Video: Meet the 2023 Tony Nominees for Scenic Design

How excited are you to be back here? It's Tony Day

Beyond. Thrilled. Static. I mean, come on. It's crazy. And you've got two Tony pins today

Shucked and something like it hot. I could not be more excited about it

Two beautiful shows. I mean, you know, I'm sure you dream designing. Oh, maybe one day I can design on Broadway or whatever

Gorgeous sets you've done this year. And two Tony nominations. what made this so special designing those two shows

I mean that there are two shows that are so incredible, but also so different

And we had been in development with both of them for such a long time before the pandemic

And just doing that, keeping the threads together as that was happening

and designing it and then it being realized right still as we were kind of in our sort of precarious areas of that

is incredible. And to have like come out and be celebrated, like this is thrilling. And they're also just so great and they're both so funny, so full of heart

That's the best part. It must be so wild to run back and forth between the two theaters

seeing the glamorous world of a 30s and then going back to like Shuttland It very different And also just different in their like Shuck to me is like so authentic and about community and intimacy and in the space within the Niederlander too is so wonderful And then Stomlake first of all the Schubert Theater is a jewel box of like theaters

and doing this Art Deco gem that sits in there with machine age glamour

And just, like, the set is a piece of Casey's incredible choreography

So they're just very, very different. I love that they're celebrated together in this season

What's made working on Camelot so special for each of you? I mean, it's great

You know, it's a musical that I know because, you know, did it in high school and, you know, aware of it

But to take a completely different approach to it with a new book and a modern take

And it's just, yeah, it was just great pleasure. It was the first show I saw one of the first shows I saw when I was a kid in Dallas, Texas

I saw the original road company of it. I was blown away by it and just, but to design it is so daunting because it's just

we wanted to go in a completely different direction and the book did. And so, but it's been a thrill to work on, just a thrill

We worked on Christmas Carol. I'm a projection designer, but I'm nominated with Dane for set

Designer so that you know we one person now for Choney season We fusing as we speak What made it so special working on a Christmas Carol Stunning the Michael Arden production Jefferson Mays everything you did Thank you Well I mean it was a wonderful production

It was a wonderful idea. Then creating it, the whole kind of just figuring out

the mechanism of how we could make the show exciting, make the show colorful, make the show dark and mysterious

It was a multiple year journey of conversation, trying things out, creativity

It was just great. It was just a great process. Yeah, it was an immensely, immensely hard thing

to do. The first iteration of it in LA had so much promise and was occasionally

excellent and sometimes catastrophic. The show is built with like, we call it zero

tolerance, but like it has no margin for error. One thing that goes wrong, one missed step

one thing that happens backstage, the whole thing comes crumbling. So it's always a bit of a life knife's edge

to make it and watch it. And we're thrilled to be recognized because it was

you know, super hard work to do. Working with Michael Arden. Michael's the greatest to work with

He's super smart. He's incredibly creative and wonderful, and he just wants to do everything

So there's really no limit of what you can achieve with him. Yeah, the best. I mean, I do everything with Michael

We have prayed this year. We've done, I do all his shows. And, you know, he's my best friend and creative partner

and you know we have the most extraordinary shorthand And I think I always feel the most confident bringing in collaborators that you know who I know will have the most extraordinary time working with him because he truly is especially for designers the friendliest director you could possibly imagine

It's, I mean, it's such an incredible honor. You can never believe it. I was saying to Jen Schrever, who's also here wearing smarting one of these beautiful pins

And you can't believe it until you're really here on this day

It's from another... It's got to be surreal. Could you design for the theater

and this is the pinnacle of everything and you're like, oh my gosh, I'm here? Well, it's incredibly exciting to be here

It's an honor to be able to make work at this level with the artists and artisans

who make the things that you see on stage. It's just a thrill. Okay, your set design for Good Night Oscar

is flawless. It's so beautiful. We live in that space. What's made it so special for you

with working on that show? Well, I mean, first of all, It is written by my very good friend, Doug Wright

and it's directed by my partner of 25 years, Lisa Peterson, who is making her Broadway debut with this show

And she is phenomenal director, so to see her have the opportunity to work at this level with these people

and just knock it out of the park it's been thrilling, thrilling for me