Street Scene | EJH Designs

"Ain't It Awful The Heat?"	"When a Woman Has a Baby"	"Somehow I Never Could Believe"
"Wrapped In A Ribbon"	"What Good Would The Moon Be?"	"I've Got A Marble And A Star (Reprise)"
"A Boy Like You"	"The Woman Who Lived up There"	"Lullaby"
"Don't Forget The Lilac Bush"

Illinois State University, Spring 2016

Street Scene -

Approach

Street Scene unfolds on a sweltering summer day outside a Manhattan tenement, where neighbors gossip, celebrate, dream, and ultimately face tragedy. With 43 performers across two and a half stories of apartments, the scale was both immense and intimate. I approached the lighting as a painterly study of time passing — naturalistic enough to track a full 24-hour cycle, yet heightened to carry the weight of Kurt Weill’s soaring score and Langston Hughes’ lyricism.

Director: Robert Quinlan
Scenic Designer: Sam Gribben
Costume Designer: Anna Hill
Lighting Designer: Ethan Hollinger

Photography: Ethan Hollinger & Marissa Webb

The design emphasized both atmosphere and detail. Stark, oppressive washes underscored the unrelenting summer heat, while soft moonlight or the sparkle of an “ice cream sextet” offered sudden playfulness. Apartment interiors were tracked with practical fixtures and overhead sources, giving the audience subtle cues about when families stirred, argued, or went to bed. Against the bustle of ensemble scenes, isolated pools of light carved out moments like Sam’s solitary “Lonely House,” contrasting the crowd with piercing intimacy.

Throughout, the lighting embraced contradiction: epic in scale but attentive to nuance, grounded in realism but shaped with a painter’s brush. An imaged board and complete set of renderings guided the vocabulary of shadow, heat, and color, anchoring the design in collaboration from the earliest stages of rehearsal through the final performance. Feel free to peruse below!