Somebody directing at the Folger Theatre, for instance, has to be very careful, because the sightlines are extremely challenging. But it’s very fun to watch actors’ faces walking into the Folger for the first time, because it’s a wonderful replica of an Elizabethan stage [that really] takes you back, and there’s something exciting about that for any actor, I would think.

MM: One of the hallmarks of the typical Elizabethan theater was the intimate relationship between the actors and the audience.  

HT: It was very participatory. At the Folger, in the area that we call the Main House on the floor, those seats would not have been there [in the Elizabethan era]. Those would have been groundlings [people who paid a penny each in order to watch the performance while standing in the unsheltered center of the theater]. Those people would have been eating, drinking, throwing things, and shouting! 

MM: Theater in those days was a rowdy business, but that hasn’t stopped many people over the past century from pursuing the idea of recreating an “authentic” or “accurate” Elizabethan theatrical experience.  How do you feel about that movement?

HT: If you are going for accuracy, that’s great, but it’s not necessarily going to be a theatrical experience or an artistic experience—it’s different. It depends on what you want to get out of it. I think that one pitfall of having a replica of an Elizabethan theater is that it is not always easy to work with. [At the Folger,] there are two big pillars in the middle of the stage, and there are places where the king or queen might have sat, presumably so he or she could be seen, but now you can’t seat an audience member there because they can’t see what’s going on.

MM: From your perspective as an actor, how well do you think set designers generally respond to the constraints and opportunities of specific theaters and plays?

HT: Any self-respecting designer would surely embrace what is there. For example, I would say that Aaron Posner’s production of As You Like It did a great job of using the columns [at the Folger]. In the first act, the design actually called for more columns on stage. Then when [the characters] were in the forest in the second act, all those other columns came down—they were symbolizing the trees, of course, and so the design really did sort of embrace the existing columns.

When I was acting in The Desk Set at the Studio, the designer did this great, almost Art Deco set for it. It made you stand in a certain way. If you’ve got a beanbag chair in your scene, you’re going to act in a certain way around the beanbag chair. All of those elements contribute. 

MM: How do all of the design components come together in a typical production?

HT: Directors meet with all of the designers far before the first read-through of a play, long before they even assemble a cast. You want to make sure that whoever is designing the sets, the lighting, the sound, the costumes, and the director are all on the same page and telling the same story. The director might say, “I’m interested in this period of design, and I want to incorporate the darkness of this play,” or, “I want to incorporate the fantasy side of this play.” The designers will go off and come back and say, “Here are some sketches.” It’s back and forth. They work and they mold, so that by the time you get to the first read-through, there is a complete model from the set designer, with at least 90 percent of the questions answered as to what’s going to go where. 

I do know lighting designers who write cues later in the process, because they have to depend on the actors. There was one play I did with an actress who had beautiful blond hair, and I remember afterward someone saying, “Wow, that lighting designer really loved her.” He used the fact that her character was this sweet, wonderful, kind person, and he lit that blond hair so that you saw an angel. And that’s a perfect example of contributing to tell the story, because that’s what we’re all trying to do.

MM: Do you have a favorite theater in which to perform?

HT: I can’t even say. They’re all so different. I love the Arena Stage—specifically what is now called the Fichandler Stage there—because I love playing in the round. There’s something about trying to reach out to everyone who is in front of you, and behind you, and to the sides. And the Folger, obviously—it has such a personality. And the Studio Theatre has a fantastic intimate feeling to it, which I really love. On their thrust stages you get to be right up with [the audience]—you can see faces clear as a bell and there’s something fun about that. And I did do a production of Romeo and Juliet outside, in a redwood glen, at Shakespeare Santa Cruz [in California]. Performing Romeo and Juliet actually under the stars—that was pretty remarkable.

MM: Have you noticed major changes in attitudes about theatrical settings and set design over the years?

HT: History is cyclical. In the early days, you often had only one set for the whole play. Arguably, in the Elizabethan era, you didn’t even have any sets. Then, of course, setting the play got more elaborate.  But then in the modern era, there was also a certain fashion for minimalist plays with no sets to speak of, like Waiting for Godot. 

Nowadays, it can be one extreme or the other. Look at Stop Kiss by Diana Son. There were 26 scenes. Do you actually create sets for all of those? When I was in it, they actually did create separate sets in various spots on the stage. Other productions of that play have been more abstract. 

MM: In a way, as an actor, you are ultimately the set designer’s client. In that capacity, what sage advice might you give to an aspiring designer?

HT: Set designers, like architects, are dealing with a building—they have to think about engineering, practicality, and all within a budget. So it’s architecture, it really is. The design of the set affects everything. Ultimately, the job of the designer is the same as the job of the actor, the director, and everybody else: Remember to tell the story.

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