Designed for: Gadzooks

Model Scale: 1/4”-1’

Artist Statement: This was a found space Hamlet. While questioning the location of this production, I thought of motifs that I wanted to lean into while thinking of this design. What I decided to focus on was the paranoia that creeps up on Hamlet throughout the play. Something that personally gives me the feeling of paranoia are mannequins, this guided me towards the setting of an abandoned retail store. I wanted to achieve something realistic, an actual abandoned store. While researching stores that closed during the late 90’s and yearly 2000’s I came across Gadzooks. This was a store that closed down physical locations in 2004. The layout of the store was nothing special, but what drew me to it was the interior decoration. It’s not something that was familiar to me, it was fun and unique, not like modern stores, which was what I was searching for.
As the show continues more and more mannequins appear. Act one, before Hamlet truly loses his mind, there aren’t many in the front room. The paranoia begins to reveal its self in Act 3 where the audience ventures into the storage room, where majority of the mannequins are located.