Designing in Two Worlds: Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams

Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams works in two ways, as an associate scenic designer and as a scenic designer.  Most of those who know her, she says,  know her in one role and not the other.

Some see her as Michael Yeargan’s associate scenic designer, who has handled scheduling, measurements, studio management and budget, and other logistics for shows that include that include My Fair Lady, Fiddler on the Roof, The King and I, The Bridges of Madison County, Women on The Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone on Broadway, the West End, and/or a national tour. She has served as associate scenic designer for others as well.

Others appreciate her as a designer who has worked Off Broadway, in top regionals from the Old Globe and Seattle Rep to the Yale Rep and Arena Stage (and many between). She also designed the recent new musical Dragon Spring Phoenix Rise at the Shed.

Director Sarna Lapine feels MacAdams isn’t appreciated enough. “Because of her humility and incredible work ethic, she’s underrecognized for how brilliant she is,” says Lapine, who has worked with her often. “She’s not about self-promotion but about the work. I feel there’s not enough of a spotlight on her.”  

MacAdams also works in two worlds, designing in theaters and opera houses here and in her native Japan. 

Her story begins in Kobe, Japan, where she grew up. She often visited the Takarazuka Revue, an all-female theater company with this rule: “When a performer is going to marry, she has to retire from the company” That turned out to be helpful to MacAdams, who was able to take ballet lessons from a retired Takarazka performer, the mother of a playmate. Connecting to a theater professional led to a fascination with the world of theater.

The costumes for the ballet “and lots of ropes and spiral staircase so tall” mesmerized her. She remembers a defining moment, attending a dance recital, but it isn’t the dancing that stays with her. “The energy was the main attraction to me,” she recalls. “I was thinking, ‘I love this, and I want to be part of this energy.” But she had no desire to get on stage. She looked in the wings as props came in, and quickly she not only knew what she wasn’t. She had an inkling of what she was. 

She discovered the Italian opera in Japan when she was 14, something so different from the Noh play, Kabuki, and Takarazuka. The huge theater, and the 18th century Italian town on stage meant more than the music. “I was sucked into the visual world,” she recalls. “And I thought ‘This is what I want to do. I have to be artist to do this. The first thing I did was learn to paint with oil like the 18th century landscape I saw onstage at The Barber of Saville. But I was told there were other places I can learn theater, so I went to talk to my ballet instructor who is the only professional person I knew.”

When MacAdams talked, she didn’t know what words to use. What was she to call this person who created a world on stage? “I didn’t know ‘scenic designer,’” she recalls. Her ballet teacher took her to a small town’s multipurpose theatre and introduced her to the people running it. “I met this guy, coming down a spiral staircase, Mr. Ishimoto. He looked into my eye. I was in high school, and I wore my high school uniform. I want to be polite and that was the most formal clothes I had. He told me I was right about painting. If I cannot draw, I cannot draw set. He would show me how backstage works.”

The 16-year-old went to Ishimoto’s theater ever weekend, and every weekend was different—a ballet group might be there one weekend, a hobby group another. She earned $50 a day, a lot of money for a 16-year-old. Ishimoto advised her to save money—she would need it for tuition. But her education had already started. She would operate follow spots, stage manage, paint signs for events, and work on crews.

She also learned that studying set design was more crucial than continuing to study fine art. “I had never met a professional set designer for five years at Ishimoto’s theater,” she says. She decided to move to Tokyo to find a job at a theater where she would meet some.

There were only two schools in Tokyo where she could learn set design, and neither admitted her, so she returned home and to Ishimoto’s theater. She was able to study mixed media at the Pilchuck Glass School and fine arts at the Osaka University of the Arts.

But how would she meet professional designers? What questions could she ask them if she did? She tried to find work in a larger company that would do scenic work and saw an ad: “No experience necessary.” But when she showed up, more experienced than most, she recalls they told her “’We cannot have females do this.’ I was angry at that point. You said anybody, but when I tried, you say ‘we need a boy.’”

