Interview: Katariina Kirjavainen
Set designer Katariina Kirjavainen: “All artistic design must produce a common subconscious for the performance.”
The work of a set designer starts with the text. That is why the humming ridge was a good starting point for set designer Katariina Kirjavainen, who had read Emily Brontë’s classic novel several times at different stages of her life.
“I had had the opportunity to contemplate the Humming Ridge many times in my life. It’s an amazing book and speaks on many different levels. A deep story and the people are brilliantly written,” Kirjavainen says.
Kirjavainen has been designing sets since the late 80s. He designed his first set design for the Helsinki City Theatre in 2002 and has been working in the company permanently since 2006.
The early stages of a new production always include meetings between the director and other artistic designers. In this case, we consider what the text means in this time, what may be moving in time and what we want to highlight.
After that, Kirjavainen makes the actual plan and builds an accurate scale model of the set. Once the plan has been approved for implementation, he draws the working drawings and supervises the construction and implementation of the sets so that they are functionally and artistically successful.
The most important task of the set design is to produce action
on the humming ridge Kirjavainen wanted to create a set that continues from the stage to the auditorium and splits part of the stall. This first had to be done with permission from the theatre management, as the set takes up seats in the auditorium.
“In this way, the ‘wall’ between the performance and the viewer’s experience disappears, and the performance becomes carnal,” Kirjavainen explains his decision. He says that the set design began to take shape quite soon after he had been chosen as the set designer for Humiseva harju .
“This was such a pleasant job that I knew pretty quickly what I wanted. It also quickly became apparent that this is a very physical performance,” Kirjavainen says.
Humming Ridge , set in the English countryside, has two key venues. The Humming Ridge, surrounded by the moor, where the main characters Cathy, Heathcliff and Hindley live, and the Rastaslaakso Manor, where the Linton family lives. In the set design designed by Kirjavainen, these two very different worlds are formed.
“If I think of a moor or the idea of a moor, it produces physical running and climbing,” says Kirjavainen. That is why the moor has been built as a large hill that rises to a height of several metres. The actors get to climb on top of it, look into the distance and run down.
Rastaslaakso’s home, on the other hand, produces a completely different kind of activity, as you can’t see anywhere from there. “It’s a place that’s in a static state. There, movement stops, thoughts stop and life stops,” Kirjavainen describes.
Scenography also creates a common subconscious
Kirjavainen was involved in bringing his set design into the performance and participated in almost all of the rehearsals of Humiseva harju. “It’s great to be in rehearsals and see how the set is used. How the director and the actors came up with their own ways of using my plan,” Kirjavainen says.
When the ridge was first brought to practice, Kirjavainen climbed up the moor and descended the butt hill. In this way, he introduced the actors to the characteristics of the moor, after which the actors climbed after him.
Some of the play’s props were only created during rehearsals. Kirjavainen has a habit of taking various items to rehearsals, which they try to take with them to the scenes. In Humming Ridge , the director and actors were also involved in deciding which ideas in the set design would carry all the way to the performance. A good example of this is the robot vacuum cleaner buzzing in the Lintons’ home.
Kirjavainen is meticulous about the items he chooses. She wants objects to have their own stories and for them to all be meaningful. “Props can help an actor build their own role. All artistic design must produce a common subconscious for the performance,” he explains. Kirjavainen describes Humming Ridge as a process-like work in which the way of doing things was collective and organic. The final proposal was formed together with the working group.
“In this project, as a group and as artists, we were able to get close to something that could be shared through the personal. The fact that the viewer’s experience is full comes as the sum of the artistic collaboration.”
Ida Henritius