This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Eila Mell: Hello and welcome to Behind the Awards. I'm Eila here with Bruce. Hey, Bruce.

[0:06] Bruce Gotlieb: Hello there. How are we doing today?

[0:08] Eila Mell: I am a little tired because I went to a great event last night.

[0:13] Bruce Gotlieb: Okay.

[0:14] Eila Mell: And so I got home late, but it was so cool. It was called Costumes and Cocktails and TDF, their costume collection. It was their award ceremony, the Irene Sheriff Awards. And for those who don't know, Irene Sheriff was this amazing costume designer. And she did so many of classic shows that we just take as theater lore right now. There were four honorees. I will tell you who they were. Jennifer Muller, costume designer, amazing. Tom Watson, a wig designer. John McFarlane, who is an artist. I mean, he paints, sets, drops. He does it all himself. This was so amazing. He doesn't have assistants and associates. He only will take two to three shows a season because he does everything himself by hand. Just amazing. I know. And then the main honoree was the incredible Paul Taswell.

[1:20] Bruce Gotlieb: Oscar winner.

[1:21] Eila Mell: Oscar winner. Right. I mean.

[1:23] Bruce Gotlieb: I mean, aside from, you know.

[1:25] Eila Mell: His two Tonys. Yeah, right. Little things like that. But wow. And Paul is so deserving of this award. And just for those who don't know, he designed a little show called Hamilton and a movie called Wicked. And he's just incredible. So it was a really fun night. It was at TOW downtown. Sure. And Bruce, the best part is that not only did we get to go to this wonderful award ceremony, but you could shop. I know they were selling like vintage Bob Mackie pieces.

[2:03] Bruce Gotlieb: Oh, so what'd you buy?

[2:05] Eila Mell: I didn't get anything. But my plus one, my friend Audra, she got this great necklace. I know I tried on this incredible gold jacket and it was just a little big and I just wasn't I wanted it so bad, but it wasn't fitting.

[2:20] Bruce Gotlieb: I mean, there were designers in the room. You couldn't ask them to.

[2:24] Eila Mell: I know. Oh, and that was the other thing. It was like a who's who of costume designers. Um, Kathy Zuber was there and Queen Jean and Sandra Lacoste. I mean, so many people, I can't even begin to tell you all the luminaries in the room.

[2:41] Bruce Gotlieb: Amazing. It was so much fun. Yeah.

[2:44] Eila Mell: So, you know, we're in the throes of award season. We're just the other night.

[2:49] Bruce Gotlieb: Right. We're on the brink of Tony galore.

[2:53] Eila Mell: I know. I know. So speaking of awards, we have an award-winning guest on our show today.

[2:59] Bruce Gotlieb: Another designer, but a set designer.

[3:01] Eila Mell: That's right. And he's designed Broadway Academy Awards Met Gala. Oh, he designed a theater in a hotel in Las Vegas. I mean, he's done things that you don't even realize that a set designer would get to do.

[3:15] Bruce Gotlieb: And he's even an author.

[3:17] Eila Mell: Well, that's right. We'll get to that. But Bruce, what maybe people would never imagine is that he designed some of the sets for The Muppet Show that was just on.

[3:29] Bruce Gotlieb: How fun. Well, we have award-winning designer Derek McLean as our guest.

[3:35] Eila Mell: So let's waste no time.

[3:46] Eila Mell: Behind the Awards is so thrilled to welcome Derek McLean.

[3:50] Derek McLean: Hello there.

[3:51] Eila Mell: Hi. Nice to be here. Nice to see you both.

[3:53] Bruce Gotlieb: Good morning. We're thrilled to have you.

[3:55] Derek McLean: Thank you.

[3:56] Eila Mell: So, you know, we've been talking about having you on since we started the show.

[3:59] Derek McLean: It's true.

[4:02] Eila Mell: Now is just the right time.

[4:03] Derek McLean: I'm glad I'm finally here.

[4:04] Bruce Gotlieb: Yes.

[4:05] Eila Mell: Well, you're a busy guy. I mean, it's not like one project a season. Your Broadway Academy Awards Met Gala, like you name it, you're designing it.

[4:16] Derek McLean: Yeah, a few things, a few things at one time.

[4:19] Eila Mell: Well, let's talk about what you know, how you represented on Broadway just at this moment. What is it, five shows right now on and off Broadway?

[4:27] Derek McLean: Yeah, I have five shows on Broadway, one show off Broadway right now.

[4:30] Eila Mell: All right, so let's count them.

[4:32] Derek McLean: So there's Moulin Rouge.

[4:34] Eila Mell: Yeah.

[4:34] Derek McLean: MJ.

[4:35] Eila Mell: Yeah.

[4:36] Derek McLean: Let's see if I can get them all.

[4:37] Eila Mell: Okay.

[4:39] Derek McLean: Just In Time.

[4:40] Eila Mell: Yes. Very good.

[4:41] Derek McLean: Two more Broadway.

[4:43] Eila Mell: Do I help?

[4:44] Derek McLean: Yes.

[4:44] Derek McLean: Death Becomes Her.

[4:46] Eila Mell: Oh, yeah, of course.

[4:47] Derek McLean: And The Ballisters.

[4:48] Eila Mell: The Ballisters, which is not yet opened. It's in previews.

[4:50] Derek McLean: Correct.

[4:51] Eila Mell: Right. And then off Broadway, The Adding Machine.

[4:54] Derek McLean: That's right. Yep.

[4:55] Eila Mell: There's only six shows. But how many projects can you be working on at a time?

[5:00] Derek McLean: I mean, you know, I would say most of the time I have sort of, you know, somewhere between six and eight or sometimes ten projects. But the thing is that they're all at different times and they're all at different stages. So if I had, you know, if I had eight projects all opening in the same month, that would be impossible. I would be dead. But yeah. But, you know, it's not really how it works. And so, you know, I'm sort of technically still working on The Ballisters because it hasn't opened. And I'll go, I'll swing by tech rehearsal this afternoon and check in with the director, Kenny Leon, and just make sure he doesn't need anything. But, you know, I think at this point, I'm kind of done with that.

