Renee Surprenant, Visiting Assistant Professor of Design and Technical Director in Theatre Arts, understands the importance of getting a change in scenery. This June, she will head to Italy to spend her fourth consecutive summer working as the set designer and internship coordinator for La Musica Lirica.
La Musica Lirica is a five-week training program that sends about 50 opera students to Novafeltria, Italy, to gain hands-on training and experience in producing operas.
“The whole point of the program is to teach the students better Italian language skills and singing skills in Italy so they get the full immersion,” Surprenant said.
Surprenant works with a technical director and two interns to produce the sets for three shows. Designing and building the sets takes the first 2 1/2 weeks of the program. During the second half, the students do mini tours through Emilia Romagna, a region in northeast Italy.
“We get to see some really cool places and none of them are in big cities that you would normally see if you’re on a trip to Italy,” Surprenant said. “On a normal tour you might skip over this whole beautiful region. It’s not very touristy. It feels like authentic Italy.”
The program puts on three shows: two large productions and one smaller production for less-experienced students. This summer the company will perform “La Traviata” and “Falstaff,” both by Giuseppe Verdi, as its main productions.
Surprenant said the variety of venues they use adds to the experience.
“Some of the stages are outside — temporary stages set up in a courtyard,” Surprenant said.“Others are in real Italian theaters with great stages and old theater machinery from the 1800s. They’re beautiful opera houses. The sets I design are almost like puzzle pieces so I can make them bigger or smaller to fit into the space. We usually don’t know what the space will be like until we get there.”
Surprenant said the theaters in Italy are unlike any she has seen in the United States.
“That’s kind of why Italy has that entrancing quality,” she said. “It’s old and so beautiful and a lot of these theaters are older than our country. It’s just so amazing to be able to be there.”
Surprenant’s role as a set designer means she comes up with the concepts for the scenery in conjunction with the director, draws a design, then passes the design along to a technical director who builds the set. Surprenant also paints the sets.
At Hillsdale, Surprenant is both set designer and technical director for theatre department productions, working two jobs instead of just one. Surprenant said that when she was pursuing her Master of Fine Arts degree at Michigan State University, she wanted to master set design, technical direction, and painting.
“I knew throughout my graduate studies that I would have a much higher chance of getting a job in this field if I were good doing all of those things, and I enjoy doing all of these things,” Surprenant said. “So, my plan was to train in both design and technical direction, and learn how to paint so that I could do it all myself and cover all my bases.”
It turned out that her role at Hillsdale would require her to do all three.
“That wouldn’t be the case anywhere else,” Surprenant said. “Normally I would be one or the other but here I do have the challenge of doing all of it. Our schedule is set up so that I can do all of it. If we did four shows a semester it would be a lot more difficult, but it’s spaced out just correctly so that I can do all of it.”
Surprenant said she sees potential in making La Musica Lirica into a study abroad option for set design students in the future.
“For students of set design, whether you’re a set designer or constructing or painting the scenery, doing summer stock theater is really important,” she said. “You can go to school during the year and then do a summer job in the professional world. There is so much to learn in terms of time management and the time crunch of getting it done no matter what. Banding together with your scene shop is a really important experience that all summer stocks have. You can get that experience with this program, and you can get the experience of being in Italy.”
Senior theatre major Nicholas Gibbs, who is on the set design track, has worked with as one of Surprenant’s employees for a couple years. Surprenant works with four student employees when she designs the sets for Hillsdale’s theatre department.
Gibbs said he thinks La Musica Lirica would be a great opportunity for set design students.
“I would love to see an opportunity like that, especially at Hillsdale,” he said. “Theater is a career that is almost entirely reliant on word-of-mouth and connections, so the more networking you do and the greater diversity of people you work with, the greater chance you have of landing work. Plus, the exposure to an entirely different culture’s forms of theater, design, and art are perfect
creative fuel for students like me who are still discovering the vastness of style.”
Gibbs said that working with Surprenant influenced him to pursue theatrical design.
“We worked with her first on the production of ‘Woyzeck’ we did here and I definitely saw a new side to design,” Gibbs said. “I had never exactly considered theatrical design as something I was interested in, but seeing the kind of diversity Renee brought really drew me in. As I started working towards a focus in design, she really started to challenge me and push me to work more efficiently. She was really patient, and I think in part that it is because she’s graduated more recently from academia and understands the balancing act.”
Though her two-part job does seem like a balancing act, Surprenant has produced quality work for the Hillsdale theatre department — and sophomore Glynis Gilio, an actress in these productions, said she has noticed.
“The work that Renee has done thus far has been absolutely spectacular,” Gilio said. “As an actor, you want to know that when you’re on that stage you feel immersed in the environment around you, and Renee is an expert at achieving that. Renee is also very skilled at working with students with all different levels of experience in the scene shop. She incorporates them well and is a great leader.”
Surprenant said she feels a certain commitment to each set she works on.
“I love set design because each show has a different specialty to it, a different thing to focus on,” she said. “I love something different about every show and as a whole I get to do so many different things and that’s what makes it so exciting.”
