All in the Details: Tony-Nominated Set Designers on Getting It Right

What are all those buttons for?

That’s one of the many questions David Zinn is frequently asked about the sound console that spans nearly the length of the set he designed for “Stereophonic,” David Adjmi’s backstage drama about a band’s discordant recording sessions in the 1970s.

“I think that,” he said, laughing. “What are all those buttons?”

A music studio, a Harlem hair salon, a church sanctuary: These were a few of the worlds that Broadway audiences were whisked away to this season courtesy of the Tony Award nominees for best scenic design of a play. Zinn received two nominations, for “Stereophonic” and “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding.” Derek McLane was nominated for the revival of “Purlie Victorious.”

In its second year working on Broadway, the design collective dots (Santiago Orjuela-Laverde, Andrew Moerdyk and Kimie Nishikawa) was nominated twice, for “Appropriate” and “An Enemy of the People.”

Ahead of the Tony Awards on Sunday, the nominees talked about the inspirations and challenges of playmaking with make believe.

‘Appropriate’

The design collective dots aimed to create a “realistic feeling” of a plantation house in “Appropriate.”Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

It’s a cliché to say a house is a character in a play. But that is eerily the case in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s dark comedy about the racist legacies of a white family and a grand plantation home that feels alive and haunted. Lived in too, but by a dark spirit with the power to make sure a photo album of lynching victims finds its way into the family’s hands.