When students began ignoring dramaturgical lobby displays at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, student dramaturg Aria Velz decided to take a new approach. She created a series of dramaturgically-driven installation art pieces that not only conveyed important information but also engaged the audience in the feeling of the production as soon as they stepped foot in the lobby. Examples of Velz's work on "Spring Awakening" and "Trojan Women: A Love Story" are below. -Amy Freeman and Jacqueline Goldfinger, rVPs, Philly Metro Region

Spring Awakening

For this display, my assistant, some friends, and I made hundreds of paper flowers and put them up throughout the lobby. At the bottom of the stairs were flowers that looked dead and shriveled, and as you went up, they became more colorful and lively and beautiful until you reached the top of the stairs, where they lined the walls to give the impression of flourishing life. This setup gives the audience a feeling of traveling from winter and death into spring and liveliness. The colors of the flowers were different shades of purples and blue, both of which are very present in the play. Historical and dramaturgical information also lined the walls, and finally I placed a few boards with questions on them for audience members to go up and write answers on sticky notes, to further plant themes and ideas into their minds as they entered.

Trojan Women: A Love Story

I had several ideas going into this, but ultimately I had to vastly simplify as I became the calling stage manager during the time I had scheduled to setup the display. I had asked all of the women in the cast as well as several friends who are women to give me any unwanted items - clothes, shoes, cosmetics, toiletries, appliances, anything that I could use to make some that was centered on women. With the help of some great friends, we decided to make a clothesline of scorched women's clothing with all of the clothes that I had acquired, burning all of the clothes by hand. This iconic image of motherhood and womanhood of a clothesline full of clothes, with all composed of decimated women's clothing, was to show not only destruction of items but the destruction of womanhood. We also created some piles with the remaining shoes and cosmetics. Finally, we littered some metal pieces as shrapnel as well as several bullet shells I had acquired around the piles to give the final visual of destruction and chaos.