About Me
- Hey there! My name is James Clark, and I’m a Junior at Stanford University majoring in mechanical engineering and minoring in sustainable architecture and engineering. I love sketching up crazy ideas and figuring out how to bring them to life. You can check out a few of my projects below!
About the Show
My Role
- My involvement with Mary Poppins began in May of 2023 when the director, Liam Fay, and I connected because we each had the same dream: to see a production of Mary Poppins come to campus. After funding had been allocated and rights had been bought, I joined the team in December of 2023 as associate scenic designer. As such, I would be heading the magic of the show, including everything from Mary’s magic carpetbag to her final flight.
My Design Approach
- As I came to find out, many solutions for the magical elements were avaliable online. However, not all of them were up to the standards that I was hoping for, leading me to forging my own path through the design process. I optimized for unconventional solutions that would spark wonder in the hearts of adults and children alike.
Leadership in Theater
- A project of this scale does not get done alone. It relies on a multitude of contributors, each providing their own unique touch to the process. This was a fact that I had to acknowledge from the get-go in order to get anything done. The key here is maximizing the time during which people help you. On days that I had people come help, I would arrive 15-30 minutes early to set out tools and material, and create a clear outline of the task(s) to be completed so that folks could jump right in and start building. Under these circumstances, my priority switched from completing work to organizing people.
- Another thing that a project of this scale requires is a can-do attitude. Volunteering for jobs as needed and putting in the hours required to make the cogs of the theater machine turn is just part of the job. This resulted in me putting in around 40 build hours during the final two weeks before the show, making hardware store runs, fixing props, and joining run crew for the show (moving sets, cuing lights, triggering magical moments, etc.).
Kitchen Table
Bedside Table
Rolling Chimneys
Step in Time Lights
Additional Projects
Appreciative Reviews
- And as a cherry on top, audiences LOVED it. Check out these reviews from students and faculty.
- Not only were these reviews a testament to the hundreds and hundreds of combined hours that went into the show from the director, cast, scenic team, audio team, lighting team, orchestra, and plethora of other people who helped, but it was also a testament to how transformative good design can be. It has the ability to enhance performances and immerse the audience further into the story. It allows everyone in the space to be caught up in the exact same moment, each experiencing it with the tint of their own perspective.
Final Reflections
- What Worked Well
- The magical carpetbag, Step in Time lights, kite, and kitchen table were all very effective during the show. By no coincidence, each of these were labeled as priorities and had the proper amount of time and planning go into their creation.
- What I Learned
- One thing that I should’ve anticipated early on was just how busy life gets when you’re both a full time student and trying to put on a Broadway musical in seven weeks. Many many designs got cut due to the lack of time. A lot of this time crunch came about due to not having access to our funding for the first three weeks of the quarter, meaning we couldn’t buy wood/other materials or get started on the set.
- If I had another chance to work on Mary Poppins, there are a few things I would do differently:
- Ensure we have the most amount of time possible to design, build, and iterate.
- Create a specific schedule early on that details when and how everything will be built.
- Have a large build team that can be called upon as needed.
- Prototype, prototype, prototype! Everything I create needs to be durable, intuitive, and reliable.
- Factor in the time it takes for cast and crew to learn how to use the elements I created.
- Ambitious ideas are great, but simplification isn’t bad. Knowing which ideas would fall under “ambitious” versus “simple” is important so that I can be prepared for the hardships (and potential cutting) of the more ambitious ideas.
Conclusion
Theater and architecture are not always thought of in tandem, but I believe that some of the best architectural design has an awareness of both. As designers, we are directing our user through an experience or story. In theater, the user is our audience: a third-person observer being taken through a preconstructed narrative. In architectural design, the user is our visitors, and the exciting bit is that they are creating their own narrative in how they interact with our design. Every element is a discovery to our visitor, an expansion of the space’s space in their mind. Because they are living out their own story within our design, there cannot be anything obstructing the visitor from these discoveries. It has to be intuitive, and it has to make sense… except for when there’s magic involved. An element that is so surprising that the user can’t help but be solely in the moment, allowing their mind to rest and emotions run free. Because it is in that magic that we, as designers, make our impact. That magic creates memories to be returned to for years to come.
After our last show, a group of about 30 kids came up for photos and autographs with the actors, each especially enamored with Mary and Bert. Seeing this, I was thrown back to some of my first experiences with theater. At the time, I didn’t have any idea how many people were involved with the given production, but I knew that I had just been on a wonderful adventure and that I wanted more. Watching all the kids swarm Mary and Bert, it fully hit me that I had made it to the other side: I wasn’t experiencing that magic any more, I was creating it. And the magic I get to experience now isn’t that of being immersed in the story, but in the joy that I help create for others.
Who knows where this fusion of theater and architecture will take me, but I have a feeling that this is the beginning of one wild ride.