Costume and scenic designer Vita Tzykun shares how she is coping with COVID-19 closings in this series, "When the Lights Went Out," where theatrical designers discuss what they are doing these days.
On the day slated for the final run-through of the world premiere of Edward Tulane at the Minnesota Opera, everything stopped. “The costume shop swiftly pivoted from building fantastical creatures that I have designed for one of the scenes in the opera to making PPE for hospitals,” says Vita Tzykun.
At home, Tzykun finished work on the scenic design for another world premiere, this one Castor and Patience for the Cincinnati Opera. “I submitted the designs a few weeks later, as contracted, only to learn that the premiere has also been canceled.” The San Francisco Opera also canceled Revolution of Steve Jobs. Tzykun had designed scenery for it when it premiered at the Santa Fe Opera in 2017, adjusting it for two other venues. She would not be able to do that for the fourth.
The free time allows her to learn more about the AR/VR/MR/XR world. “I think that there is unprecedented potential there in terms of dramatic and visual storytelling that is only now truly starting to be explored and morph from shooter games to much more complex immersive experiences,” she says. Last week, she attended a virtual AWE conference. “It was an incredibly eye-opening experience.”
Tzykun is isolated with her “partner in life and art, a baritone, composer, visual artist and director.” In 2015, she and David Adam Moore formed a multimedia collective called GLMMR, and since then, they have been searching for ways to evolve beyond the limitations of the proscenium and the flat screen. “Both David and I are typically on the road for seven to nine months a year, so we are very accustomed to communicating remotely, and in that sense, I feel lucky that this isolation didn’t present many new challenges to our modes of communications with our families, friends, and colleagues,” she says.
Now, they are in the midst of an intense pre-production period for Schubert’s Winterreise that was to have premiered at Austin Opera in late March. “Rather than canceling it, they proposed to produce it as a filmed song cycle. Since our original production has video projections, we are planning to intertwine them with the filmed performance during post-production, and potentially add elements of stop motion animation and hand-drawn landscapes, to create a unique art film. What’s especially exciting about this is that Austin Opera looked for ways to evolve the project, rather than shutting it down. That is, of course, possible in part because Winterreise is a one-man show, and that will allow us to keep the production crew to less than 10 people in a large space for a limited amount of time.”
Tzykun adds, “We are taking this time as an opportunity to finally spend more time together, learn new things, and create, and even though it’s not possible to keep our heads up every single day, we try to channel our anxieties into fueling our push into new creative frontiers.”
Check out what other entertainment design professionals are doing in "When the Lights Went Out."