Scenic Designer Chika Shimizu Relishes Translating Her Imagination to Stage
The frequent and fast-moving location changes in Mike Lew’s Tiger Style! require a flexible, nimble set. In a split scene, Shimizu’s brilliant, giant revolving door serves as a barrier between the two spaces.
T2 Tiger Style! scenic designer Chika Shimizu says she had never been to a play before she went to college in California. Raised “in the countryside” in Japan by a family whose business was an embroidery factory, she did already have a deep love for music, reading, drawing and writing, but access to stage performances was nowhere to be found. Her passion for writing led her to pursue a career in writing children’s books. Then, she saw that college production, and she was hooked.
Shimizu’s all-white set can reflect any mood or place given the LED light grid built into the floor.
“I think it really brings me joy,” she says. “I always loved reading and writing books. Whenever I read books, I’m always imagining what’s happening in the story — and now it’s my job to do that! I was fortunate to have great, great teachers who encouraged me to look into design [as a career].”
That was a good move: After receiving her MFA from Yale School of Drama, her career has included designing shows at Berkeley Rep, Bucks County Playhouse, Yale Rep, Access Theater, and Artists at Play; the VR immersive game Another Dream; and the television show Hunky Boys Go Ding Dong for the Adult Swim Network. She’s even been in Fayetteville to work for TheatreSquared once before, on 2018’s Vietgone. Now she’s back to serve as scenic designer for Tiger Style!, a show that requires multiple transitions to vastly different environments. Her solution is a deceptively clean, simple, all-white set that, with the help of a giant revolving door she designed, mutates quickly into scenes as disparate as a city park, a suburban living room, a busy Asian airport, and a jail cell. These combined with the flashy LED floor — which contributes to the heightened reality of the plot — takes us to all of those different places effortlessly.
“There are so many descriptions in other plays, but this play has a lot of freedom for a set designer,” she notes. “There are some descriptions, like what furniture should be in the room, but there is no talk about where they enter, where they exit. When I first read a script, I see the ground plan of the theater, and I’m trying to find the best way to make the most exciting entrance work in the scene.”
Shimizu estimates she reads a play three times when she’s in the process of designing a show.
“The first read, I just read really fast, like an audience will see it,” she says. “I always feel like my first impression is really important, how I feel the color, tone of the play is, if there’s any shape or composition that came to my mind. And I always do research, trying to find the core of the play. The second reading, I’m trying to get more detail, to make sure to catch the flow everywhere. And I always do a prop list — I feel like it’s really important in making the life around the character.”
This means she comes to the first meeting with the director extraordinarily prepared — but, she says, not close-minded and not married to the ideas that she’s developed in her research.
“[That first meeting with the director] is very exciting,” she says. “And even though I have brainstormed ideas, I feel my job is trying to visualize the director’s concept and ideas. Sometimes they have a strong idea visually, but others don’t really have a strong concept. I think collaboration is really important, and I always appreciate a different point of view. Even though I might already have an idea, I always love to try new things and I think that makes my design better.”
Though designing Tiger Style! Is keeping her busy, Shimizu will be even more busy when she gets back home to New York City, where she’s writing a novel—something she started at the beginning of the pandemic—and raising a four year-old daughter, who has her own experience with T2: Shimizu’s daughter was just three months old when Shimizu had to travel to Fayetteville to open Vietgone. Shimizu says the director and T2 production staff had enthusiastically encouraged her to bring her baby with her.
“The first rehearsal, I brought my baby,” she remembers. “Every break, I went to nurse. I debated coming with her for a long time, but I decided to come, and I’m really glad that I did.”