And In Adding Machine, I am really done with it. And actually, it also is in previews, but it opens on Sunday. So, you know, and then there's other things, you know, I have a show that I'm doing this summer at the Lortel with Alex Timbers. It's a one-woman show with Kat Cohen, a comedian. And so, you know, like that's, it's soonish, but it's, that's basically designed at this point. So like the tough creative work is done on that. There's, you know, obviously some things to figure out once we get into the theater and all that stuff. And there's probably some budget things to solve. But, you know, and then there's other projects, which will be in the fall, next winter, you know, that I'm really, you know, in the middle of working on.

And then there's things like for the following season that I've barely started on, you know, that I've just had a few conversations about. So that's what makes it all possible is that, you know, they're all in different, they're all in different places.

[6:35] Eila Mell: At what point do you, is there, is there a point in the process? Because we know from talking to how many people that, you know, it could take a show years to come to evolution, to actually be a production, be put up. How soon in that timeline do you get brought in?

[6:54] Derek McLean: I, you know, if it's a big musical, a new musical, usually really early, you know, and so that would typically be, you know, anywhere from two to four years before it first appears.

[7:08] Eila Mell: Wow.

[7:09] Derek McLean: On stage, you know, some shows are longer because there's delays. And then every now and then there's something that's shorter. You know, when I did the musical Beautiful, the Carole King musical, I think I got hired seven months before we opened in San Francisco, you know, and that wound up being about a year before we opened on Broadway. So that was really fast. I just had a very impatient producer who just wanted to push the show along. And so, and he did. But that's very unusual for a Broadway musical. But, you know, something like L'Eau Rouge or MJ or Death Becomes You, it's usually a couple of years ahead of time, you know. And so I'm also working on the design before it's fully written.

And, you know, and so one of the exciting things, I think, for what we as designers get to do is you get to be a sort of a part of some of that writing process. Not that I'm actually writing it, of course, but, you know, you're in dialogue with the director and the writers very often. And sometimes, you know, things change just because of sort of practical considerations having to do with the design. You know, L'Eau Rouge, there are a few things like that. For example, I don't know if you remember, there's Toulouse-Lautrec's Garrett is a place on the show. And I had a very sort of distinct idea for that, that was kind of elaborate. That was, you know, and then there was a whole other set in that that we were trying to squeeze in there.

Actually, the two other sets we were trying to squeeze into that act. It was like the transition to get to one of those sets was really, really tough. And finally, you know, I think I said to Alex Timbers, do you think there's any way this second scene could actually just be set in Toulouse-Lautrec's Garrett again? And we could reuse that set because it's kind of a cool set and it would save us this other set. And he was like, yeah, absolutely. And then we did the same thing with the original scripted set, and it was at a dress shop. And that's where Satine gets sort of made over. It's a kind of makeover and see where they buy her fancy clothes. And that was set in a dress shop. And I designed this dress shop, and it was really cool.

I think it was really cool anyway. But it was super expensive. Like, you know, that set alone costs like, you know, a tenth of what the whole budget was supposed to be. And so when we were struggling to, you know, bring the budget under control, I think Alex said, what if we just cut that set and set that makeover scene back in the Duke's house? Because we already have the Duke's house. We already have the Duke's apartment, whatever it was. We already have that set sort of designed. So we could just use that one again and set the scene there. So, you know, that kind of thing sort of happens. And then that becomes part of the... It sort of becomes, you know, in a way, it sort of becomes part of the story.

[9:39] Eila Mell: Yeah. When you're working with a specific team, we know that they have their vision of what the piece looks like. When you get hired, do you say, oh, well, I'm working with Kenny, so I know right away he's going to want X, Y, Z. Does that filter some of your design based on who you're working with?

[9:55] Derek McLean: A hundred percent. Yeah. I mean, probably something that's unconscious after a while. You get to know these directors and their personalities and what they're interested in. And so, you know, now I've done probably, I don't know how many I've done, maybe eight or nine or ten shows with Kenny. So I kind of know like certain things he's just not going to like, so I don't bother exploring them. And then I, you know, and I've worked with Alex Timbers a bunch of times at this point also. And so then they have just totally different approaches to design and to those design meetings and how those work. And then I've worked with some other directors who are sort of not really that interested in design.

Like they just kind of want me to figure it out, which is also fine, but it means you have to prepare for those meetings very, very differently because you need to figure out how to get, you know, the design to where you need it to be. Like, I kind of like directors who challenge me a lot and, you know, say that's good, but I wonder if he can make it better. And, you know, and they mention a few things that are sort of bugging them or that they don't think are like fully developed. And that's great. I love that. And then I've worked with other directors, you know, sometimes where I've shown them an idea which I think is great and they look at it and they go, okay, good, that's great. And that always makes me nervous if they just say, if they say that.

So with those directors, once I realize that, what I do usually is I come up with like three totally distinct ideas. Like there's no way you could say they're great to all of them because they're so different. So, and I deliberately say, I said, okay, before you respond, I'm going to show you three different ideas. So you don't really need to say anything until I've shown you the three ideas. And that's really meant to try to provoke a conversation about the choices that need to be made because some of those choices can be really profound in terms of how the production works, what the style and what the language, the sort of visual language of the show is and how that works. So having those conversations early on is super important.

[11:43] Eila Mell: Yeah. By the time that the company gets together for the first rehearsal, how much of the show is built?

