Diane Cheklich and I are tremendously pleased and excited to announce that award-winning designer Monika Essen has joined our collaboration to bring Under the Poppy to you, a bit of fun in the dark, oh my yes. What we love so much – besides, of course, Monika’s witty and devastating eye, the emotional resonance of her designs, and her continuing refusal to do the easy thing, the comfortable, expected thing – is her aesthetic philosophy of theatrical design: “[T]hese creations are not just a backdrop to the action, but living, breathing, interactive characters in themselves.”  Which, if you were trying to describe the perfect atmosphere in which the show will, must, take place, would be it.

In the real world, our environments shape us, moment by moment, whether or not we consciously acknowledge it: enter a hospital lobby, a high school hallway, an empty bedroom, how do you feel?  Are you just the same in all of those places, or are  the construction and placement of the furnishings, the light or its lack, the smells and the sounds, components of your experience? Do some places make you feel bad? Weary? Excited, aroused? Does a half-dark room evoke your curiosity or your fear, or both? How do you feel about the smell of pine?

Monika understands all of this on a molecular level.  Welcome, Monika!

Here’s just one example of her work. [Photo from Epoque Design Studio.]