Fahrenheit 451 Scenic Design Project
Indiana University, Fundamentals of Scenic Design
Research Layout, Digital Rendering, Ground Plan
Design Statement: 
​ 
​Fahrenheit 451 is about a world defined by censorship and the destruction of knowledge. Books are burned, and critical thinking is discouraged. Acceptable knowledge is determined by an external force: these characters have little agency in determining what they know. To reflect this externally imposed world, the environment onstage is oppressive and inescapable—towering walls surround the characters at every turn. These walls are an amalgamation of different objects (spindles, molding, wood scraps, boxes) but every object is black—stripped of its individual history and meaning. The world itself has been censored. Everything has been burned.   
     
Within this world, we move swiftly from location to location, but the furniture in each place is composed of the same black, minimalistic stools—censored just like the walls. The repeated, stylized use of these stools reinforces the inescapability of this world and the uniformity that has been imposed on the characters within. The play reminds us: knowledge is power. However, it is not simply the existence of information that is important, but rather the viewers’ interaction with it. The abstract, censored world onstage invites the audience to engage critically with the production, and think about, as our protagonist Montag does, “All the things we don’t notice. Know about, but don’t know.”