{"id":94654,"date":"2014-07-03T08:33:08","date_gmt":"2014-07-03T12:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=94654"},"modified":"2014-08-18T09:22:58","modified_gmt":"2014-08-18T13:22:58","slug":"rocky-set-design-earns-tony-award-for-alum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2014\/07\/rocky-set-design-earns-tony-award-for-alum\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Rocky\u2019 Set Design Earns Tony Award for Alum"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Chris<\/a>
Chris Barreca ’79 (SFA) gives his acceptance speech during the 2014 Tony Awards ceremony in June. Barreca won a Tony for his set design for the Broadway musical ‘Rocky.’<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Chris Barreca \u201979 (SFA) says he doesn\u2019t believe much in awards, but if he does receive one, it provides the opportunity for him to acknowledge those who are responsible for his accomplishments.<\/p>\n

So as he stood on stage at Radio City Music Hall on June 8 holding the 2014 Tony Award for Outstanding Set Design for \u201cRocky,\u201d he spent his time thanking the behind-the-scenes people he worked with to develop the Broadway musical.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery time Andy Karl sings \u2018Keep On Standing,\u2019 I think of the thousands of people who have supported me throughout my life,\u201d Barreca said during the nationwide television broadcast of the awards. Karl is the actor who stars as Rocky Balboa in the stage adaptation of the Sylvester Stallone film that won the 1976 Academy Award for Best Picture.<\/p>\n

Honored many times for his stage designs, this was the first time Barreca was nominated for the theater industry\u2019s top honor. During his career, he has designed more than 200 productions, staged throughout the United States, on Broadway, in London, and as far away as Australia. He also has had a concurrent career lecturing and teaching at some of the nation\u2019s most prestigious theater programs, including Yale School of Drama, and the School of Visual Arts and California Institute of Arts in Los Angeles, where today he serves as head of the Design Department.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think the people I know who are successful work for awards,\u201d he says. \u201cI love my work. What\u2019s really nice about getting the award is the acknowledgment of all that work. It makes you feel like you can keep going.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Andy<\/a>
Andy Karl in a scene from the Broadway show ‘Rocky.’ (Matthew Murphy Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Barreca says the stage production of \u201cRocky\u201d presented several challenges, including having multiple iconic locations that are integral to the story of the rise of an unheralded boxer who gets the chance to fight for the world heavyweight championship. Among the most familiar scenes are Rocky training in a meat packing plant by hitting a side of beef, running through the streets of Philadelphia to climb the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum, and the drama and brutality of the championship fight.<\/p>\n

One of the key elements of Barreca\u2019s stage design \u2013 described as \u201cwondrous\u201d by Entertainment Weekly<\/em> \u2013 is the boxing ring that rises up and down, requiring some theatergoers to be moved into front-row seats for the boxing matches. The ring also turns to become a projection screen for some scenes.<\/p>\n

\"Terrence<\/a>
Terrence Archie, left, and Andy Karl in the boxing ring for the Broadway show ‘Rocky.’ (Photo by Matthew Murphy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWhen we started previews, we were surprised at how the audience responded,\u201d Barreca says. \u201cBecause the story is so embedded in people\u2019s head, when the meat comes in, people go crazy. We intentionally made these things epic. Design is not a background, it\u2019s a means. If you think of a performance as an orchestra, and the character as an instrument in the orchestra, the design is several instruments in the orchestra. It depends on the piece that\u2019s being played.\u201d<\/p>\n

Using musical analogies comes easy to Barecca, who arrived in Storrs as an undergraduate to pursue a double major in music and theater. A trumpeter, he intended to become a performer. But he continued to use skills he had learned as a teenager living in Weston, Conn., working for Atlas Scenic Studio in Bridgeport, which built sets for Broadway shows and the Metropolitan Opera.<\/p>\n

On campus, he assisted Frank Ballard in building puppets and scenery for shows the legendary puppeteer would take on tour. He also started to design sets for shows at the Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts. The experience changed his thinking about his future.<\/p>\n

At UConn, I found my voice. I was inspired. –Chris Barreca<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cI decided I wanted to be a generative artist, instead of interpretive,\u201d Barreca says. \u201cDesign is a generative form. It\u2019s a visual work of art and it can stand on its own. Yes, it isn\u2019t interpretive, because I\u2019m working off a text, but it\u2019s more generative than I was as an instrumentalist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Encouraged by Jerry Rojo, head of the Department of Dramatic Arts and now professor emeritus of dramatic arts, and James Ingalls \u201972 (SFA), stage manager at the Yale Repertory Theatre and a noted lighting designer, Barreca headed to the Yale School of Drama, where he studied under Ming Cho Lee and Michael Yeargan, two longtime professors and noted designers.<\/p>\n

He began teaching when Yeargan asked him to lead a Yale class, and he later became an advisor to undergraduate students. After serving as a guest lecturer for more than a dozen years, he began teaching in 1996 at California Institute of Arts.<\/p>\n

His design work around the United States includes theaters such as The Gutherie, Hartford Stage, ACT in San Francisco, Baltimore Center Stage, The Ford Theater in Washington, D.C., The Mark Taper Forum, Seattle Repertory Theater, Berkeley Repertory Theater, The Dallas Theater Center, The Yale Repertory Theater, and The Roundabout Theatre Company and Lincoln Center in New York City.<\/p>\n

His Broadway premieres include the musicals \u201cMarie Christine\u201d and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s \u201cChronicle of a Death Foretold\u201d (American Theater Wing Award) \u2013 both for Lincoln Center Theater; \u201cThe Violet Hour;\u201d \u201cOur Country’s Good\u201d (Prague Quadrennial Selection), and \u201cSearch and Destroy\u201d (Drama-Logue Award).<\/p>\n

Barreca says that as the son of an executive at General Electric Co. who moved frequently before settling near the company\u2019s headquarters in Connecticut, he experienced \u201ca rough academic childhood\u201d before heading to UConn.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was a provisional student at first because I was a good musician,\u201d he says. \u201cMoving around a lot was good preparation for working the theater. At UConn, I found my voice. I was inspired.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Set designer Chris Barreca ’79 (SFA) wins a Tony Award for ‘Rocky’ on Broadway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":94691,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[147,1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[55],"class_list":["post-94654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-29 05:24:22","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94654"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94712,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94654\/revisions\/94712"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/94691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94654"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=94654"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=94654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}