[11:50] Derek McLean: It usually depends on the size of the show. If it's a big musical, the show is entirely built by the first rehearsal and they're loading it into the theater. You know, if it was a show like Oula Rouge, you know, that probably took over two months to load into the theater. So, you know, and they probably had, they probably had six weeks of rehearsal. I don't remember. We probably had six weeks of rehearsal before we got it on stage. So the set was already being loaded into the theater, which is a scary thing because if something gets discovered, you know, in rehearsal, it can be very hard to adjust because it would be so expensive to change anything at that point. But on the other hand, for a big show like Oula Rouge or MJ or Deaf Becomes Her, there almost always have been staged workshops ahead of time.

So you're not really going into it blind because very often the stage workshop will have most of the same cast members. You know, with one or two exceptions, you've kind of designed, ideally, you've designed everything before the staged workshop. And you build mockups of it for rehearsal. So you find out things about the sizes or, you know, if the director is going to say, oh gosh, I need another, I need another entrance. I need a door. You know, he didn't give me a door. I had to have a door for the scene. So you're like, okay, it's good to know. So you have a chance to adapt and incorporate all those things. But like Beautiful, which I was mentioning was really fast, we didn't have any of that. There was no staged workshop. The only workshop I saw of that show was a music stand workshop with

[13:17] Derek McLane: The actors sang the songs out and read the script sitting down in chairs, and that was it. Because it was sort of fast-tracked, there were certain things in the script that I thought, there's just no way that this scene is going to remain as written. So it forced me to design that a little bit differently. I had to come up with sort of, in a way, like a kind of unit set that was very flexible that could just become whatever we needed. I mean, I had some specific things, but in general, no, because there just wasn't time.

[13:51] Eila Mell: If you're doing a show, and we know that in previews things can change, and some shows are minor tweaks and some shows change drastically, what happens with those sets that have been designed and maybe moved in that now don't exist anymore? Is there a warehouse in the sky you go to live or do you just repurpose them for whatever you're working on next?

[14:08] Derek McLane: I think they mostly wind up in the Fresh Kills landfill and chopped up into little bits or maybe recycling bins. But no, they don't get reused. I mean, some furniture might get reused, but the problem with all that stuff is everybody wants what they want, and they want it to be totally specific. So even though something might seem similar, it's not going to be exactly what somebody else wants. Plus, storage is expensive. New York City real estate is very expensive, and storage is too expensive. And so you can't store anything anywhere close to the city, so you have to take it way out of the city, and then you have to pay for trucking. And then you'd have to negotiate the rights to use it for a different show. So it's just too complicated. Basically, everything gets chopped up and dumped in a dumpster when it's done.

[15:00] Eila Mell: Yeah, I didn't even think of the rights. Everything has rights.

[15:05] Derek McLane: Yeah, exactly.

[15:07] Eila Mell: When you're starting out on a project like a Broadway show, I feel like there's a certain model. Is that different when you're designing for an award show or for the Met Gala? Is it the same initial creative process, or is it different because it's a different medium?

[15:24] Derek McLane: Well, it's different because it's a different medium, for sure. But there's a lot more similarity between designing a Broadway musical on stage and designing a musical to be done on television, because those are both stories. I think the big difference with something like an award show or a gala party versus Broadway is that there's not a story. It's not a narrative, really. Even though people sometimes describe themes for these things, you're just not telling a story that has a beginning, middle, and end. In a funny way, it's harder to design award shows and galas because of that. For a play or a musical, there tends to be a logic by which you answer most questions. You basically say, okay, well, this show takes place in 1899, and it's in Paris, and it has the following locations that the audience kind of needs to understand.

As a designer, you have a certain obligation, usually, to help the audience understand those things so that the story will play. But you don't really have any of those obligations if you're designing an award show. Actually, making these decisions can be harder for everybody because it's just a matter of taste. You can show 10 sketches for an award show, and it becomes sort of a debate over what's prettier or what different people think are prettier. That's so wildly subjective. You don't really have that when you're a director trying to decide what a set should be. Usually, there's something in the story or the mood or the tone that you're trying to get that will answer that question for you.

[17:11] Eila Mell: Let's talk about Death Becomes Her a little bit. It's super important that the actors are safe on that set because there's so much physical action. Can you tell us some of the secrets of that set in order to create those illusions?

[17:23] Derek McLane: Safety was definitely a big consideration. Because it was produced by NBCUniversal, they had their own safety person there who was present throughout the process. I would say one of the biggest things we had to solve early on was the character Madeline being pushed down the staircase, which is a famous thing in the movie. It's basically how we end Act 1 of the musical. We knew we wanted that to be a big event. Actually, I can back up a little bit before talking about the safety of that. Creatively, we really weren't sure how to go about it. We knew we wanted it to be funny, but we weren't sure what the best way to achieve that was. I designed the staircase pretty completely, and then we built a mock-up of it, a full-size mock-up of it, and took it to the Duke Theater on 42nd Street and set it up.

I think we had a week of time scheduled in there with the director, choreographer Chris Catelli, and with some dancers that he knew. Then he also hired a stunt person as an experiment. We had three things we wanted to try. One was a stunt person, a very realistic stunt fall. The second was something really silly, which was basically like a beach ball, one of those big yoga ball things. We got one of those and we covered it with bits of Madeline's costume, so you could see pant legs and arms and things like that, and some hair. We tried rolling that down the stairs. That was the most extremely absurd idea. We did a couple of different versions of that. We also made a dummy that would roll down the stairs, a floppy dummy.

We looked at that and it was too silly. It was kind of funny, but also just too dumb. Then Chris had this notion that maybe a stunt person would be great. This movie stunt person came in. She spent 20 minutes preparing. Then she said, okay, I'm ready. She was counting the steps and walking up and down the stairs. Then she said, okay, you ready? We all pulled out our bones to videotape this. She fell down the stairs, tumbling down the stairs. It took about a second and a half. She got to the bottom of the stairs, and then she just lay there. We were all like, holy shit, she's dead. It was so disturbing. It was really like something from a horror movie. We all said, well, that's not going to work, because that's just disturbing.

