Ulmus Ohioana was commissioned by Denison University who also supported its premiere production in 2017. The script is drawn from the letters of William “Hike” Currin, the first Denison student to die in WWI, and his fellow student Lily Bell Sefton, one of the first women to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry in the United States. Ulmus Ohioana is about teaching and ambition, longing and chemistry, regret and waste. It’s about the brevity of our lives, and about their simultaneous indelibility. I collaborated with one of my graduate design students, Cassie Lentz, who designed and painted the scrim of elm trees.
The environment was shaped by a series of scenic props–wooden chairs, a standing desk, and three chalkboards–that evoked the period and the university atmosphere. In addition to reshaping the space by arranging these units, we were also able to use the chalkboards as projection surfaces. Sometimes the media design reinforced or replicated chalk markings and other times it created stylized imagery supporting the mood, location or information in the moment. The elm trees painted on black scrim were revealed later in the play and a field of led stars hung behind them.
SCENE & MEDIA DESIGN: Brad Steinmetz
ASST SCENE DESIGN: Cassie Lentz
COSTUME DESIGN: Joyce Merrilees
LIGHTING DESIGN: Peter Pauze
Denison University
DIRECTION: Jennifer Schlueter
April, 2017
