What's happening now.

33 Variations, Moises Kaufman’s play about Beethoven and a contemporary researcher who is studying him is getting ready for Broadway in February. The play’s set is a riff on the materials from the world of Beethoven and his museum in Bonn, the kind of riff I love doing—taking a couple different materials (in this case manuscripts and the boxes they are stored in) and exploding them into the entire universe. Some of those objects are beautiful in their own right; others are not. But together, multiplied hundreds of times, they make some pretty beautiful patterns.

Up in Providence, Rhode Island, the Grease tour is getting ready to head out across the country. Simpler than my Broadway design, this production has some cool new tricks, a couple of things that light up in fun ways, and no band onstage—they are in the orchestra pit this time, and it makes for stronger, cleaner and bolder images onstage.

Becky Shaw, by Gina Gionfriddo is in rehearsal at 2nd Stage. The story telling in that is a wild ride. After a surprising but stable first act, the second act careens from place to place. The writing is very funny and the task for Peter Dubois and me on that one is to tell the story with as much reality as the pace and confines of the theatre will allow. In the meantime, we are finishing up the design for Mourning Becomes Electra. Scott Elliott, with whom I have collaborated more than anyone else, are working in a new style—something very theatrical, bold and bare bones—inspired by both the play and the economic reality of our time (something I imagine we might see more of in the year or two to come). Scrapping our original and more ambitious idea, we are still trying to treat our longtime home, the Acorn Theatre, in an environmental way (and I don’t mean Green).

Playing in Chicago, and coming to New York in two months is Lynn Nottage’s play Ruined. It follows the lives of several women working in a truck stop in the Congo during a civil war (could it be more timely?). While it sounds depressing, the play is surprisingly lively, as well as moving. Kate Whoriskey, another long time collaborator, has directed the play with lots of music and very strong performances. My approach was to avoid the devastation encountered by its characters, and make the space as beautiful as the Congo—a jungle of some 70 palm trunks, set off on a glossy reflective floor. The bad stuff comes soon enough, but I thought why tip our hand? (I guess I just did).

Down the pike: Ragtime at the Kennedy Center (Marcia Dodge director) and Falstaff at Juilliard, directed by Stephen Wadworth. More on them later. Shoko, Erica, Ted and Julia have been busy.

My Open Doors group this year is as surprising as ever. Open Doors is the program started by Wendy Wasserstein, and in it, we take small groups of high school students to see Broadway and off-Broadway shows and discuss them. This group is the least shy I’ve seen in five years of mentoring. We started by seeing The 39 Steps, which provided material for many opinions. Sometimes, we start out slowly and tentatively, but this bunch of 8 high school students charged right in, as if they were bred to offer opinions.