Also, it was so fast. You blinked. You would have missed it. It was almost sort of a non-event. Then Chris said the thing that he really wanted to try was a kind of acrobatic version. He had brought this dancer, Warren, that he'd worked with a bunch before who was also trained as an acrobat. Warren did it. Then he had a boombox, and he played some music, which wasn't really exactly the right music for it yet. He added some thunderclaps and some sounds of bone crunching. Warren and Chris started working on this thing where it's a sort of slow-motion fall down the stairs where he does flips and bounces off of things, and they're punctuated by sound effects. We didn't have it certainly anywhere close to right in that lab, but it was the beginning of an idea.

One of the things Chris went away with was, I need the composer to actually write a specific piece of music for this, like a really over-the-top, almost operatic-sounding piece of grand music to do this with really giant sound effects of thunder and bone crunches. So that ended up being the result of that. Then the NBC safety person stepped in and said, okay, so let's just talk about how to make this safe. He was great, by the way. He never really interfered. He was quite collaborative. He said, we need to figure out how to make all the steps soft so that if he slips and bangs himself, he's not hurt by the treads of the steps. Also, same thing with the railing, the banisters. It's a quite elaborate looking thing.

It's supposed to look like it's a movie star's grand sweeping staircase, but in fact, all the treads and the molding on the treads are all made of neoprene, molded neoprene. It's a weird thing to walk up because it's actually soft as you walk up the stairs. The baluster railing is actually made out of cast neoprene that's in the shape of a baluster. Then there's filigree work underneath that. That's all made out of slightly flexible plastic. It looks like metal, but it's actually plastic so that if you bang into it, it has some give to it. So all these things were a part of it.

[22:10] Eila Mell: That's so interesting.

[22:11] Derek McLane: Yeah, it was fun. It was the first time I ever made a rubber staircase.

[22:16] Eila Mell: It's not a bad idea, though.

[22:18] Derek McLane: Yeah, exactly. I think all of us could use those.

[22:19] Eila Mell: Yeah, really.

[22:23] Jasmine Amy Rogers: Hi, I'm Jasmine Amy Rogers. You are listening to Behind the Awards. We'll be right back.

[22:32] Eila Mell: So there's so much that you do, but then there are things that people wouldn't realize that you're designing, like the Met Gala and the Oscars and things like that, and also the live musicals on TV that they were doing for a while. Is there anything that you want to do that you haven't done yet?

[22:51] Derek McLane: Oh, that's a good question. I mean, it would be fun to do the opening ceremony for the Olympics. That would be a cool one. But I don't know. I mean, I like things that are complicated and big and scare me. That would scare me, so that's why that would be fun. And certainly, I haven't done the Oscars in years, but the first time I did it, I was terrified. I was like, why me? Why did you call me and ask me to do this? And actually, the answer that they gave me was that it was Craig Zayden and Neil Merrin who hired me to do that. And I had worked with them previously on a Broadway musical, and then they were hired as the producers of the show. And then they called me and asked me to design it. And they said to me, you know, they said, we love your Broadway design work.

And they mentioned a couple of shows, like they were very specific shows, like they mentioned 33 Variations and I Am My Own Wife and How to Succeed in Business, which I did with them. And they said, we love that aesthetic that you have, and we want you to bring that to the Oscars. We'd be very curious to see what your sort of taste of the Oscars is. We don't want you to try to make this look like what you think the Oscars are supposed to look like or what anybody else has done with the Oscars. We want you just to do you. We want you to do your thing for this, which was a really wonderful, generous thing for them to say. And so that took some of the fear away for me. I was still pretty petrified because, you know, the show that's like that, that's done every year is a little bit like a machine, like you're entering into this, you know, you're entering into this thing that has its own apparatus with all the people who've done it for years and years and years.

And suddenly you're like the new kid there. And they're like, you know, they're all sort of checking you out to see if you know what you're doing. And you don't really know what you're doing. So, you know, it's inherently frightening, which is funny.

[24:50] Eila Mell: And you can't slow them down.

[24:52] Derek McLane: And you can't slow them down. Exactly.

[24:57] Eila Mell: To me, it sounds like if you want to aspire to be a designer in the realm that you are, you have to like puzzles and you have to like solving things.

[25:01] Derek McLane: Yeah, definitely you do. I mean, especially on Broadway stages, because space is, you know, it's such a premium. Yeah. And, you know, I'm sure you've been backstage at some of the big Broadway musicals, but it's bananas back there how tight everything is. And often things are large set pieces and props are stored in the wings up in the air. And it's not just one layer of them. It's like they're sometimes triple stacked up there, one on top of another.

[25:28] Eila Mell: Well, I think people are surprised to know that that is also part of the design, where to store the scenery when it's not in use.

[25:36] Derek McLane: You know, like in Death Becomes Her, we're at the Lunt, and the Lunt has a pretty generous amount of space on the stage right wing. But stage left, there's really no space. It's like from the edge of the proscenium to the wall there, I think is nine feet or something like that. So it's really, really tight. And so first of all, masking. So, you know, so the audience doesn't see into the wings over there and see all the people waiting to go on stage and the stage has its own challenge. But the other thing was that staircase was figuring out how to get that staircase on and off stage, which is quite a big piece. And I don't know, for some reason, I decided it had to be over on stage left and not stage right stage left where there's less space.

But so that's what it was. And what we ended up doing is as it goes off stage in two parts, as it goes off stage, it splits. It's in deck tracks and the deck tracks look a little bit like train tracks, you know, with a with a with one of those switcher things that, you know, make something change tracks. And so the first part of the.

[27:05] Derek McLane: Designing a Broadway musical, of course, the audience doesn't care how much or how little space there is in the wings or anywhere. They care what they see on stage. So part of our job is to sort of figure out how to impress them with what's on stage, even though there's no space to store anything. If the audience is thinking about wingspace, you're in a lot of trouble.

