Tianheng Yao
Design Portfolio

Theater Product Designs

About

I am a designer with a focus on theater and interaction design. My goal is to bring creativity and innovation to every project I work on. With years of experience in the field, I have had the pleasure of collaborating with various clients and teams, resulting in successful design solutions that exceed expectations. Let's work together to bring your ideas to life.

Contact Me

My Work

Work

Theater Production - Set Design

I specialize in creating immersive and visually stunning set designs for theater productions. This is a classic piece called Cyrano De Begerac.

Cyrano De Begerac

Summary

This play by Edmond Rostand, is a timeless tale of unrequited love, honor, and wit. The story revolves around Cyrano, a skilled duelist and poet with an exceptionally large nose. Despite his brilliance, he fears that his appearance will hinder his love for Roxane. When she falls for the handsome but less articulate Christian, Cyrano selflessly aids their love through his poetic prowess. The play explores themes of identity, courage, and the enduring power of love, with Cyrano's character embodying both the tragedy of unspoken love and the triumph of selfless devotion.

Production Concept:

Theme: romance

History Background: 1470 War of Roses

Immersive Theater

Conclusion

We will use extremely restorative scenes, in our original building to build a scene that the audience can interact with, let them follow the protagonist's experience together to experience the tense, romantic story. They can read freely while the main character is writing letters, taste pastries from the bakery, travel to and from Cyrano's wedding with Guiche and Roxane in the third act, and even personally protect Cyrano's mail delivery in the fourth act, and finally experience the protagonist's memories

Hand craft: Sculpture for Cyrano De Begerac

This is a sculpture to demonstrate our production idea, artistic choice and history background for Cyrano De Begerac

The "hat"

concept:

to represent our idea of immersive theater and the theme of romance

Make it related to each act to represent the whole play

The key challange is how to showcase the idea of immersive. Immersive is about interact, and the best way of interacting is let the audience actually use it and even put it on. So, the solution of hat came to my mind.

Graphic designs

Timeline of

Ikko Tanaka (red)

&

Mitsuo Katsui(blue)

Ikko Tanaka and Mitsuo are graphic design masters in Japan, so I put them together as a timeline to comapre their work and see how they affected

modern graphic designs

Language without words

——Isotypes

A "How to Guide" for US Energy Atlas

US Energy Atlas is a official website for people to check different energy plants and related datas. However, it's complex and confusing when you land on the website.

So, I made a guideline mainly explain what is EIA and how to use the interactive map function.

Specimen card for typeface: Pilsner

A1 poster for Kamen Rider 50th Anniversary

My drawings

I really like to watch animes and do drawings, here's my sketches of some anime characters and original drawings

Draw what I love

Self project

I'm always having the mind of imaging some crazy plans for a theater plan, this time, it's going to happen in Boston's Museum of Fine Arts!

Immersive Theater for Temptation

Overview and lists of characters

To immerse the audience in the play and prompt reflection, participants, numbering 40-60, sign a document agreeing to get super wet during the immersive experience and live in a designated space for 3 days. Introduced as new members of a black magic research institution, they form groups with assigned roles in the lab. Actors lead each group, fostering connections between characters and collaborating with others. The audience, subjected to strict rules, mirrors the societal workplace. As daily routines progress, the senior scientist, Foustka, engages with the audience, subtly encouraging participation in black magic. Participants can choose to follow Foustka, exploring the magic and gaining power, or adhere to the rules. Those who follow discover the director is a demon, leading to a climactic showdown in a garden party where Foustka and followers meet a fiery demise. The intention is to challenge notions of good and evil, revealing that blindly following rules can make one unwittingly complicit in darker forces.

Original look of MFA

I decided to use the original look of the MFA museum because it’s more retro and works well with the mid century style

Ground plan of level1: villa interior

This picture is the inside of the villa, different groups will live in different dorms and all the places are open to them, so that they can explore by themselves. The Garden is an important place in the last scene, the script mentioned that “we are again at the institute’s garden” (Václav Havel 40). when Foustka finds out the director’s true identity, they will fight there. After Foustka fails, the garden floor would be opened by a device, and Foustka and his fellow spectators would fall into the magma (which is made up of milk filling the pool) and the projection on the wall would illuminate the milk as the magma's color.

Ground plan of level2: institution

This level is the institution where they work. As I mentioned before, the audience will be assigned into different jobs and work in different areas. The audience and the actors will have stuff meetings in either of the factory, so that they can get to know each other.

Inside of institution

Because the script doesn’t give a specific time in the play, I decided to express the absurdity by combining the modern with the laboratory style of the past. I intend to construct the institution of the play by adding the apparatus of the early laboratory in the picture below to the ceiling of the modern laboratory. In terms of color, I want to show the theme of totalitarianism by focusing on monochromatic of white or gray.

Limitations

What I have so far is still a framework of the play because I mainly focus on the scene design and use my scene as my starting point, let other elements serve my setting. There will still be paradoxes or omissions in some script details. Moreover, how to guide the audience to still dare to follow their own hearts to make choices under strict rules, and what kind of wishes can black magic satisfy them? It requires more thinking and professional opinions from experts from different aspects, and it also requires competent actors to incite the audience's heart. Finally let the participating audience summon the courage to make their own.