Kristen Robinson is a New York based set designer originally from Ohio. Her work ranges from experimental opera to regional theatre. Trained both in theatre and painting she is constantly looking to re-imagine her own visual narrative of design, and the story of the human spirit. Kristen is the Assistant Professor of Scenic Design in the Theatre Design/Technology program at SUNY Purchase. She holds her MFA from Yale and is a member of  USA 829.

When did you know you wanted to pursue Scenic Design as a career? 

There were two moments. The first moment was in high school, I was really fortunate that my high school did a “career show day”. We could reach out to a business  and ask if we could shadow them for a day. The Cincinnati Opera was there, and I had no sense of fear of asking people if I could shadow them, so I met with the production manager at this little pop up opera event. I later emailed him and asked if I could come and shadow at the Opera, he was very kind and said yes. For a day I got to go and be at the Cincinnati Opera and follow the Production Manager around. It was the perfect day to shadow because they were changing over between two different shows. He took me all the way back to the last row in the most upper balcony of this opera house. It’s a very classic and gorgeous house, a true Opera experience. I went back there and we were looking at them changing out the set for one of their old repertory productions, this opera called La traviata. The set was really painterly, and there was this chandelier. We were way in the back and he pointed down and said “that chandelier is made out of plastic spoons” and I was like “I want to do that, that seems amazing.” That was really a seminal moment, on the inside I knew that was what I wanted to do. It wasn’t completely something that I named on the outside, even though I was actively doing theatre in high school. I was torn between being a painter and a theatre person. In college I remember doing both, I would do summer stock as a scenic painter and I remember feeling like I wanted to focus on design. I saw this scenic designer Neil Patel, so I sent him an email. There weren’t a lot of professional scenic designers in Kentucky so I asked if I could assist him or do some sort of internship. He said yes, so I went to New York for a summer and interned for him. That made the actual possibility of being a set designer real, because I was working with this person who had an actual business, a family, and a studio. My family were a bunch of painters so I knew how to be just a painter, and now I had seen an example of what it meant to be an actual working set designer. It really all fell into place for me after that experience. 

What inspired you to teach Scenic Design at the college level? 

My painting professor when I was in undergrad, and I went to a liberal arts college, I didn’t go to a conservatory program like Purchase. My painting teacher was just an extraordinary teacher and mentor for me, he saw in me both my hunger to learn more but also understood how to really push and challenge the thing that I was interested in. He has been a very important person in my life. When I was in grad school at Yale I  had some amazing professors and mentors, but also connected with this set designer at the time, Riccardo Hernández. He was a very wonderful mentor for me, he recommended me to apply at Purchase, I got really excited about the idea of applying and teaching there. I just feel so committed to the idea that I have benefited from so many of these educators and mentors in my life and if I can do that for the younger generation and pass on what I’ve learned then hopefully all the amazing things that they have taught me I can teach other people. 

Does teaching have an impact on you as an artist? Do you feel you are a stronger artist because of it?

That’s a really great question. I think I feel two things about that. I think if you would have asked me before the pandemic I wouldn't have known this. I’m on a sabbatical right now, I’m not teaching at Purchase this semester. I learned during the pandemic that teaching you became the only thing for me. I was doing some art projects, but radically fewer than what I was normally making because of the pandemic impact on the theatre industry. What I learned was if I stop doing or reduce my own art practice then my teaching starts really suffering. I felt out of touch with the thing that I’m trying to communicate to you, to the students. I’m distant from the thing that I’m trying to tell you. When I’m doing both simultaneously then I find that there can be a really exciting feedback loop, where I bring something new to the classroom, a challenge, or an artist that I discovered. Then the responses and the ideas that come from the students end up feeding my own questions and artistic responses. You guys teach me things all the time, or ask questions that I wouldn’t ever think to ask. I think most students assume that the teacher knows most things, and they give that to the students. I do feel like that is a reciprocal organism. For me personally, I have to be doing both. 

What interests you about storytelling? What interests you about creating a world for a play?

I am the most interested in making worlds and experiences that people don’t necessarily encounter every day, or witnessing a piece of theatre with people they know. It brings something new out of themselves. They feel like they have gone through a human experience that they don’t get to encounter every day. In terms of how my set design work can impact that, I’m interested in how making a space can create a really exciting obstacle or physical container that affects the way that the actors move and engage with the audience and the space on stage. The sort of psychological impact of that on the audience. If you perform in a really tiny space, that is going to go one way, versus a space that is really open. I’m excited by the dynamics between the space and the psychological experience.  

