Ralph Gardner Jr. gets the backstory on how the set design came together for the hit musical
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David Korins, set designer for the ‘Hamilton’ musical, at his Manhattan office. PHOTO: AGATON STROM FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
By RALPH GARDNER JR.
May 10, 2016 3:43 p.m. ET
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Were I the envious type, I might be envious of set designer David Korins’s Tony nomination for “Hamilton.” Not that I ever showed much aptitude in the theatrical arts, my career reaching its zenith in a minor role in a high school production of “Feiffer’s People.”
Though given the demand for “Hamilton” tickets, I’d probably be more envious of Mr. Korins’s access to them.
“I’m contractually able to get a pair of tickets for every show,” he told me. “I have to pay for them. It has made me quite popular with a whole bunch of people I don’t know.”
But what I most coveted on a visit to his West 30th street studio was a portrait of Pee-wee Herman that hung on his wall. “If Andy Warhol did that it would sell for millions of dollars,” Mr. Korins joked.
To the best of my knowledge, the pop artist didn’t work in jelly beans, the medium employed in this work—the face vanilla beans, the hair chocolate and licorice, Pee-wee’s bow tie red cherry.
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A Pee-wee Herman portrait adorns a wall in the office of ‘Hamilton’ set designer David Korins. PHOTO: AGATON STROM FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
“Paul said, ‘I really want that,’” Mr. Korins remembered, referring to Paul Reubens, Pee-wee’s alias. Or is it the other way around? But the set designer held firm. “I said, ‘I’m going to keep this one.’ We spent so much time and effort creating it.”
I’m not sure whether he was referring to the candy portrait or the set he created for the 2011 Broadway production of “The Pee-wee Herman Show.”
Rising to such challenges is something Mr. Korins, 39, has been doing since he graduated from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he majored in theatrical design and interned at the Williamstown Theater Festival.
His Broadway credits, in addition to “Hamilton” and “The Pee-wee Herman Show,” include “Misery,” “Annie,” and “Motown.” He’s also worked with Kanye West, designed “Mariah Carey’s Christmas” at the Beacon Theater, and did the sets for “Grease Live,” the January TV production of the 1971 musical.
In other words, it’s been a good year for David Korins.
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“It was opening night and closing night at the same time,” with all the attendant spontaneity, he said of “Grease.” “I was actually videotaping the golf carts” on their way from the gym to the town square during the number “We Go Together.” “One of the cameras caught me in the rearview mirror.”
Though viewers seeking glitches might have more readily noticed when one of the golf carts jumped the curb and briefly seemed poised to tip over.
If there’s a cardinal rule to set design, Mr. Korins said—besides not contributing to accidents during the performance—it’s that the audience be distracted by the set as little as possible.
“The star of that show is the writing,” the set designer said of “Hamilton.” “I take great pride that nobody is talking about the scenery.”
That’s not entirely true, and not just because of his Tony nod. The awards will be handed out on June 12.
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At the performance I saw, everything, including the scenery, seemed to elicit applause. Though the set, which takes full advantage of the Richard Rodgers Theatre’s bare brick walls and features more scaffolding than even the average New York City sidewalk, took a minimalist approach to the rendering of American history.
“They didn’t really come to me with any idea,” Mr. Korins said of Hamilton’s creators. “There was a script and music, and we started from there.”
The set designer realized there was no way to depict all the locations of Alexander Hamilton’s eventful life. “It’s a story about this group of people who, not necessarily built the country, but built the scaffolding from which the country is built.”
Hence, lots of rough-hewn wood, coarse ropes and a turntable the actors board more often than the crowds on the Coney Island Cyclone—though so smoothly it’s hardly noticeable.
“It’s really two turntables,” Mr. Korins corrected me. “I couldn’t shake the fact that Aaron Burr’s and Alexander Hamilton’s relationship was a cyclical relationship over the course of their entire lives. I came up with the idea and said, ‘I think there are 10 moments to stage this way.’ They just bought it right away.”
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“It’s a huge testament to the design team,” he added.
Among them his own staff that, on the afternoon of my visit, were working on designs for coming productions that looked as intricate as any blueprints for New York City skyscrapers—if skyscrapers were required to dance to music.
However, they were in the service of simplicity. “Part of the job of a designer is to figure out the bare minimum of everything you need,” Mr. Korins said.