By Eva Laporte
One of the joys of producing Karen Zacarías’ Native Gardens is that the set is often an event in itself: two neighboring homes, lush gardens, fencing, flowers, grass, and the visible labor of transformation unfolding before the audience. It’s a world that usually asks for scale.
For our PLAY DATE reading, I had a different vision.
Because our intimate venue needed to be fully loaded out that same night as the event, I started asking: what is the smallest possible scenic gesture that could still hold the whole story?
While researching scenic design, I came across Chicago’s Manual Cinema and was totally inspired. You have to check this out: Shadow Puppetry at Manual Cinema | Smithsonian Folklife
They utilize overhead projectors to create backdrops, puppetry, and visual storytelling.
With huge thanks to Martha Penaranda at Trinity University, a borrowed projector became our “micro-set”—a scenic tool that could create a backdrop and environment, and, perhaps most importantly, allow the audience to see the 2D survey plat and property lines the characters obsess over throughout the play.
We knew this idea needed an artist who could think both thematically and visually, and Karen Arredondo immediately brought that kind of rigor, playfulness, and precision to the process. Her visual concept became the foundation for the final projection pieces, later developed in collaboration with Zach’s graphic and architectural eye.
We loved hearing more about her process.
SURROUND PROJECT: Native Gardens is usually produced with a large, bustling visual world. How did you approach distilling that scale into a visual treatment for our intimate micro-set?
KAREN: To get to the core of this design, I focused on a few design elements I found most useful in telling this story thematically: line, color, shape, and typography. These elements each took on a role in representing the visual treatment we couldn’t fully realize in 3D.
SURROUND PROJECT: The projections help “zoom in” on the exact spaces and land plat the characters are focused on—and ultimately fighting over. How did you use the 2D plane to guide the audience’s eye toward that conflict?
KAREN: Initially, I found color, shape, and space helpful in designating location and family ties. Eva and I established conventions: the Del Valle family in yellow on one end and the Butley family in blue on the opposite end. We chose mirrored house imagery to represent both families living as Americans, yet filtered through different core values. Line became central to the concept of boundaries through plats and architecture.
SURROUND PROJECT: Which themes most inspired your visual choices?
KAREN: The line work was deeply rooted in the theme of boundaries, which naturally opens into ownership and perspective. I wanted the layering of color and line to comment on how our perspective is filtered through lived experience.
SURROUND PROJECT: What was it like seeing your concept evolve in collaboration with Zach Lewis?
KAREN: In one word, delightful. Zach’s expertise in graphic and architectural design added the missing components my concept needed and elevated it into a stronger visual experience.
A New Way of Seeing the Garden
What I love most about this is how it allowed us to hold the entire neighborhood inside one small beam of light. It exaggerated the comedic stakes of the characters’ tensions.
By shrinking the set to its most essential elements—line, color, boundary, and image—the world of Native Gardens somehow became even more legible. The tiny set didn’t reduce the story. It sharpened it.
Instead of asking the play to be smaller for a staged reading, we invited the audiences’ imaginations to be larger.
That spirit of imaginative constraint, collaborative design, and storytelling clarity is exactly what makes PLAY DATES feel so alive.
Surround Project PLAY DATES conclude on May 2, 2026, with Eureka Day.
Check out more on Manual Cinema!