Scenic, Lighting, & Sound Design, Technical Director

Cardinal Stritch University 2023

Directed by Mark Boergers

The design for No Exit is based around the idea of “the unexpected”. On entering the space, each of the characters in the show find their surroundings surprising. They expect torture. Physical, gruesome, horrible torture. To be placed into this environment which feels alien and unexpected makes them even more uneasy than if hell had lived up to their expectations. The design, its architecture, its color, and even its layout on the stage of Kendall, is meant to be a surprise be unexpected for the audience, and the characters. 

It is still hell, and the brutalist architecture of the space makes our characters feel trapped and uneasy. Heavy overhead elements and imposing grid-walls impart a sense of crushing unease as the three detainees descend into their hell-space. Overhead practical lighting reinforces the feeling of this room being a mutual, triangular interrogation. Each alcove in the design holds easter eggs hinting at the room’s former occupants going back thousands of years. Sound and light help to complete the sensory story in the room: time is passing here as it is in the world of the living, and our characters are doomed to inhabit this space until they can endure its torture no more. 

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