Harper Joy is thrilled to welcome back visiting designer and professor Akiko Nishijima Rotch who is serving as the set designer for Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls. Akiko was first familiarized with the role of “scenic designer” back in high school in her native Japan. After attending her favorite rock band’s concert and taking a closer look at the program, Akiko became intrigued by the role the “scenic designer” played. It wasn’t until she took a two-month Greyhound bus trip from L.A. to New York that she truly fell in love with the idea of becoming a designer herself, this time after viewing the Broadway musical The Life in 1997. Inspired to make her dream a reality, Akiko first had to learn the English language, something she had not tackled prior to moving to New York. After spending three years learning English in order to study set design, she received her M.A. in Interior and Architecture Lighting Design from Parsons School of Design. She then went on to receive her M.F.A. in Scenic Design from NYU Tisch where she met her husband, Art Rotch, who is now the Artistic Director of Perseverance Theatre in Alaska.
Akiko resides in Juneau, Alaska and spends her time designing for Perseverance as well as many theatres outside of Alaska. Despite having her roots up north, she has spent a great deal of time at Whitman. Her first set design for HJT was in 2012 for The Birthday Party, and she designed Tartuffe last fall. When describing her interest in returning to HJT, Akiko says she loves how “eager to learn and work Whitman students are” and welcomes the Walla Walla weather as a nice break from the Juneau rain.
Top Girls provides a unique set of challenges for a set designer, one being how language-driven the play is. Akiko insists how crucial it was in the designing of the set that the actors be physically close to the audience so that the intricate text is really able to come across. To do this, Akiko had to design all of the set pieces to be movable so that each scene can be front and center. Akiko goes on to state Top Girls encompasses many different places and types of characters within one story. Thus, a large challenge lies in making these worlds come together in a cohesive manner. One way Akiko accomplishes this is by including photos/drawings of the historical female characters that are in the play within a collage on the moving panels. Akiko chose to do this out of respect and also as a reminder that even when the play takes on a more familial and less historical context, women’s role in society is still a large part of the conversation.
Come see Akiko’s work in Top Girls, opening October 23rd!
AKIKO’S BIO:A native of Japan. Working in the New National Theatre in Tokyo as a scene painter. Starting the design career in New York. Moving to Juneau, Alaska in 2008. Recent set designs include: “Floyd Collins” (’13) “The Birthday Party” (’12) (Harper Joy Theatre) “Betrayal” (’13) “Bigfoot” (’13 &’12) “A Christmas Carol” (’11) “Blue Bear” (’12&’11) “Hansel & Gretel”(’10)”Eurydice” by Sarah Ruhl (‘10) “Battles of Fire and Water”(‘09) (Perseverance Theatre Juneau, Alaska) “Elixir of Love” (’10) “The Last Leaf” & “The Gift of the Magi” (’09) “Il trittico” (Il Tabarro, Suor Angelica, and Gianni Schicchi) (‘08) (Opera To Go) “The Threepenny Opera” (‘09) (Columbia University MFA Thesis project); “Measure for Measure” (‘07) (NYU production)