When she asked why, she was told she was not married and young. “If their work hurt my face, they cannot take responsibility. I told them I am like monkey. I can climb up anywhere. I can carry heavy things. But all those didn’t work…because I am a girl and not related to any important person in the theater.”

She decided she couldn’t win the battle in a man’s world. “Getting out of that  country was the answer for me.

CROSSING AN OCEAN

Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams works in two worlds. She began studying fine arts in Japan at the Osaka University of the Arts and came here to study scenic design. She also interned at a theater in Japan, run by a Mr. Ishimoto. (See part one for details.)

Ishimoto told her about New York, about Broadway. “It sounded like Mecca. He loved musical theater and was a collector of old American musical movies. So, he has been showing me Singing in the Rain or Seven Brides for Seven Brothers or West Side Story.” 

MacAdams picked up a book about studying abroad. She had family in Seattle, so she settled there, near her father’s cousin.

The book said the University of Washington would let her observe theater classes. It didn’t. But she enrolled in the ESL program there and applied to the Cornish College of the Arts, to study theater.

Cornish rejected her, three times--not because she is a woman but because Mikiko Suzuki had come from Japan unable to speak or read English. “I called the department chair. I brought my art portfolio and said, ‘I have to study here.’”

And so she did.

“Despite the fact that Mikiko was ‘English Challenged," she was a fine communicator. Her earnest face, dark hair in braids and oversized glasses easily engaged and charmed everyone she met,” says that professor, Karen Gjelsteen. “She easily asked questions, offered intelligent comments in critiques and freely praised the successes of her classmates.  Since reading English was much harder for her than speaking English, a few members of the faculty and her classmates held weekly play readings for her.”

MacAdams says she struggled to read scripts with the help of a dictionary. She struggled to understand teachers.  Her classmates saw her frustration and rallied to her.  Now old enough to drink, she repaid the debt by making rice balls and buying beer for the underaged students.

Mikiko was passionate, driven, eager and compelled to pursue a career in scenic design,” Gjelsteen says, adding that made her a welcome team member in class and in production. “She was so curious, open and willing to learn, persistent and committed.  And she was fun and funny.  For example, she loved the sound of certain English words,  and some of them she thought were hilarious.  She laughed so hard at the word, ‘spatula,’ that her classmates each gifted her one at the end of her first year.”

She entered Cornish with artistic, if not language, skills, Gjelsteen recalls-- in color theory, in sketching, drawing, painting and design.  “During our college breaks and over the course of her studies for her BFA, she volunteered at almost every theatre in town…[and] developed a network of supporters here in Seattle of theatre artisans and designers.” 

Adds Gjelsteen, “When she was first learning her craft, she assisted me.  I was a tough taskmaster who demanded good drafting and model making. She worked hard to meet my expectations…. She learned to translate the written text into visual frames by creating storyboards and took bold risks in both her costume and scenic design work.  She was innovative and one of the first students to employ photoshop in her costume renderings. Poised and professional, she graduated with a portfolio full of stunning work. It's a wonderful thing for a teacher to have a fiery talent to mentor.” 

MacAdams learned a lot at Cornish, but she also learned she didn’t know everything she needed to design professionally.  “I think ‘this is the last change to be set designer. I have to go to graduate school.’ Everyone said Yale. I was driven, very driven.”

She was prepared to go to any graduate school that would take her. “All I knew is I wanted go to grad school and be set designer,” she thought. Yale was inconceivable to her, even though she had spent a summer interning at a ballet company—where Ming Cho Lee was designing that summer.

A mentor, Drew Boughton, and charge artist Eddi Whitsett arranged for her to meet Ming. “I was in my junior year of undergrad. I showed him my portfolio. He took one-and-a-half hour talking to me, and he was very specific for  what I need to do.” He advised her to see everything in Seattle and read all of Shakespeare. “I still haven’t finished reading all Shakespeare.”

A production manager at the ballet company arranged for her to get comps to dress rehearsals and previews, and she did manage to see every show at the Seattle Rep, the Intiman, and other theaters in Seattle. Gjelsteen says MacAdams moved into a smaller apartment to pay for tickets that weren’t comped and to buy modeling materials.

 After then she went to Yale. 

