THREE QUESTIONS WITH… David Zinn Scenic designer of MCC Theater’s upcoming Carrie.

1. Are there any guiding principles to the “look” of this new Carrie?

The space itself always brings both a lot of freedom and a lot of limitations, whatever show you’re doing—that’s only amplified by the size of this space, so i would say that we really started with the empty theater and how to make it feel like an appropriate venue for the scale of our production and what kind of emotional world we wanted it to evoke. I had the luxury of sitting through a bunch of readings and workshops of it— seeing where Stafford’s impulses about revisiting CARRIE were taking him, and i think a lot of inspiration came from the simplicity of those spaces as well. How to set the audiences imagination free in the simplest way possible.

2. What’s it like to work in a space like the Lortel, vs, a Broadway theater, and how might that apply to the show?

There’s just a lot of things you have to consider, things that you have to build into your set, that maybe you dont in a bigger space—like, where are all 14 cast members going to change? if you want to take a even a chair, or a table offstage, where is it going to go? Is there even room for a prop table? or a stage manager? We’ve had to create a backstage as well as what the audience sees. But that’s new york, right? we’re always trying to figure out how to utilize small spaces as best we can. This is like having a dinner party for 24 in a studio apartment. It’s a fun challenge, but it’s a challenge.

3. Is there a particular designer from whose work you’ve drawn inspiration?

There are designers i admire, certainly, but again the space is really the inspiration here—I know the lortel pretty well—it’s a great theater that’s had an extraordinary history but it’s playing space is relatively neutral, which is awesome for a lot of things but for CARRIE i wanted to make a space which feels like it wearing it’s history on it’s sleeve—where you can really feel the sense that people have been there, and where there can be darkness—all the better to tell a ghost story in, i think. I looked at a lot of pictures of abandoned spaces to try and bring some of their essence into it, but i really started from zero with a new architecture that hopefully feels like it’s been there forever. It’s been a really wonderful challenge to try and create a space which feels natural to the existing theater, but carries an emotional weight that the Lortel’s stage maybe doesnt necessarily on its own.