The Conference of the Birds by Sholeh Wolpe

The End that is Really the Beginning

Based on Sufi ideologies, I wanted to focus this design on architecture found in Iran and the Middle East.  And with talking with the director and the team, we really wanted the world of this play to be fairly dystopian. The world is kind of in shambles. But what was important about that, is that the remnants of this ruined society are all around our characters.

When looking into the Sufi religion, and other spiritualities in the Middle East, I was really struck by the concept of the wishing tree. Generally, one would make a wish, tie an offering to the tree, and only untie it once the wish came true. So, within the world of our play, the people of the past have created this wishing tree in the middle of the space, but, tying into humanity’s pollution problem, all of the wishes are made from trash, closely resembling leaves.

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There was a number of arch pieces throughout the space that were used to create the various settings throughout the play, and this ended up being very successful! At the end of the play, a number of tubes dispersed throughout the tree at center gave the appearance of drizzling rain. (A frustratingly hard thing to capture in photographs, sadly) Along with the design of the set itself, I was also able to design an interactive wishing tree exhibit in the lobby of the theatre. Since the actual set was focused on humanity's trash problem, I wanted the lobby to be a closer look at theatrical waste. Therefore, everything used in the lobby was theatrical waste from our department, which ended up being very impactful. 

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Below this you can see my original rendering of the design, along with a number of production photos.