For someone with language issues, getting in was easier than studying there. Teachers assigned four or five scripts a week. Ming and Jane Greenwood had difficulty understanding her, she says. Again, classmates helped. “Somehow I graduated.”

These days, nobody misunderstands MacAdams, but she’s been known to confuse a word or two. Lighting designer Donald Holder, who has worked with her since 2007, beginning with the Broadway revival of South Pacific while she was working for Michael Yeargan, says “Mikiko is totally bi-lingual, but because her native language is Japanese, she occasionally misspells relatively simple words on her design drawings and production communications to hilarious effect. She’s referred to orchestra music stand lights as ‘band lumps,’ shift plans have mistakenly been referred to as ‘shit plans,’ handicap seating has been referred to as ‘handy cap,’ big ideas noted as ‘bug ideas.’ to name a few.  When I’ve tried to point out these entertaining faux pas, Mikiko is typically surprised but equally amused.”

Money was a problem while she was at Yale, so she looked for opportunities to make some. Riccardo Hernandez had just moved from Brooklyn to Hamden CT. She did some work for him. And Michael Yeargan lived in Milford CT. She began working for him in 2002, first as an assistant, later as an associate, and she and hasn’t stopped; currently, they are preparing to take the current revival of My Fair Lady to London.

Yeargan met her when she was a student at Yale and found her “a very promising, energetic human being who did wonderful work.” He took a leave when she was there, but he hired her to assist him during the summers. “She is full of enthusiasm, very precise,” he says. “She’s wonderfully organized and an excellent draftsperson.” She made an impression on him, and he hired her when she graduated.

Her first project was drafting Light in the Piazza for Yeargan, not knowing the show was heading to Broadway.

And there she was. Mecca.

MacAdams loves supporting another designer as an associate. She’s not fazed by technical problems or logistical issues. But as much as she loves her work as an associate designer for Yeargan and others, much as she loves working on large shows, she wanted to express her own visual ideas on stage. So, while working as an associate, she managed to design several shows a year, too.  

“Michael let me disappear from time to time from his projects. He wanted me to succeed as a designer,” she says.

“She is a terrific designer, ” he says.

BECOMING A DESIGNER

Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams’ path to scenic design began with studying fine arts in Japan, continued through the Cornish School of the Arts in Seattle followed by Yale Drama, and through work as an associate designer, often for Michael Yeargan. (See parts one and two for more.)

When MacAdams designs, she begins by reading a script without a dictionary, without taking notes.  “I always jump into a design. In my first reading, I just read whole thing, even though some of the vocabulary is difficult. When I feel something, I start getting into analyzing the structure of the play. I note props and other technical things and create a scene breakdown. Then I talk to the director. I’m open minded of what director will say. The show gets richer by collaboration.”

Directors appreciate her. “Mikiko has a keen eye for beauty. She designs stunning worlds and is incredibly delightful to work with. She solves problems with a bounty of creativity,” says director Seema Sueko.

Director Pirronne Yousefzadeh values MacAdams' dramaturgical approach. “She asks insightful questions about the structure of the play as well as the historical context.” They worked together on The Invisible Hand, which takes place in a space where a prisoner is being detained.  “She created a world that was stylistically exciting and very grounded in research and a real sense of place. She marries both dramaturgical rigor and a bold aesthetic, which is a rare combination. And on top of all of that, she allows the architecture of the venue--and all of its idiosyncrasies--to further inform the design, allowing it to truly transcend.”

 “She can navigate a play like The Invisible Hand, which is a thriller rooted in one environment just as easily as she can design Vietgone, which functions like a comedic musical and requires a sense of propulsion through many scenes in countless locations. She’s so deft in how she can access such a wide range of tools and work on such a wide range of material,” adds Yousefzadeh.

Sarna Lapine and MacAdams came up in the theater together, working together as assistant director and assistante designer, beginning with The Light in the Piazza at Lincoln Center. Then they began working as director and scenic designer. “We started a creative relationship over 15 years ago,” Lapine says. “In our early days together, Mikiko was always bringing me plays she thought I should direct. She brought me this beautiful poetic play by Anna Ziegler, Photograph 51, based on the British scientist, Rosalind Franklin, who was instrumental in the discovery of DNA.  For years, we wanted to do this together.”

