JORGE BALLINA

SDM: How do you approach a project?

JB: I believe the main job of the set designer is to create Spaces for the dramatic action. So I start analyzing what happens in every scene so I can design the appropiate space for each action.

SDM: How does your culture affect your design?

JB: We Mexicans have a very ingenious way to solve problems. Many times thinking outside the box. In the theater, the lack of money for the productions and the adversity of the conditions we usually work with, make us find very synthetic and strong ideas where nothing is purely decorative because you have to choose the elements very carefully.

SDM: Someone you admire?

JB: Three people I admire are Stephen Sondheim, W. A. Mozart and Richard Wagner. The three of them are composers, but they understood the music as part of the theater as a whole. I try to think the same way.

SDM: Would you like to revisit an old project? Why?

JB: So far, a project that I have been wanting to completely rethink does not come to mind. However, Fidelio was a good exercise in revisiting an opera made ten years ago and doing a completely different version.

SDM: How does you blend work and living life?

JB: When I'm working, I can't stop thinking of the pieces I'm designing, all the time, day and night, even in my sleep. When I have a problem to solve in my mind, It becomes part of my life. But when you love what you do, you don't think about it as work. It's part of my life. I can't separate them.

SDM: What do you think of technology in theater?

JB: Technology is great, but it's important to remember that it's only a tool. It's there to help you and solve the problems. Not to dictate you. It's problematic when technology becomes the end and not the means. You have to find the technology needed for each design.

SDM: How does the audience get excited?

JB: The audience gets the most excited when all the elements of the show are well integrated as a whole. When they tell the story together powerfully and synchronized. When the content is powerfully projected to the audience with the visuals, the text and the music in unison.