[27:28] Eila Mell: Do you ever win the show because you don't know what theater you're going into? You can maybe have some idea or we'd love to have like Moulin Rouge is in the Hirschfeld, we'd love to have the Hirschfeld, blah, blah, blah. Does that ever alter your design once that theater gets assigned? Because sometimes you don't know what theater you're getting. It seems, you know, till further along in the process. So then do you have to go back and tweak based on wingspace or depth of stage or how it's raked and all of that?

[27:58] Derek McLane: Oh, totally. Yeah. Well, none of them are raked on Broadway, but in London, a lot of them are raked. But I mean, to be honest, I've never designed a big Broadway musical that didn't know what theater we were going into ahead of time. You know, Moulin Rouge, we did an out of town in Boston and we knew. But before we got to Boston, we knew we were going to the Hirschfeld. So I actually didn't design it for the theater in Boston. I designed it for the Hirschfeld. And same with MJ, we didn't go out of town, but we always knew that was going to the Neil Simon. For something that big, you would really have to, you know, it definitely comes. Or I knew it was going to the Lunt pretty early on. So that staircase trick that I just described, we did that when we were out of town in Chicago, even though we didn't need to in Chicago.

But it was sort of to test the idea out. Yeah, I think for a really big musical, if you didn't know what theater you're going into, you'd really have to do a lot of rehashing and redesigning to make that work.

[28:51] Derek McLane: But I'm working on it. You know, I'm working on one right now, which I'm really excited about. It's a musical called Begin Again. And I don't know what theater we're going to go into for that. I hope I'm Broadway yet. So just designing it from the O'Globe in San Diego. But I'm keeping in mind a list of four possible or likely theaters. It should kind of roughly fit in any of those theaters without a complete rehash, but I'll have to for any of them. I'd have to make some adjustments if I actually set out to say I'm going to design this so that it could fit in any one of four or five or six theaters. You'd end up having to make the set so small to accommodate because every theater in New York is idiosyncratic.

They're all, you know, some of them have space stage, less space stage. Right. Some of them are shallow. There's always weird things in these theaters. And so if you were to try to combine all the smallest dimensions of that, you'd wind up with a tiny little set.

[29:45] Eila Mell: Well, so let's go to the opposite end of that spectrum. Yeah. And so let's talk about the new group.

[29:51] Derek McLane: Yeah. So you're the chair of the new group. I'm now chair emeritus. There's a new chair, which I'm very, very thankful for. It was great to do, but it was a lot of work.

[30:01] Eila Mell: Yeah. But, you know, you're still one of the show on the board designers of their shows. And so you have the Adding Machine right now. And, you know, it's such a successful design. I mean, my friend Rory went to see it last night and he just was raving about the set.

[30:18] Derek McLane: Oh, that's so nice. Thank you. Yeah. Talk about the limitations of designing there, because it's unique.

[30:24] Derek McLane: It's unique and it actually has sort of some interesting issues. The space is a church. It's actually a functioning church on Sunday. Every Sunday afternoon, there is a sermon in there. The church itself is very, very accommodating of that. They basically have said they will do their sermon on whatever sets there. And you don't have to move it out of the way. It's been used as an off-Broadway theater since 1959 or something like that. So it's part of their culture. It's theater. It's in Clemens, let's just say, so people know.

[30:52] Eila Mell: Yeah, exactly. That's right.

[30:54] Derek McLane: And so it's kind of a cool space architecture. It's a little funky. You know, it's in pristine condition, which I think is part of its charm. Their current condition is actually not allowed to have much scenery on stage. Really, it's not allowed to have scenery on stage, only allowed to have props and lighting and costumes. And so I had to design a set that was basically all made of props. And, you know, the backdrop, as it were, is basically a shell, very simple steel shells with props on them. And it's got, you know, it's got about 300 office objects from the 1920s plays with the 1923. So it's got office light fixtures and typewriters and some adding machines and other sort of office type things sort of forming the backdrop. And then on stage is basically a bunch of file cabinets, wooden file cabinets from the 20s. And then they become all the things in that in the play become things to sit on.

[31:54] Eila Mell: Talk about the bedroom specifically, because it's...

[31:56] Derek McLane: Oh, well, the bedside of the bedroom. I can't stop thinking about that. The bedroom actually is a file cabinet, but we modified it so that the front doors open up like this. And then there's a Murphy bed inside, which folds down. There's a main character. Zero is dead halfway through the show. Spoiler. Sorry. And you see him and you discover him in a cemetery. And so there's a sort of full vertical file cabinet that opens up and it reveals the inside of it is a coffin. And you see Mr. Zero inside this coffin. There's a couple other things like that that we do with these filing cabinets. But I think what's sort of fun about it is that the whole vocabulary, visual vocabulary of that design is his office stuff.

Like it's basically it looks like a 1920s office when you walk in. And that character remains true no matter where you are, even in the cemetery. It's still sort of cemeteries made out of office furniture. But the limitations, you know, can make you so much more creative.

[33:00] Derek McLane: Yeah, I mean, having limitations are really, I guess, you know, that's sort of what I was trying to say about the Oscars in a way that's challenging is when I was doing them is that it doesn't really have those same kind of creative limitations. I mean, not that what I was describing for, say, Clemens is this is a creative limitation, but it becomes a creative limitation because you have these parameters you have to work under. And so it forces you to think about the design differently. And so I think that's usually fun when that happens. If you're thinking in the abstract and so broad, it's like, where do you stop? Where does your, you know, it's nice to have. Oh, where do you start? Well, we're about to. Sondheim and James Lapine wrote Sunday in the Park with George about that, about that same thing, a blank canvas is like, you know, it's at once the most wonderful thing, also the most terrifying thing. Where do you start?

