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Lovetts pie shop by dropping them down a chute hidden at the back of the set.
The crane, meanwhile, will also deliver that crucial other star of the show: Sweeneys barber chair.
Its all very grand and very sinister.
Ive always had large-scale ideas, Lien says from her studio.
I just finally arrived in a place where I can do what is my natural tendency.
Even when it wasnt large scale, her work has always tended toward an enveloping quality.
Im interested in what the largest container is for the piece, including the audience, she says.
My tendency is to go from the outside in.
The challenge for Lien this time around was to go big again and yet not just re-create the original.
I consider myself an outsider to theater, until after I had finished college, she says.
So I have none of the baggage of high-school productions or growing up with musicals.
She points to the line taped to the wall above her desk.
That was the world I wanted to create, she says.
I wanted to feel like were going into a subterranean space, Lien says.
From there, she started on a few months of research before modeling designs in her studio.
I dont do a lot of renderings, she says.
Maybe that comes from my architecture background.
The crane felt like a mechanism that would establish the industrial milieu but have practical functions, Lien says.
Lien brought that concept to the producers in August before they went into a budgeting-and-revision process.
Kail pushed her to pare down the design primarily for storytelling reasons.
They ended up cutting two other bridgelike pieces of the set to focus on one main bridge piece.
We had a close collaboration from the beginning, Lien says.
We did a lot of lo-fi theatrical effects with sleight of hand and misdirection and shadows, she says.
You would laugh if you could see how that actual trick works!
