By Henrik Ibsen
Theoretical Set Design
Directed by Melia Bensussen
Advised by Riccardo Hernandez and Oana Botez
Hartford Stage
2024
Set Designer: Patti Panyakaew
Costume Designer: Micah Ohno
Lighting Designer: Ankit Pandey
Projection Designer: Doaa Ouf
Sound Designer: Tojo Rasedoara
Peer Gynt is a journey of discovering the meaning of a man's life. The play starts from Peer as a young adult, living with his mother, Aase, at her cabin at the hillside of the mountain. He is a daydreamer, in search of his kingdom. He travels from Norway to the troll world, to the warmer climate of Morocco and Egypt, and back home again as an old man, still searching for some significance in life. He starts to realize his life is a failure, an empty shell, and eventually dies. The play moves in time and space, consciousness and unconsciousness, blending fantasy, folkore, and realism all together.
The theme of ambiguity and distortion of reality inspired the use of fabric. The setting of the story that seem impossible to deal with on stage, moving from the mountain to the desert, exterior to interior, landscape to the sea, these could all be respresented by the form and movement of the fabric. It could be a change in shape, color, gestural marks and effects.
The geometry and typological structure of the mountain, forest, and sand dunes are slowly converted into a looser form when Peer faces his failure to achieve his goal and starts acknowledging the reality. His whole life is metaphorical to peeling the onion in act IV -- there is nothing in the end.
Act II Scene 1
Ingrid and Peer Gynt in the mountain
Act II Scene 6
The great hall of the Dovre King
Act III Scene 4
Aase's death
Act IV Scene 1
Coast of Morocco
Act IV Scene 6
Arab tent
Act V Scene 1 and 2
On board a ship and shipwreck
Act V Scene 5
Heart of the forest - onion peeling
Act V Scene 10
Ending - thin man comes to get him
Research references
The tensile technical design of the fabric is the core in key moments. The first scene in the Norwegian landscape is a stretched version with transparent columns that create the mountain shape.
As Peer encounters the troll world, everything is upside down, like being underground. The structural frames move up as another set of columns move down from the grid, creating the same shape but flipped.
When he travels to the warmer climate of Morocco, there is no more structure. The fabric is hung loose above the floor with wind effect blowing it. In Egypt, the loose fabric is moved down to the ground in irregular shapes, like the nature of the sane dunes.
In Act V as Peer returns home, there is almost no tension from hanging the fabric. It goes off completely when he peels the onion. The churchgoers, the townspeople, and the priests who chants his funeral remove all the fabric from the view in the end.
Design process