Conceived and created by Randy Weiner, best known in New York for his involvement with the immersive theatrical experience Sleep No More, Queen Of The Night opened in the basement of the Paramount Hotel on February 2. The show merges theatrical performance, circus acts, “food performance,” and a lavish dinner into an evening like no other.
Set in a reconstruction of Billy Rose’s historic Diamond Horseshoe, the event, billed as the “dark debutante ball” given by the Marchesa in honor of her daughter Pamina, required the talents and creativity of an incredible team of artists. The evening is decadent, full of sexual innuendo, lavish, and involves skin to skin contact between cast and audience.
For this ambitious project, Weiner pulled together a rock-star team: director Christine Jones, circus creator Shana Carroll, “food performance” creator Jennifer Rubell, choreographer Lorin Latarro, and creative director Giovanna Battaglia. They were joined by Douglas Little (set and scent design), Austin R. Smith (lighting design), Darron L. West and Charles Coes (sound design), Thom Browne (fashion design), Steve Cuiffo (magic design), Meg Sharpe (interior design), and executive chef Jason Kallert.
Jones is best known as a set designer, most notably of Broadway’s Spring Awakening and American Idiot. The project, though in some ways a departure, is also an outgrowth of her development of Theater for One, “a portable performing arts space for one performer and one audience member, that turns public events into private acts, making each performance a singularly intimate exchange.”
By the time Jones was brought on by Weiner, architects Stonehill & Taylor had been working on creating the Diamond Horseshoe space with interior designer Meg Sharpe for more than a year. The venue, imbued with both real and constructed history, was part of the story from the beginning.
Weiner’s staff and vision coalesced around the recreation of the Diamond Horseshoe, which was obviously central to the creation and success of the event. The original Diamond Horseshoe, created by Billy Rose, opened in 1938 beneath the Paramount Hotel. After years as a home to lavish revues, the Horseshow closed in 1951 but was left alone to crumble, except when used for a few select events like Andy Warhol’s 1987 memorial lunch. The space was waiting to become home of Queen Of The Night.
And the team was a real meeting of like-minds, according to Jones. “We were all drawn to the Diamond Horseshoe in different ways, and we all wanted a supernatural experience. It was incredible to work with so many different artists, all of us working out of our comfort zone in a significant way and most of us working together for the first time,” she says. “Over the course of many very intense weeks, we created, recreated, revised, started over, returned to old ideas, and made up a road map as we went along. None of us had ever done anything like this before, so we didn’t have a tried and true means of making this work, and all of us had very different ways of working.”
According to Little, “Christine wanted to pay homage to the space and have guests enter what looked like the remnants of the old Diamond Horseshoe. The space is a rare gem and has distinctive magic about it. Entering from the insanity of Times Square and descending into this magical world is nothing short of a mythological experience.” Smith recounts his own initial experience of the space with that same staircase. “The Diamond Horseshoe was being completely gutted when I came in,” he says. “I believe it was very early February 2013. No floor—the stairwell was mostly intact as you see it today. We loved how the stairwell looked, but the architect was required to restore it. Afterwards, our scenic team came in and distressed it back to its original dilapidation.”
Inspired by The Magic Flute, as well as the myths of Persephone and Demeter, Jones considers Queen Of The Night to be “much more a ritual experience than a theatre performance.” She is clear that the biggest challenge of the show “was integrating so many different elements. In one moment, you are coordinating a circus performance on stage, a magic trick, pigs on spits waiting in the wings, glasses that need to be delivered, performances in private rooms happening simultaneously—layers and layers of events and details occurring over a three hour time span.” According to Jones, the show comprises close to 10 hours of material, presented simultaneously throughout several rooms and a large ballroom, over a period of three hours.
Little was brought on by creative director Giovanna Battaglia because of his experience working on window projects for Bergdorf Goodman. For him, the biggest challenge, aside from working with a team of directors instead of a single vision, was “retrofitting the spaces for performance that were never intended to do much more than hold duct work.” In addition to the architects, the theatrical construction was handled by on-set carpentry team Nick Colt and Chris Ehman, while production manager Gabriel Evansohn supervised the build and installations.
For the full story, including a closer look at the set and lighting designs, download the March iPad issue of Live Design.