Hometown: Caguas, Puerto Rico
Education: MFA Set Design from Brooklyn College and a BS In Mechanical Engineering from the University of Puerto Rico College of Engineering (RUM)
Favorite Credits: The Beauty Queen on Leenane by Martin McDonagh, La Celestina by Fernando Rojas, Same Train by Levy Lee Simon
Why theater?: I was an actor in Puerto Rico then decided to mix it up a little bit. End up coming to New York to study Set Design, mostly because I love to be part of the creative team. I love the process of collaboration to make magic happens.
What is your role on Prospect?: I am the Set designer.
Tell us about Prospect?: The world of the play presented to the audience is a fragmented and dislocated one. We are showing everything up front and every audience member will have a different experience with it. The audience will join the characters in a night of excess back in the 80’s in Dallas. Not all is what it seams. We will witness a night of party, alcohol and drugs then we will see what is real and what’s not.
Is beautiful and raw.
What is inspiring your design for Prospect?: Life as broken fragments of a shattered mirror where not all is what it seems.
What kind of theater speaks to you? What or who inspires you as an artist?: The kind of theater that tells the story in a different way using physicality and clever stagecraft. I like to be surprised and I am not interested in seeing a complete realistic representation of a story. I expect to be taken to a different realm. Definitely Art itself. All kind of artistic manifestation.
What makes a design “successful”?: A design to be successful has to complement the play and helps tell the story better. A design that fill out the blanks on the script visually.
How do you approach your work individually and collaboratively?: I read the play several times first to feel the story and then in a more technical approach. I let the story to move me. Making visual research start this entire inspirational journey. Somehow I start finding visual inspiration and start drawing thumb nails sketches to let my ideas guide me. Then I take my ideas and share them with the director and the creative team, they bring to the table their ideas and feedback which then dictates the creative process to follow.
What is your favorite part about the collaboration process?: My favorite part is the part of idea developing the brain storming, when the group is creating without thinking in money and what is possible or not.
If you could design any play or musical you’ve yet to design, what would it be?: I will love to be able to design Martin McDonagh’s The Leenane Trilogy and The Aran Islands Trilogy.
For more on Jorge, visit www.jorgeddieppa.com
Boundless Theatre Company will present the New York Premiere of Octavio Solis’ PROSPECT, directed by Elena Araoz at Teatro Circulo (64 East 4th Street between 2nd Avenue and Bowery), May 19-June 5. Tickets ($18) are available online at www.boundlesstheatre.org