They wound up collaborating on it in Japan. “We met this wonderful producer in Japan, Hiroka Murata…On one of her visits to New York she came to Mikiko studio's to meet with us and asked if we had any dream projects we wanted to do. We spoke about Photograph 51 and while Hiroko wasn’t quite certain of how the play would translate in Japanese, she was taken by our passion for the project. We ended up doing the play in Tokyo [at the Umeda Arts Theater] with a wonderful cast and an all-female creative team. It was one of the greatest creative experiences of my professional life and I have Mikiko to thank for making it happen,” says Lapine.

Lapine is impressed with the detailed way MacAdams approaches their work. “Nothing is gratuitous. There’s something behind every detail and every gesture. Her approach is very kinetic and very musical and alive. She’s also technically proficient. She knows how to organize and achieve systems behind the scenes. All you see on stage is the magic."

They have worked together on numerous projects, including The Year of Magical Thinking, Lincoln Center Theater's tour of South Pacific, a re-imagined revival of Annie Get Your Gun, and several operas.  "For The Rape of Lucretia we were in a non-traditional space, essentially an old warehouse converted into an art gallery in South Boston. Mikiko had to design the holistic audience experience from the moment they entered the gallery to their seating. It was an immersive experience, and she built an enormous and beautiful model of the set which was a work of art in its own right." says Lapine. "We then created storyboards from the model." 

“Mikiko is an incredible crafts woman and model maker. We do a lot of pre-visualization in these beautiful models. It’s not the way everybody works because it’s time consuming, but it’s so much easier for me to work through a show in my head with a 3-D model. Part of the artistry is how you manage transitions, and we collaborate on creating a system that has flexibility. Mikiko responds to the way I use the model and she makes changes to her design accordingly.  We were both associates on Lincoln Center Theater's Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Mikiko built over 70 white models and set them up in the dressing rooms in the basement of Lincoln Center Theater, so Bartlett Sher could figure out the fast transitions.” 

Perhaps most important is a shared aesthetic. "Mikiko and I both respond to emotional naturalism in a poetic space,” says Lapine. 

Designers who have collaborated with MacAdans also sing her praises. Holder has worked with her many times, both in her roles as associate and designer. Recently they collaborated on a new musical, Monsoon Wedding, at Berkeley Rep, and on a contemporary Kabuki theatre piece in Tokyo in early 2020. “In every case, Mikiko has been the consummate professional.  Her work is detailed, accurate and extremely comprehensive.  She’s personable, intelligent, and a great communicator and collaborator.  Her work ethic is incomparable, she’s always sensitive to the needs of the other disciplines, and the unity of design that has graced all of her productions is a credit to Mikikoartistry, technical expertise, and managerial skills.”

He says that although she’s been immersed in Western culture for years, she has a deep connection to her Japanese roots. For instance, he says she creates Japanese environments when she’s on the road. “Mikiko rearranges her out-of-town hotel/living spaces to become a remote design studio and Japanese kitchen,” Holder says. “She re-organizes her small room with creativity and ingenuity. Every square inch used to great effect.” Although he isn’t surprised a set designer would create personal spaces, “she takes it to another level. I’ve had the privilege of enjoying Mikiko's traditional Japanese cold dishes, made in her hotel room.  How she finds the time and energy to entertain friends and colleagues after a long day in the theatre is pretty impressive unto itself. And Mikiko’s attention to detail in every aspect of her life is pretty extraordinary to witness.”

MacAdams has helped other designers learn the ropes, first at Hampshire College, then at SUNY Purchase, Fordham University, and Rutgers. Currently, she teaches at Yale Drama. ”She’s an incredible teacher and mentor and fosters their growth and development as they’re coming up in her studio,” says Lapine.

Lapine feels she, too, has developed through her collaboration with MacAdams. “She’s not complacent. Every time we work together, I find I grow as an artist because she’s always pushing to be a better designer.”