[34:51] Derek McLane: Right. So many possibilities. So many possibilities. And so I think anybody who works creatively faces that, whether you're a writer, a painter, or a designer, you know, it's that blank page that can be kind of terrifying. But if you're set, if you have a problem to solve to start, it actually can make it a little bit easier because you go, OK, I have to solve this problem. How do I solve this problem? And it takes you out of this sort of panic of the open-endedness of what do I do?

[35:17] Eila Mell: So you've had some incredible teachers, including Ming Cho Lee.

[35:22] Derek McLane: Yeah. And then Robin Wagner, who you got to work for. Yeah. Did you learn different things from them?

[35:29] Derek McLane: Completely different. I mean, Ming was my teacher at Yale Drama School, the most incredible teacher I ever had in my life. Hands down. Very challenging, ruthlessly challenging at times. But, you know, and I kind of realized when I got to Yale, I'd never really been criticized. I mean, in college, you get sort of graded. But like this is like very direct and very blunt. And I wasn't prepared for it at first. I think a lot of students weren't prepared for it. So that was an interesting thing to learn, to accept and grow from. But he was, you know, he was 100 percent an artist. And he really believed that you had to draw everything to start. And then he really believed that you had to make a model of everything in scale.

And the model had to be beautiful. Like there was no, you know, shortcuts weren't really acceptable. You just had to make the model beautiful. And then he also believes like if you were in the theater and the director came in and said, oh, the set's too tall. Let's make it a foot shorter. But before you did that, you had to change it in the model. You couldn't just make, you couldn't just weigh it. You know, I remember when I was a student, I thought that seemed absurd. It seems, you know, sort of academic. Like, why, you know, here we are in the theater. Why do you have to go back to the model? But now I actually do it all the time. Like, actually, I don't trust making those decisions without actually really looking at them and looking sort of at the whole picture.

So his big, big obsession was drawing. Everything had to be drawn. You couldn't really design something if you couldn't draw it. And I kind of think that's true today. I got there reluctantly because I wasn't a very good drawer when I when I started. But now I'm a pretty good drawer. And I, you know, I use it for everything. And it's sort of like how we speak is with our pencils.

[36:16] Derek McLane: And so he was he was an incredible Robin Wagner, who I he wasn't a formal teacher. He was somebody I assisted when I came to New York. Robin couldn't really draw. We drew OK, but he and he had a whole different approach. Robin insisted that he was not an artist, which I think is nonsense. Of course, he was an artist. But Robin would always say, you know, Robin had a lot of bravado and he would say, I'm not an artist. I'm a businessman. I hire artists like you to help me figure out this design. And that was this thing. And he did hire, you know, he depended on good assistance to help him draw these ideas. And there was a lot of freedom working for him in some ways because he wanted your ideas.

You know, sometimes he would say, I have no idea what to do with the scene. He would describe the scene and he said, why don't you just try drawing three versions of this and let's just see what happens. And so, you know, you would some of them. He would look at it and go, that's ridiculous. Why did you do that? You said, well, you asked me to do three ideas. And he's like, you're right. He was very liberating in a way because he wasn't as precious and because he declared himself not an artist. There was sort of a little more freedom working there. I think Ming never really had much of a commercial career as a designer. He did some Broadway shows and things, but mostly he did a lot of operas, a lot of nonprofit work.

And he, you know, and he was a brilliant teacher. Robert was the most successful Broadway designer, you know, for a long time. You know, he would frequently have, you know, a number of big Broadway musicals running, you know, and some of them, some of them were hugely successful, like A Chorus Line and things like that. And he had a long relationship with Michael Bennett in designing Michael Bennett shows, but other people as well. And so it was just it was the opposite of Ming. And so in so many ways. And it was it was interesting. It was really interesting working for him. He was, you know, just part of theater history. Also, he went all the way back to David Merrick.

[38:12] Derek McLane: Yeah. He designed 42nd Street that David Merrick produced. One day I came in to the studio and he said, Derek, tonight you're going to go see 42nd Street on Broadway. I have two tickets so you can take a friend. Shows at eight. Tickets will be at the box office. I need you to go and take notes, as many notes as you can about it, because I want you to design. I want you to work on the tour, the touring production. He said, I want you to ask me as few questions as possible. And so that was sort of the mandate. There's real agitation because I went and I had, you know, I ended up having to go watch it a few times because I needed to sort of get it into my head a little better. And then he said, you give me a few more instructions, he said. For every three pieces of scenery you see on stage on Broadway, you have to turn that into one piece of scenery for the tour. So it was interesting to try to figure that out, especially as, you know, such a young designer.

[39:30] Derek McLane: Oh, for sure. For sure. Yeah. But I mean, I mean, I really do want to be there for every show. Sure. And I really try to do that. I mean, I want to be there for the directors and I want to be able to I want to see it for myself because it's never exactly what you expect. And so there's always things that you have to you have to deal with. But, you know, in terms of yes, I have some I have some associates right now. I have four people working in my studio.

[39:59] Eila Mell: Yes. Now you have obviously a team that surrounds you, that you trust. And, you know, they know how you work. You kind of have this nonverbal communication that you can do when you were first starting out on your own, I guess, not being under somebody's wing. Did you feel like you had to be at every everything? Now you have a team. So one of your associates can go see this while this is going on. If you have to be there, you can kind of spread yourself a little bit more than you probably could have in the beginning.

[39:53] Derek McLane: I guess I do some of the things that I learned from Robin and some of the things I learned from Ming with this gang. I definitely will encourage people here to try a couple of different ideas. Like I'll say, I'll do a little doodle of something and say, I think we want to do something like this, but I'd love you to try three different versions of it. One that's a little bit taller, one that's a little bit shorter, and maybe one that's a little bit more extravagant. I mean, there's a little more coverage. That's an abbreviated version of the conversation. So that's a little bit of a thing that I don't think Ming Cho Lee would have ever done that. I think that's a Robin technique. But I'm very, very open to learning, you know, to discoveries that will happen when people try things.

