Mark Ricker

The process of adapting a play into a film can have its own set of challenges in terms of Production Design. Various adaptations can sometimes affect artistic decisions about how the stage should be translated to the screen. However, when combining the award-winning plays from August Wilson and the creative minds of Director, George C. Wolfe and Production Designer, Mark Ricker, the result is an incredibly dynamic depiction of Chicago in the 1920s.

In an exclusive interview with Interiors, we spoke with Academy Award nominee, Mark Ricker, who is the Production Designer for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. The photos, concept art and drawings are courtesy of Mark Ricker and Netflix.

INT: First off, we were curious how the opportunity to do the Film, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, came about? What was it about it that made you want to work on it?

MR: As is to be expected, I believe their first choice for the project was David Gropman, the wonderful Production Designer who did August Wilson’s Fences for Denzel Washington when he directed it on location in Pittsburgh. Lucky for me, David (who I’ve known for over 30 years), was unavailable. My agent recommended me to one of the producers, who I had worked with on The Nanny Diaries. Though I didn’t know the play, I was familiar with the work of August Wilson - I’d actually carved the piano for an NYU production of The Piano Lesson, and of course I’d seen Fences. There was no question I’d want to meet on the project - it was a period I hadn’t done before, which interested me. There was the undeniable attraction of working with Denzel and co-producer Todd Black, as well as working with Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman again (from The Help and both in Get on Up). Also at the top of the list was the opportunity to work with George C. Wolfe, whose work I’d been honored to see since Angels in America when I was that student at NYU.

INT: In a recent Interview with Architectural Digest, you mentioned that there were numerous inspirations for the film including an impressionist painting and the work of photographer Richard Samuel Roberts and the woodcuts of painters Jacob Lawrence and Aaron Douglas. Were there any other references (Architecture, Literature, Cinema) that you took from as you were planning the overall aesthetic.

MR: As the scale of the project and the sets were limited to the spaces and locations in the script - the scale of the references was also limited. The expansion on research did come in the form of as much historical, photographic research as we could get of Chicago; Bronzeville - the thriving African American district, industrial warehouses and businesses, hardware stores, lumber yards, etc. Also Vaudeville theaters, tent shows, Black owned Hotels, factories, and of course recording studios. For aesthetic and emotional purposes, I looked at the structure of slave ships - George wanted the basement band room to subtly evoke the hull.

Though the film is adapted from the play - I didn’t read it or look at any previous stage productions. I wanted to react to the script given and not be influenced by prior designs. The palette of the 1906 Chicago impressionist painting by Alson Skinner truly did inspire the limited palette of the film. As well, I was taken with an interview I’d seen with Mike Nichols in which he described his insistence on shooting Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe (another play adaptation) in black and white - the ultimate limited palette. He explained (to paraphrase) that a film in black and white was an automatic metaphor - and consciously or not - the notion of that idea I thought was compelling for the adaptation to film of Ma Rainey - even in color.

INT: The film includes three sets (the recording studio, the basement band room and exteriors of Chicago) but it still feels incredibly dynamic with each space and location. How developed was the recording studio when it was first described to you? Did certain aspects evolve or change over time?

MR: There was very little description of the Recording Studio in the script. The control booth was elevated above the studio floor - and the band room was in the basement, which did have more specifics described as such: "It is a windowless subterranean room. Once a storage room. No Air. No Light. A bench, lockers, some folding chairs and crates. But thank God there is a ceiling fan.” So the characteristic and major developments in there were the addition of a small window and the four square wooden timbers. These posts not only came from the research of the slave ships, but also the discussions with George that he wanted the space to represent a boxing ring. Those four corners defined the center area where the main event would take place. The beautiful brick floor in the basement already existed in the old steel mill that served as our “sound stage” - so we positioned the set there to take advantage.

The studio upstairs was first developed a bit in a ground plan or two. The architectural details came following discussions with George in that we wanted the studio to inhabit the rear room of a chair making factory. The control booth would have been the manager’s office. The details and shapes of the windows came after we found the exterior location to match. We rotated the set at the last minute to take advantage, once again, of an existing ancient gantry crane - so out those windows now stood the completely cost-free footings of an “elevated train”, which the Visual FX department later complimented by adding an animated matching “L” train rumbling above in the exterior scenes. Even the “horse hair stuffed” sound muffling shutters were added after realizing we needed this to record the sound. The heavy curtains came from the research of studios from the 1920s. None of this was described in the script - it is the process of finding the details of the world along the way.

Mark Ricker is a Production Designer and has worked on various Films and Television Shows.