In a theater, the first thing the audience sees, and looks at the longest, is the stage. Even so, set design is something most of us know little about. Why does a set have its form and elements' How does it suit the performance' Consider a set that designer and MIT Associate Professor Sara Brown created in 2015, when the Brooklyn of Academy of Music adapted the canonical Japanese Noh play 'Hagoromo,' turning it into a chamber opera with dance. Noh plays have a traditional structure and a crucial final transformation. In 'Hagomoro,' an angel loses her cloak; a fisherman only reluctantly returns it, after the angel performs a ritual dance; the angel then ascends to the heavens. To focus on the main characters, Brown's design featured three high walls surrounding center stage, with musicians and a chorus elevated behind them. 'That set was a framing device more than anything else,' says Brown, who is also associate head of MIT's Music and Theater Arts program. 'It lifted the musicians...
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