Matilda

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Matilda the Musical

Oakland School for the Arts

We used the familiar outlines of a house to frame the musical’s various locations. Bottom left is the Wormwood house, with Matilda’s attic bedroom above. Miss Trunchbull’s office is top right, beneath which is Miss Honey’s shed and the library. The classroom is bottom center. During Matilda’s joyful moments, the classroom walls pivot to reveal large, colorful abstract art panels.

We started the design process with mock-ups. Our first idea was to reflect the dreariness of Matilda’s life with a set made from the black and white outlines of a coloring book. The only color would appear from behind two large swinging walls. These color panels made it into the final design, even after the director moved us in a more realistic direction.

The first mock-up (coloring book look)

Second mock-up (realistic)

3D Model (Sketch-Up)

Closed panels set with theater

Open panels

The Building Process

We inherited a basic structure from the show that preceded us. In the first photo below, you can see what it looked like—a stage with a raised platform on top. The two big elements that we built were the swinging walls and the roof rafter. The swinging walls were a little complicated as they needed to be very big but easy to move. We built them with a very simple frame and thin plywood.