I'm Beowulf Borat and I am nominated for scenic design for POTUS and for Flying Over Sunset
It is Tony Day, my friend, and double nominee! It's kind of amazing. I was saying to my wife the other day that Tony nomination day is kind of like Christmas
except no matter how good you were that year or you think you were that year, you never know if Santa's going to show up
And when he shows up twice, it's just, wow. It's a wonderful feeling
These were two incredible shows you designed, one of course being a play, one of course being a musical
What gave you the most joy of working on POTUS and what gave you the most joy of working on Flying Over Sunset
You know, it's kind of the same answer for both. It's the directors. That is the collaboration for me
and when that is good, the process is amazing and the result's going to be amazing
So if I get nominated for something, it's Susan Stroman and James Laplaine also
We figure these things out together, and it's not that they tell me what to do
We have bad ideas around, but both shows develop sort of based on what those directors are doing
And I was saying to somebody, the set for POTUS only works because Susan Stroman knows how to stage things within an inch of their life
And the way that really works is there's always action going on. There's always a story being told within it
So as we're moving through, she always has the actors telling stories, not verbally necessarily
with action, with movement, and that's why that set works. And Flying Over Sunset was similar. It was kind of an abstract representation of your brain on LSD
but that was an expression of the story James was trying to tell
And that's what's exciting and fun to me, is every project is different
because it's me kind of melding with the director, trying to figure out how do we visually represent what this is about
and how do we get ourselves from place to place and show the audience what's going on
And you're wearing two pins today! Two pins! I demanded my two pins up front