A memory-play scenic design for The Glass Menagerie at Maples Repertory Theatre, built around an elevated Wingfield apartment, porous thresholds, and visual traces of Tom's narration.
Tennessee Williams described The Glass Menagerie as a memory play, and that idea became the foundation of my scenic design. Rather than creating a literal recreation of the Wingfield apartment, I approached the environment as a landscape shaped by Tom's recollections--fragmented, emotional, and imperfect. The design needed to feel familiar enough to ground the story while allowing the world to shift through the lens of memory.
At the center of the production was a large elevated platform that defined the primary playing space of the apartment. Surrounding it, fragments of architecture suggested the apartment, the city beyond, and the blurred edges of remembered experiences. These elements created a visual language that supported the play's movement between reality and recollection.
One of the primary challenges was balancing clarity with uncertainty. The audience needed to recognize the Wingfield home while also sensing that the environment was being filtered through Tom's narration. Nothing was intended to feel entirely fixed or complete.
A memory wall became one of the production's strongest visual motifs. Composed of framed fragments from Tom and Laura's past, the collection functioned less as documentation and more as recollection. The images remained intentionally ambiguous, reinforcing the idea that memory is selective, emotional, and often unreliable. Through this approach, the scenic design sought to transform memory into a physical environment--one that existed somewhere between the past and the present.
