Fun Home
Scenic Design | Paper Project | 2020
Director: Portia Krieger
Lighting Designer: Kyle Stamm
“Like chaos never happens if it’s never seen”
In the musical Fun Home, Alison Bechdel is looking into her past to her childhood and college years. Throughout the show we see insights about Alison’s family including her father who also struggled to be true to himself and committed suicide when Alison was in college. The show connects present day Alison, as a forty year old, to different events that happened in her past and helped her to learn new facts she did not pick up on when she was living the memory.
The show focuses on the theme of perspective and how things that happen in your life can help you see your past more clearly; you can understand something that did not make any sense when it happened. Looking through your past can cause connections to form between memories that had never been there before. It also explores how living behind a facade can affect a person and those around them but also how society is the reason for this facade. The Bechdel family motto is “Like chaos never happens if it’s never seen” referring to the fact that the family looks perfect to people on the outside but they are all really struggling with guilt, regret, and self acceptance in reality. This show is relevant today because everybody can find a better understanding of themself when they look back on their life.
Research Boards
Sketch Model
Select Scene Renderings with Research
“Ring of Keys” Diner
Embalming Room
Final Model
When audience members enter the theatre, they will see a dollhouse-like structure that is reminiscent of a project young Alison could have made. The sky blue back and side pieces, along with the bright green grass floor, make the house and its surroundings look perfect. It is the facade that the family is hiding behind and it is opened when we start to go back into Alison’s memories which are certainly not perfect. The main material used, cardboard, is reminiscent of the box Alison opens at the beginning of the show that she finds memories inside of, just like will be found in the house. The 3 house sections with the 3 bottom boxes that open compartmentalize each of Alison’s memories to demonstrate that she does not see the connection between them when she first starts going back into them. The boxes unfold to show how once Alison is reminded of her first memory it reminds her of the next and the next until her whole life has unfolded before her eyes. The stitching on the house not only helps to develop the idea that the house is a childhood craft done by Alison but also makes a connection between the boxes and therefore the memories.
