For our production of Sweeney Todd, we wanted to tell the story through the eyes of an older Johanna who was inviting the ghosts of her past into our world to tell the story of her life. Thus, we wanted to have a portal to the underworld where she would beckon the ghosts from. We wanted the portal to feel like it was living flesh to tie into the visceral subject matter of the play.

To accomplish this, I wanted the portal to feel like it was made of membrane and was posable. For this, I picked up some nylon fabric panels and stretched them out across the set. I wanted it to look almost like stretched skin. Behind these white panels, there would be a looming red panel to represent the underworld itself. I then used a heat gun o burn some holes in the nylon and attached some pieces of shredded red fabric to it so it looked infected and veiny. The result was this grotesque and mysterious portal to another world.