2026 | Student

MUSE Design Awards Silver Winner

Antigone – Play

Entrant

Ruidi Yang

Category

Interior Design - Stage

Client's Name

Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama

Country / Region

United States

About The Entry

Sophocles' Antigone explores the conflict between personal conscience and state authority. Set in a post-disaster future, this production imagines a society rebuilding itself from what remains. Fragments of the old world are assembled into shelter, furniture, and a new symbol of power, making reconstruction both the setting and the method through which the world is built.

The set is assembled largely from reclaimed scenic elements sourced from stock inventory and previous productions, then transformed through scenic painting into the weathered textures of a post-disaster landscape. A rusted iron staircase serves as an unstable monument to authority, while reclaimed crates continually shift between furniture, platforms, and fragments of architecture, allowing different locations and moments to emerge through the performers' interaction with the space. The act of reclamation becomes more than an aesthetic choice; it reinforces the production's central exploration of how individuals and societies reconstruct themselves after collapse.

Within a thrust-stage configuration, the rusted staircase and a simple bench anchor the opposing positions of Creon and Antigone within a shared civic space, allowing conflict to unfold across multiple audience viewpoints. Together, material and spatial strategies create an environment in which the assembly of the set mirrors the reconstruction of the society it portrays.

Credits

Scenic Designer
Ruidi Yang
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