Rows of vibrant sketches, computer-generated colored images and set designs line three walls in a tiny room tucked within the theater district surrounding Syracuse Stage. Glossy magazine pages and posters, half-stapled to the ceiling, dangle overhead. A detailed model of a fully designed stage rests on a small table, boxed in by the wall and a much larger table, where six Syracuse University design students and director Michael Donald Edwards sit, chatty and restless.

‘We call this the boom-boom room, where it all happens,’ said R. Allen Babcock, a senior design and technical theater major, waving his arms.

The room looks like the aftermath of a 64-color crayon box explosion and seemed perfectly acceptable as the behind-the-scene design headquarters of Syracuse Stage’s ‘Hedwig and the Angry Inch.’ The musical opens Jan. 20 in Hutchings Auditorium.

‘This will be unlike any Hedwig that’s been done before,’ Edwards said, gesturing to the images on the wall.

‘Hedwig and the Angry Inch,’ written by John Cameron Mitchell, describes the journey of Hansel, a man from East Germany, before the fall of the Berlin Wall. He undergoes a botched sex change operation, leaving him neither male nor female. In short, he changes his name to Hedwig, identifies himself as a woman, moves to Kansas, is jilted by two men and forms a band called the Angry Inch that tours the country.

The show’s Angry Inch band will debut at 10:30 a.m. today in the Schine Student Center atrium, giving passers-by a taste of what’s to come.

The designers, who will oversee the construction of the set, costumes, lighting and animation while Edwards works with the cast, can hardly get Hedwig out of their minds.

‘You’re not going to see Oklahoma,’ said Jason Read, a sophomore design and technical theater major and the show’s moving light coordinator, or best boy. ‘This is not your traditional musical at all.’

And in the same rebellious spirit, the design work of the show is as untraditional as the show itself. Students have never designed any Syracuse Stage show before.

Despite that fact, Syracuse Stage directors and employees have treated the students respectfully, as they would professional designers, said Jackie Corcoran, a fifth-year design and technical theater major and costume designer for the show.

‘We’re the pioneers, baby,’ Babcock interrupted, giving Edwards a high five.

And the students have more than met Edwards’ expectations.

‘There’s a real advantage to assembling a design team of students,’ Edwards said. ‘It’s a great opportunity to take this show, make it our own and design it in a way that’s fresh.’

The students agreed that their work on Hedwig has done much more than add another line to their resum.

‘It’s been an amazing experience,’ Read said. ‘I want to incorporate everything I’ve learned into my work.’

‘It takes the cake,’ Babcock added. ‘This is a project you actually like to think about in your free time.’

Christy Richards, a sophomore design and technical theater major and assistant scenic director, loves the opportunity to get hands-on experience after only one year of study at SU.

‘I hope the Stage keeps doing things like this,’ Richards said. ‘I’m hoping one day I get to design this type of show.’

The designers began brainstorming at the beginning of this semester, although a few had even formulated general ideas during the summer. They met at Babcock’s home once a week for four weeks to discuss the show, analyze its themes and brainstorm design ideas. Then they met every Friday in the ‘boom-boom’ room.

‘We asked ourselves questions like, ‘Why is she from East Berlin?” Edwards said. ”When did she decide to get a sex change? Why come to America?”

In answering those questions, they realized that while the show’s sexual themes ooze from every song and action, the show also projects a strong political theme.

‘We started out with explicit sexual images, but abandoned them,’ said David Allen Meyer, a fifth-year architecture major and set designer. ‘We’ve gone for a much more political frame. So the sex is there, but it’s not as explicit.’

Imagery of the Berlin Wall represents not only Hedwig’s home city, but also the division between East and West Germany. When the wall fell, the metaphorical division between citizens dissolved as they learned to accept one another, Meyer said.

‘If that bloody thing can come down, why can’t all the divisions come down?’ Edwards asked.

The political themes of the show also reflect today’s hostilities, both abroad and within America, as more and more people become angry with the state of affairs.

‘We’re so divided right now, so paranoid, so tense,’ Corcoran said, silhouetted by the sunlight streaming through the room’s only window. ‘And Hedwig was hurt by divisions, too.’

But conversations about sex, gender, government and personal growth did not flow freely from the group at their first meeting, as they do now. To do the best job they could however, they learned to set aside their inhibitions and be fearless about the process, Edwards said.

‘We couldn’t just pretend to do it right,’ Edwards added.

Some members of the Syracuse community, which has not seen such a gender-bending, raucous show grace any of its theaters, will need to set aside their own inhibitions to learn that every person has something in common with the oddball, Edwards said.

‘It’s about metamorphosis, and how we have so many divisions and walls in our lives,’ he said. ‘Tear down this wall and all the other walls will fall.’

Every person wants to realize who she is as a complete person, Meyer added.

‘That’s what the main character, Hedwig, does,’ Meyer said. ‘She finds that wholeness within herself.’

Steve Rosolio, a senior film major and animation director, hopes that the musical will be just as fun as the process behind it.

‘I expect to get the same enthusiasm out of the audience that I see in this room,’ Rosolio said. ‘This group has such energy and excitement, and I hope that really carries through.’

Published on December 3, 2003 at 12:00 pm