Portland Center Stage | Page 48

A VISION COMES TO LIFE From research to inception, the process of creating a set design involves many steps. Here, Acebo shares what it took to bring A Streetcar Named Desire from paper to the stage. 06 Do you think designers tend to read a text differently than directors or actors do? 07 I do. I read plays for the landscape. I read plays for how they move through space and time in terms of what’s happening in the play, but also in terms of the time of the theater we’re working in. I’m asking, is it speaking to audiences in a contemporary way? With, say, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, I can’t just create a mansion in Mississippi, I have to think about our audience watching it in the Bowmer [Theatre] and what are they bringing to it, what is the play telling us about today. I thin