the thugs
by Adam Bock
new york university
Director: Tate Rehklau
Lighting Designer: Nina Attinello
Scenic Designer: Marijke Siberman
Sound Designer: Lilith Hurley
Projection Designer: Nick Sanchez
Costume Designer: Chris Moseley
An office becomes a capitalist surveillance state in this hyper-stylized live production of Adam Bock’s dark comedy.
My design was an aesthetic embodiment of corporate dominance, defining and controlling the space through form, color, and contrast. Sharp beam-cuts, light sculptures, and unconventional instrumentation became an architecture of surveillance.
In this way the lighting operated as its own character in the story, enacting the will of the faceless bosses and commanding submission from the helpless office workers.
drafting & instrumentation
I used a sodium vapor light to establish time of day, as if adhering to the lighting schedule of an industrial parking lot. Adding to a sense of temporal confusion, it’s slow warm-up time mimicked a rising sun even as it indicated nightfall. The color temperature of this light dulled the neon in the costume design, creating a brief aesthetic respite from the bright color and high contrast that signified corporate control.
I also designed and constructed a bespoke LED light frame and fluorescent light sculpture to evoke a sense of claustrophobia and vulnerability, as if the characters were experimentation subjects.
Drafting created using Vectorworks.
reference images