Scenic, Lighting, Projections, and Costume Design by Leigh Henderson

San Jose City College Theater Arts (San José, CA), November 2017

Directed by Leyla Modirzadeh

Part of the global Climate Change Theatre Action Project, Hot Mess was comprised of a series of short plays on climate change, in various styles, from playwrights around the world. These plays were selected and arranged into a full-length evening of theater by Leigh Henderson and the director, Leyla Modirzadeh, along with the cast and crew of San José City College students. The production process also included consultation with San José City College science faculty and tours of their laboratories and specimens.

Hot Mess was a truly collaborative theater project, molded for and by the unique and diverse strengths of the San José City College students who participated in the production. Reflecting the diverse student body of San José City College, these students represented a range of racial, cultural, educational, professional, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Examples of aspects of the production created for the specific strengths of individual students include a piece performed in a student’s native language with projected English translations and a piece performed in the persona of gospel preacher, reflecting the background of the student actor and featuring costumes and props designed and created by the student performer.

The overall shape of the scenery, composed of overlapping layers of translucent gauze, evokes melting icecaps. As projections, both front and rear, pass through the multiple layers of scenery, the images deteriorate, evoking the ongoing losses of climate change and allowing for interactions between performers and projections, as performers move between the layers. In the background, a life size polar bear replica lurks silently, scrutinizing and evaluating.