Vladimir Design: A First Look

Season Travelers, we’re taking you behind the curtain of Vladimir. Today, we’re looking closer at how the world of the play is taking shape: from the research inspiring our scenic design to the costume renderings bringing these characters to life.

photograph shows a young rollerblader waving a Russian flag as he glides past a Moscow militsiya (police) officer

Taken by photographer Igor Mikhalev for Sputnik

Before there’s a set, there’s research. Our scenic team started by asking: What does this world actually feel like?

archival photograph captures a typical Soviet apartment interior inside the newly built Olympic Village in Moscow, 1981. Taken by photographer A. Kovtun, the image documents everyday life in the USSR during the early 1980s

Every design starts somewhere. For Vladimir, it started with images, textures, architecture, and a very specific moment in history.

And while these references aren’t necessarily things you’ll see recreated literally onstage, they’re helping establish the visual language of the production:

the atmosphere, scale, texture, and tension of the world our characters inhabit.

This photo shows former U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush attending the state funeral of former Russian President Boris Yeltsin in Moscow on April 25, 2007. In the front Row is Russian President Vladimir Putin alongside his then-wife, Lyudmila Putina

And then we move from the world around these characters to the stories they tell us before they even speak. These are some of our early costume renderings. Look at the silhouette, color, texture, and tiny details. Each choice gives us information about who this person is, how they want to be perceived, and the world they’re navigating.

Vladimir takes place during a moment of enormous political and cultural transition in Russia. The design grounds us in that reality. And you’re seeing all of this before our audiences see the finished world onstage. That’s one of our favorite parts of having you as Season Travelers: we get to bring you along while the work is still becoming.