Stephanie M. Jorandby
  • Portfolio Overview
  • About Stephanie
  • Costume Design
    • The Learned Ladies
    • Bee-Luther-Hatchee 2017
    • Legally Blonde
    • Reckless
    • The World of Carl Sandburg
    • A Midsummer Night's Dream
    • The Secret Garden
    • The Drowsy Chaperone
    • Still/Moving
    • Julius Caesar
    • Kindertransport
    • The Shape of Things
    • The Pirates of Penzance
    • Bee-Luther-Hatchee
    • Musical Comedy Murders of 1940
    • The Bending of The Bow
    • The Glass Menagerie
    • Tartuffe
    • Crazy for You
    • Working Week
    • Hecuba
    • Papermill Children's Theater
  • Costume Technology
    • Dye work, Millinery, and Accessories
    • Puppets and Closed-Cell Foam
    • Draping and Costume Construction
    • Wigs
  • Scenic Design and Technology
    • Still Life with Iris: Scenography
    • Defying Gravity: Scenic Design
  • Other Projects
    • Mrs. Warren's Profession
    • The Shoemaker's Holiday
    • The Seagull
    • The Birds
    • An American Oedipus
    • Still Life with Iris
    • As You Like It - Lighting Design
    • Visual Artwork
  • Curriculum Vitae
  • Contact Information
  • Friends and Colleagues
  • Exemplary Student Work
  • Kansas Thespians Presentations

Defying Gravity

Director: Andrea Boswell
Scenic Design: Stephanie M. Jorandby
Projection Design: Bri Fuller
Lighting Design: Sarah Rupp
Costume Design: Anna Kempf
Technical Direction: Hunter Andrews
Sound Design: Sara Williamson


Jane Anderson's Defying Gravity pays tribute to teacher and astronaut Christa McAulliffe and the rest of the 1986 NASA Challenger crew who perished shortly after liftoff on January 28, 1986. Her story is explored through the lens of Teacher and her young daughter Elizabeth as Elizabeth struggles with her mother's fame and ultimately the loss of her life. The impact of this tragic historic event is told using bits of fantasy and imagination interwoven with the perspectives of real people's experiences with the event.

The director's  vision specified the need for modular scenery which would be easy to move as the play transitioned through many locations. Rather than traditional acting cubes, I designed modular hexagonal "space boxes", inspired by storage areas on NASA spacecraft. Nothing has 90 degree corners in space! As playwright Jane Anderson uses Claude Monet's work, particularly his "Cathedral at Rouen", I used the color scheme and line style from this image as inspiration for the color story on the hexagonal boxes. The boxes were used as bar stools, tables, sofas, car seats, and more throughout the play.
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In order to support the frequent shifts in realistic and symbolic location, we used three separate projection surfaces. A rear-projection screen was used as an upstage-center backdrop. This clear images provided realistic backdrops for the scenes grounded in reality. We also employed two 20-foot scrim-net curtain drops stage left and stage right which were used for atmospheric lighting and front-projection effects.

Research, Concept, and Projection Imagery

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