Connecting the Dots

Reimagining teamwork and engineering awe, an experimental collective navigates the spotlight for the contemporary stage

- SAM COCHRAN

It's hard to think of a more iconic exchange in the history of theater than the balcony scene of Romeo and Juliet. Those legendary lines.

That stolen kiss. It's been performed countless times the world over. And it was for that reason that Andrew Moerdyk, Kimie Nishikawa, and Santiago Orjuela-Laverde, founders of the Brooklyn-based scenic design studio dots, hoped to reinvent it, when tapped by director Sam Gold for the Circle in the Square Theatre's recent Broadway adaptation. Together, the creative team conceived a bed of flowers-revealed by the opening of a circular panel-and, suspended above it, a mattress. Romeo (played by Kit Connor) bounded across the blooms, performing a heroic pull-up to reach Juliet (Rachel Zegler).

The moment awed audiences and TikTok viewers, as much a testament to outside-the-box thinking as to group effort.