Breaking The Waves
In 2024, I gathered a group of friends and designers that I jokingly call “The Avengers” and we applied together to design for Opera America’s Robert LL.B Tobin Director-Designer Prize. We ended up picking Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek’s Breaking The Waves, as we connected with it’s polarizing plot line and themes, as well as took interest in the 1970’s foggy dreamscape of the mysterious Isle of Skye. The piece highlights the dangerous and unknown aspects of love and faith and how they coincide with each other. It tackles the parallels between love and faith through various extremes (Bess’ relationship with God, Jan’s accident and her actions that follow, the community’s beliefs). The story touches on the inconsistency of human belief and the immense strength to maintain it.
Centered in our concept was the use of layerings of fabrics to represent the isle of Skye’s mysterious nature- thick fog and crashing waves- things that alter someone’s view and perception, further enforcing the many blind or blurred ideals our characters and community have in the story. We also chose the route to go further into the naturalistic world because we wanted to lean into more feminine qualities- it can easily be a very industrial show, but we found to really make this Bess’ story, we should put it in her world. And to us, Bess’ world is a natural one.