Does collaboration between artists create a more powerful story? How does collaboration impact your work?

Collaboration, when it is at its best, it really impacts my work in a positive way. You’re working with people who you can trust, who can inspire and challenge you. They are asking you questions or offering you ideas that then take your ideas to a different place. It can also make your ideas, not in a bad way, not just your own. Five people with different ideas come to a table, and then a new sixth idea that is probably the best version of all the things that are brought to the table pops out. It’s a little hard to say who actually had that final idea. For me, I like how that minimizes your personal ego as an artist, you can’t say that is your own idea, it becomes our idea. In bad collaboration it can be really terrible. It depends on the artist, the person and the art are linked for better or for worse. The director I’m working with now jumped on really late, we started with one idea and moved on without a director. They came on board and we had completely different instincts about how the show should be made. It has been really hard for me to do my job and try and design the show. It’s hard to completely reconceptualize and then try to appease this person's taste that you disagree with, and not completely lose faith in what you’re making. There are some artists that like that type of relationship, where you get really clear ideas, and you feel like you can make it happen. It is personal to the type of artists that you’re talking to. 

How do you connect to art if there is not a story being told? 

What a question, I guess I think in a perfect world there is both skill and meaning. Those things work together, I think sometimes a person has to go through a skill journey before they figure out how to name what the meaning is. There are two parts of my training that I think about. My visual arts training had a real impact on my set design training. It was super skills based for most of the training, it was an old fashioned way where you have to learn how to draw a skeleton, then you have to learn how to draw the skin on the body. You do that all in black and white, then you do it in color. All of that stuff can feel really frustrating for a student, like why do I have to keep copying this and drawing this. But I feel even though those projects weren’t asking me “What about this skeleton makes me feel differently as a human?” The thing it made me learn, it made me look at the world around me really carefully. That is a tool that I have now moved into my set design practice all the time. Whether it is looking at a piece of research or at a play and thinking “What is this about? Why is that there? What does this mean? How do I feel about this?” That sort of deep consideration, I would not trade that time I had learning that for anything. It paid off in a whole new way. That being said, part of the reason I chose set design and theatre is because it emotionally obsessed me. I’m a person who likes to be in control, just by my nature I like things to be done a certain way. As I’ve gotten older I have gotten more comfortable with being more emotionally present. But the set design and the theatre stuff that I did somehow forced me to engage with the interior part of myself in a whole other way, that really scared me, and made me want to pursue set design even more. 

Research is such a big part of the design process in theatre. Is research a tool you use outside of the theatre when you are creating art, whether it be a painting or drawing? 

I use research in a different way when creating outside of theatre. When you’re doing research in set design you’re researching a thing because you need to know more about a certain place in the world or it is emotional intuitive research. In my painting work, if I had an idea for something and started feeling artistically stuck, I would look at other painters to inspire me in a different way or to fight through a problem in the painting. Learning about all the different art worlds, like art history, film history, theatre history, all of that feeds into the art that I make. I’m constantly drawing on all of the history I have learned about, as an artist you are trying to expand your basic knowledge about the world as much as possible. 

How often do you reuse materials in your studio? How sustainable is your shared studio space? 

In my own practice in terms of my studio work I’ve been trying to be more sustainable. I find it exciting and challenging at the same time. Some of it is people just having to get over the preconceptions about what is considered the way a model box should look or be made. Getting directors used to looking at model boxes made out of cardboard because those were the recycled materials we’re working with. For instance in my Set Design I course I have them build a couple of model boxes just out of cardboard and chipboard, some of that is to help with cost challenges. Once you get used to using a certain scale you want to continue to use those materials. You have to take more time to train yourself to be patient with new materials, it is a slow process. 

Are there things being done to make theatre a more sustainable industry?

The Broadway Green Alliance is one of the biggest scenic design sustainability movements. The industry as a whole has a major hill to climb. Recycling takes more time, for the designer and the scene shop. The money for that time has to come from somewhere, I think until there is an actual monetary reason for the theatre to do that, it will be hard-pressed to make that be a change. Hillbolic Scene Shop is one of the only sustainable shops, they are not a union shop and it’s pretty small. They do not have the same overhead costs that Hudson Scenic would have if they wanted to go green, because of union wages. It is essentially a labor issue. 

What are your future goals as a teaching artist? 

Being flexible enough in my teaching to be able to change with the times and to not let my career die. Those are my two goals. I had a professor who would only design two shows a year and I could tell he was really bummed about it, I don’t want to become that person.