An Interview with Set Designer Rachel Hauck

This season, two of the most complicated sets on Broadway were designed by Rachel Hauck. For the musical Hadestown, Hauck had the task of figuring out a design for a show that lives in metaphor. For Hadestown, Hauck earned her first Tony nomination for Best Set Design of a Musical. She also designed the set for Heidi Schreck’s Tony-nominated What the Constitution Means to Me, the most intellectually and emotionally rigorous play to be on Broadway in years. Both Hadestown and Constitution were shows where the sets could have been anything, and both had long gestation periods before getting to Broadway—and now that they’ve arrived, it makes Hauck the only female set designer in the 2018/19 season to design the sets for both a Broadway play and musical. We speak with her about how she became a set designer, designing for new work, her process for creating the sets for Hadestown and What the Constitution Means to Me, and more.