The Process

The vast majority of the show takes place at the bride-to-be’s family mountain cabin during her bachelorette party. As the show transitions from hilarious bachelorette antics to a serious examination of her grandparents’ experience in Germany during WWII, however, the present and the past become blurred and the cabin transforms into an abandoned barrack in Poland in 1943. In order to facilitate this transition, I chose to highlight the exposed structural beams that are both a frequent feature of rustic cabin architecture and also evoke haunting images from WWII, such as those of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Furthermore, by leaving small gaps between the planking on the back wall and engineering the side sections to pivot open, the lighting designer and I were able to create a powerful look for the liminal space between past and present.