Before an audience ever sits down, before the house lights dim or the curtain rises in any of Northwestern’s Virginia Wadsworth Wirtz Center for the Performing and Media Arts venues, hundreds of hours of work have already gone into the ensuing production. Fabric has been cut and stitched, wood measured and painted, and light plotted and re-plotted, all to amplify the experience of watching student actors deliver their lines. 

At the Wirtz Center, the magical visual worlds in the more than 40 productions put on every year are largely created by graduate students who devote their education to designing shows as part of the Master of Fine Arts in Stage Design program.

Students work across three main specializations — scenery, costume and lighting design — to provide the NU community with high-quality theater and bring imaginative ideas to life. 

From concept to construction 

The first year of the MFA Stage Design program focuses on building a foundation. Students hone technical skills, practice drawing and learn how to work together. In the final quarter of that year, they take a collaboration course where they plan and execute the designs for an actual production.

For Sara Azampanah, a second-year stage design MFA student specializing in scenery design, the process begins long before any physical model is built. 

Students first have concept meetings with directors and fellow designers to work through ideas and craft a shared vision for the show. Faculty guide students as they move through the process, building up initial concepts into visual research, presentations and ongoing conversations. 

“We deliver our initial ideas, and they encourage us to think out of the box,” Azampanah said.  “They don’t want to limit ourselves in design.”

But as designs develop, creative ideas meet practical constraints. Budget limitations force students to work out priorities while shop staff weigh in on what can realistically be built. 

From there, Wirtz staff construct and install sets in the shop. During the building process, the student designers are brought into the shop to give feedback.

For Azampanah, seeing a design transform from idea to reality is one of the most valuable parts of the program. 

Designing characters through costume

While scenic designers shape the physical world of a production, costume designers are hard at work transforming actors into their characters. Their work is about more than just clothing; it requires a close understanding of character, personality and storytelling.

Third-year stage design MFA student Mackenzie Mitchell specializes in costume design. She said she starts with extended conversations with directors about how each character should look and feel — a process that can take up to eight weeks, she said.

Those early discussions form the foundation of the costumes, but the program’s lengthy timelines often add a challenge. A show may begin in one academic year and not open until the next, requiring designers to maintain a consistent vision over several months.

Mitchell has experienced that firsthand, with her first show opening a full year after the spring she began working on it. That gap, she said, forces a particular kind of discipline.

“It’s important to take a lot of notes,” Mitchell said. “You remember things, but your brain kind of switches off in between processes.”

As productions get closer to opening, the work becomes physical. Through sourcing garments, arranging rentals, scheduling fittings and working closely with the costume shop, the designs begin to come to life. This often includes upcycling costumes from previous productions and adjusting them to fit new characters.

The time between the initial design and the creation of each piece allows designers to revisit and refine their choices. That process helps them develop a clearer understanding of the characters they are designing for, Mitchell said.

“You have to really be an empathetic person to be able to step into the lens of what people would be wearing and make sure that you’re doing them justice when you’re designing their clothing,” Mitchell said. “There’s always going to be characters who you like and you don’t like.”

Bringing the show to light

Lighting design operates differently from scenic and costume work. It comes together much later in the production process, and those who specialize in it often have to work through many unknowns until the show is nearly ready.

Bethany Naylor, a second-year stage design MFA student specializing in lighting design, said while the other specialties spend pre-production quarters creating drawings and physical plans, much of a lighting designer’s work happens in the theater itself just before the show goes live. Until then, the only work they can really do involves brainstorming their plans.

“For lighting especially, most of the lighting designers’ artistic process is actually in the theater in tech when we are actually turning on lights and lighting people and lighting scenery,” Naylor said. “Everything else before that is planning and thinking and communicating what we want to do.”

In the months leading up to a production, lighting designers produce a light plot — a technical document mapping where every light will hang to best serve the show.

For Naylor, lighting is essential to setting the mood of a stage. She described the contrast between dark, dreary scenes and those that feel warm and cozy, each requiring a different approach. Even though it commonly goes unnoticed by audiences, Naylor said its impact cannot be overstated. 

“I really love how ethereal lighting is,” they said. “We can take one scenic idea and completely change how it feels through lighting.”

The shop behind the designers

Across all disciplines, the design process is never a solo effort. Behind every student designer is a team of professional staff at the Wirtz Center who help bring their ideas to life. 

Wirtz Center Technical Supervisor Shannon Perry works closely with students to translate their ideas into something that can actually be built. Designers must make decisions not only about what they personally want, but what is physically achievable.

“If an idea a student might have is central to the storytelling of the show, we help them figure out what is the most important part of the idea,” Perry said.

Once designs are finalized, the shop builds the set and installs it in the theater. For many students, it is their first time seeing a design move fully from concept to construction. 

That support extends beyond graduate student designers. Perry said the Wirtz Center also offers undergraduate students opportunities to get involved behind the scenes, either through federal work-study positions or volunteering on projects that match their interests. 

Azampanah said the opportunity to go beyond planning and execute actual designs with an experienced shop has been the best part of her program. 

“It’s very helpful as a designer to see how your design is coming to reality,” Azampanah said. “It faces you with obstacles that you might not be faced with while you’re working on an imaginary design.”

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