Feb 12, 2012 | 06:44
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Mar 24, 2010
10 Questions: Daniel Ionazzi, scenic designer of a World War II stage spectacle
To see a trailer for "Beyond all Boundaries," go here. Photo by Dan Chavkin.
The visceral reality of warfare is evoked as never before in an innovative theatrical experience now playing at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. With scenic effects designed over a period of almost two years by Daniel Ionazzi, the UCLA Theater Department's director of production, the show, “Beyond All Boundaries,” is a 30-minute stage spectacle with a budget of more than $1 million for the scenery alone that draws upon the combined power of sound, video imagery, scenery and theme-park style special effects such as steam, smoke and seats that tilt and rumble to immerse audiences in the experience. As the museum describes it, viewers “feel the tank treads rumbling across North Africa's deserts, brush snow from their cheeks during the Battle of the Bulge, and flinch at anti-aircraft fire as it tries to bring down a B-17 on a bombing run over Nazi Germany.”
Image of a B-17 bomber comes on screen.
As the project's scenic designer, Ionazzi created all the solid, "practical," scenic elements, from scrims and panels for media projections to almost life-sized props such as the nose of a B-17 bomber and an entire concentration camp guardhouse that rises into view from a pit beneath the stage.
In addition to serving as the director of production for the Department of Theater, Ionazzi is also the production manager for the Geffen Playhouse and a designer and technical consultant at prestigious national and international theatrical venues. He spoke with David Chute about the challenges of designing for a theatrical event that has so many moving parts and covers a wide swath of American history.
Can you explain all the different elements you had to deal with to make “Beyond All Boundaries”?
We were paving new ground in terms of combining three-dimensional objects with computer-generated graphics and live-action video, with lighting and special effects. It’s a conglomerate of all those things, taking elements from the theme-park ride, the theater and film. In the pit there are scenic items, such as a concentration camp guard tower and a anti-aircraft gun. There are also three panels that come up out of the pit that are used for video projections, close-ups or inserts, with a larger image projected on the background. Out front there's one main bank of three projectors that cover that entire space, and the full-stage screen, which is actually a scrim. You can project on it or light behind it and let the image bleed through. And there are additional projectors providing images layered on surfaces upstage of the scrim.
Whom did you work with on this project?
The people I was working with were mostly film people. But from the very beginning my conversations with them were about making this more than just a movie on a huge screen, making it a truly theatrical experience.
But isn’t there one obvious element that's missing that most people associate with theater — the live actor?
My purist heart would say that's exactly right, that it’s not truly a theatrical experience because we don’t have interaction with actors. In fact, nothing that happens on the stage will change with the audience’s presence. It plays the same whether there’s a full house or no one in the house. As with any kind of museum or theme-park exhibit, it's all about show control. There’s one technician there who seats the audience, punches a button and the whole thing runs. That means the scenery moves, the projections roll, the sound plays, the practical scenic effects appear and disappear on schedule. But for an audience member, it’s certainly more of an experience than just watching a 2-D film image. There is a sense that you can go up on stage and touch these things, feel the heat and the wind, smell the smoke, feel the earth shake.
So it’s all computerized?
Yes. There’s no crew there to operate any of this. This is commonly done in
theme park shows or big Vegas-style shows. Our show is geared to run every hour at the museum for 30 minutes. There’s a whole pre-show in the lobby that gives the audience a history of what has taken place before Pearl Harbor, the starting point for our show, and the state of the world up to that point. There are a lot of interesting facts. You learn quite a few things.
theme park shows or big Vegas-style shows. Our show is geared to run every hour at the museum for 30 minutes. There’s a whole pre-show in the lobby that gives the audience a history of what has taken place before Pearl Harbor, the starting point for our show, and the state of the world up to that point. There are a lot of interesting facts. You learn quite a few things.
What technical challenges did you run into?
The thing that we had to be cautious about was the issue of scale — all the scenic elements had to blend with computer-generated graphic images or videos. There could be multiple images, too. Sometimes there was one overlaying textural scenic element and then, inset into that, videos of historical footage or newsreels, or scenes that we shot here in Los Angeles, against a green screen, of actors playing soldiers walking through a bombed-out city. There was a big model in the studio, and we’d mock up those scenic pieces and project on them to see if we had the right position and the right scale. We’d go back and forth constantly tweaking those kinds of technical things.
Did you have to develop new theatrical technologies for "Beyond All Boundaries"?
In a sense, yes, we were developing new techniques – or at least figuring out how to apply the technology we had in unprecedented ways. We were pushing it right to the edge. The projection system already existed, for example. We’ve done projections at the Geffen, we’ve done projections at UCLA on productions like “Homer in Cyberspace.” This gave me the opportunity I'd been looking for to go further and play with that in a very high-end way, with the interactivity of technologies.
Have you ever done anything like this before?
It’s very different from anything I’ve done in the past. The show is meant to run for years and years. Things will need to be replaced from time to time. But a lot of the money that went into this project was spent to make sure that things were built to last and could function repeatedly. Everything had to be custom-made and fabricated. The guardhouse, for example, had to be built so it could telescope out of the pit.
Were you guided more by the need to convey accurate information in a museum setting, or by the requirements of drama?
Theme-park special effects such as smoke are utilized in the show.
Did you have any personal connection to World War II?
I did. My father was part of that war. So there were instant links in it for me and remembrances of the stories he and my uncle told me about the war when I was a kid. We also tried to experience one aspect of it. At one point, we show scenes of rows and rows of B-17 bombers rolling off the assembly line. As we were working on creating the nose of the B-17 bomber, we decided to buy a ride on a real antique B-17 that was on tour out at the Burbank Airport. So a handful of us went up on the bomber, which was inspiring. You can’t believe these things actually flew and did all this stuff.
What do you hope museum visitors get out of “Beyond all Boundaries”?
We want the show to have an emotional impact on the audience. Remember – we had to go over the whole war in 30 minutes and try to touch all the key points. As a scenic designer, you just gather it all in and hope it transfers to the audience as part of the bigger story. It's intended to propel visitors out into the museum itself, to really dig into the details. It's meant to give them an emotional experience that ties in with the more traditional material that they will see in the museum.