[40:40] Derek McLane: And it probably sparks creativity on both sides, right? That conversation. Totally. I remember I assisted this designer named Doug Stein, who was just a little bit older than me when I first came to New York. And Doug was very serious. He designed a lot of stuff for Garland Wright and a lot of stuff at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. And, you know, he was doing a lot of plays. And so he always started to work at his studio at eight o'clock every morning. And it was very well-talking in his studio. It was very quiet and serious. And he spoke quietly. And I came into his studio and he said, Derek, good morning. So I need you to make a model of this for I think it was Tartuffe. He said, I need a wall with three doors.

And I also need you to make six chairs. He said, I don't care about the style of the chairs. They just have to stand up at the model. That's all. And he did this very, very quick sketch. And then he said, and I need the model kind of soon. I said, how soon? He said, well, my meeting's at 10. And I started laughing and Doug said, what's so funny? Well, it's eight right now. So that's your meeting's two hours. Where's your meeting? And he said, it's all the way downtown. And then he paused and he said, I could be a few minutes late if I have to. So I got the model made, you know, probably right about 10 o'clock it was done. He called the director and said, I'm running a few minutes late. I'll be down there, you know, 20 minutes.

He takes the model and I, you know, it was so fast that I was kind of, you know, I was kind of inspired because again, he would also, that was also so different for me. Like Ming never would have whipped out a model in two hours like that. And then he came back a few hours later for the meeting and I said, how'd the meeting go? And he said, great. It was really a great meeting. And I said, is that, so is that the design? He said, no, the design is going to be totally different. But he said that model was perfect because it provoked the conversation I needed to have with, I think it was with Garland Wright. And so, and that also was like a thing for me that was kind of eye-opening of like, sometimes you just have to try something.

It's a little bit like writing or drawing. Like sometimes you just have to make a first draft, even if it's wrong, even if it's not the thing you're going to do, because you have to start. That's what Doug was asking me to help him do that morning at eight o'clock in the morning was make that first draft and get that process going.

[42:54] Derek McLane: When you're dealing with a show like Moulin Rouge, or you're working on a show, we know you're designing Dolly, working with these bigger entities that are so well known, is that more challenging in a way because there's expectations? I think, you know, you're aware that you don't want to disappoint people. So, something like Moulin Rouge or Dolly Parton or, you know, or MJ, you know, you work with a very, very famous title or a very famous artist, you know, it's like you want to do two things. You want to, you want to not disappoint people. You want to meet their expectations, but you also want to surprise them at the same time. So, you know, you don't want to just meet their expectations because that's probably not going to be that firing at the end of the day.

So, but you also, but you do need to meet their, like, I think, you know, I was very aware when I, when I, when I started on Moulin Rouge, I was very aware that like that, that movie is like that, you know, it's not the same as the movie. It's based on the movie. And that, that movie is so famous for its design, you know, especially among designers. It's like, you know, it's kind of, it's, you know, there's a little bit of a design inside, insider thing with designers about that movie. So, you know, it was an honor, but it was also a burden because, and even with people who weren't designers, just people who are fans of the movie, you know, I knew that there were things that they were going to want to see, but it couldn't be, I couldn't be rigid about just recreating the movie.

It wouldn't be, well, first of all, it wouldn't work. And second of all, that wouldn't be very interesting. So it was very much in my mind. Like I have to, I have to honor the things that people love about the movie on this, but I also need to, to surprise them and get them to see it in a different way.

[44:36] Derek McLane: And you had the stamp of approval of the movie's designer, Catherine Martin, on that show. Yes, she was wonderful. She was great. She couldn't have been more generous in the whole process. So let me point out on your behalf that you won one of your two Tonys for that. I did. And the other was 33 Variations. But I think that people don't realize that you also have two Emmys. That's true. Yeah. One for, I got for the Oscars one year and another for one of those TV musicals for Hairspray that I did with, with Kenny Leon. It's too bad that they don't do the musicals anymore because they were, they were fun to watch. They were fun to watch. I mean, I spoke to one of the producers about that a couple months ago.

I ran into him at a party and he mentioned he was trying to figure out a way to do one again. I mean, the problem is that they're very expensive to make. You know, you've got a long rehearsal period. You have to spend a lot of time doing the camera blocking for them, you know, with a huge number of people. I mean, like hundreds of people in that process, you know, and it's like almost like a medium-sized movie even. And then it's just a television event. And, and the ratings really varied wildly on them. I mean, some of them did pretty well, you know, the really, really famous titles and then, but like super famous titles, but like sort of anything that's not super famous. I don't think my impression is, I don't really know the business of this, but my impression is that things that were not super famous just didn't do the kind of numbers they needed to pay for itself.

So that's good. It's different now though. You know, now that things are streaming, cause this was really before streaming was as big as it is now. So who knows, who knows if it would be a different model. I mean, also part of the things then was, you know, the networks were doing them partly because they were dealing with the onset of the DVR and the fact that people could record things and not watch them live, which meant people were skipping through the advertising, which was really hurting the network. So they needed, they wanted to think like they were discovering the things that really were making them money were like, a lot of it was sporting events, you know, a couple of other live things that people felt like they had to watch live because that got them to watch the commercials.

Right. And so there was, that was part of the logic if I understood it behind the live TV musicals is that people wouldn't, you know, some people would of course record them and watch them later, but there was a thing about wanting to watch, you know, people probably, probably people hoping for train wrecks on camera or something that, you know, just the event of it, you know, people wanted to talk about it as it happened. And so that was part of the logic behind it, which I think worked for a while, but yeah, people got smart.

[47:17] Derek McLane: I'd be remiss if I didn't bring up our collaboration, our book, Designing Broadway. Yeah, that was such a pleasure. Oh my gosh, it was so much fun. So I came to you with the idea of writing about your design and what did you tell me? I think I said that I didn't think that I was ready to have a book just about myself. I didn't think I was sort of at that point in my career, I didn't think that it didn't make me comfortable. And so I thought I would only do it if it can include a lot of my colleagues who I have great respect for and who I feel like I'm in sort of violent conversation with, you know, on Broadway. And then that was the thing that sort of interested me was that we are all, you know, we're not designing in a vacuum, we're all designing, you know, in the same town.

And we are, you know, consciously or unconsciously responding to each other's work all the time. And we were inspired or repelled or whatever by things that other people do. We learn, we steal from other people, we learn from other people, and we're inspired by other people. And so that sort of interested me.

[48:18] Derek McLane: So, you know, you were wrong, your work would have made a wonderful book, but you were right. But you were right in that it made it a better book by including the whole design community. And, you know, we learned recently that this little girl loves this book and is talking about it all the time. That's the best thing ever. I love that. Yeah, I know she's an actor now, but it seems like she's going to be a future designer. So that's amazing. Incredible. I love that.

[48:47] Derek McLane: What did you learn from just the other designers that we included in the book, from writing the book? You know, I learned a little bit about how they, you know, everybody works differently. Everybody starts on projects differently. And so it was interesting, just reading their interviews and sort of hearing how they approach problems. I really enjoyed that. I really enjoyed reading other people's interviews.

[49:08] Bruce Gotlieb: Yeah, you know, what the book did for me was I didn't know much about design going in. And, you know, so by the end, you said I was an expert. I don't think that's true, but I do know a lot now because I had wonderful teachers like you and Tony Walton and Robin Wagner and, you know, and every really everybody working now pretty much. So I got to learn so much from the best that's ever done it. So, you know, it's just such a pleasure. So thank you for that for me personally.

[49:40] Derek McLane: Well, thanks for coming to me with the idea of doing a book.

[49:44] Bruce Gotlieb: Yes, we'll have to come up with another idea.

[49:46] Derek McLane: For sure.

[49:47] Bruce Gotlieb: Yeah, yeah. You recently worked on Tom Hanks' show, This World of Tomorrow, and you had a very special collaborator on this show. Do you want to talk about that a little bit?

[49:58] Derek McLane: Do you mean my son?

[49:59] Bruce Gotlieb: I do.

[50:01] Derek McLane: Yeah, well, my son, Cooper. So I also designed, I designed the scenery, but I also designed the video. The video was a very, very big part of that design. I mean, I was one of those shows, when I read it, I was like, I have no idea how to do this without projections, just the way it was written. And it first terrified me. And then I thought, well, this could actually be fun. I mean, maybe I'll just, I'd done a little bit of projection design, but never anything as ambitious or as elaborate as that. And there were some animated sequences in the show, some travel sequences, like on a subway and on taxi and things like that. And so I needed, you know, still images. I'm pretty confident that sort of like, I create still images all the time.

It's sort of like designing backdrops for scenery. So that part was comfortable for me. But animation and movement was not something I was comfortable with at all. And so my son, Cooper, is an editor. He's worked for years as an editor on TV commercials. And so I enlisted him to help with doing some of the animated sequences. That was really fun.

[51:01] Bruce Gotlieb: Yeah. And just one last question. So you went to Yale Drama, probably half the designers on Broadway went there. But, you know, is there a way in for someone who doesn't have the opportunity to go to a school like that to become a designer at your level?

[51:16] Derek McLane: Sure. I mean, there's a couple of really good designers, and there always have been, who did not go, didn't have any formal training at all. It's not required. You know, I think there's a couple of skills you really would need. You need to learn to draw, number one. You need to learn to draft and scale, and you probably need to learn to build models. Now, you might be able to get work in somebody's studio to get them to teach you that, but you probably need to spend a little bit of time on your own learning those things. I think if you don't know how to draw first, that's going to be hard. And, you know, I think you could, I think probably you need to take some classes in set design. You know, you don't have a whole graduate school program in it, but having a few classes that I think would probably be, it would save you a lot of heartache trying to get a job in somebody's studio without knowing that stuff.

And then I think, you know, if you're ambitious and you have the inclination, you can spend a lot of time learning this stuff on your own. And so I would say drawing is the key. There are people on Instagram who just make models that look like other people's models, and they're amazing.

[52:20] Bruce Gotlieb: Incredible. Yeah.

[52:24] Derek McLane: So, all right. Well, thank you so much. It was such a pleasure to have you.

[52:31] Bruce Gotlieb: Yes. Thank you. It was so great talking to both of you.

[52:36] Derek McLane: And if you have the opportunity, go out and see one of Derek's shows, a few to choose from. There's so many, but The Balusters, we hear, we first saw The Balusters.

[52:43] Derek McLane: Gorgeous, Derek. It is so gorgeous.

[52:45] Derek McLane: Oh, thank you. Thank you.

[52:47] Bruce Gotlieb: Yeah, so.

[52:48] Derek McLane: It's a funny play too, I think.

[52:50] Bruce Gotlieb: It is. It is.

[52:51] Derek McLane: We've had a couple of your actors on already. We had Margaret on, Margaret Cullen, and Christina Olivera.

[52:56] Bruce Gotlieb: So.

[52:57] Derek McLane: Amazing.

[52:58] Bruce Gotlieb: I'm very excited to see that. And yeah, Bruce loves it.

[53:01] Derek McLane: Yeah, the set is just stunning. Great. Thank you very much.

[53:04] Derek McLane: Well, you'll have to come back when you have more projects, because you always have something going on.

[53:06] Derek McLane: Thank you. I'd love to. Great to talk to you both.

[53:08] Bruce Gotlieb: Me too.

[53:09] Bruce Gotlieb: We will see everyone next time on Behind the Awards.

[53:11] Bruce Gotlieb: Bye-bye.