Theater Set Designer Sara Ryung Clement ’99 Builds Onstage Worlds

For award-winning theater set designer Sara Ryung Clement ’99, creating an onstage world from the ground up always starts with the production’s text. She calls herself a “dramaturgical designer,” who researches a play or musical’s historical and cultural contexts before delving into the visual and logistical components.

“I think about the circumstances in this world, where the place is, and who these people are and how they live,” Clement explains. “What’s the philosophy guiding the choices we make about this world?” She focuses on new works as well as reimaginings of classic productions in off-Broadway and regional venues, from Shakespeare to Rodgers and Hammerstein. Clement is also no stranger to working on productions for younger audiences, having designed sets for shows such as Peter Pan and Seussical.

However, a recent production of the musical Go, Dog. Go! Ve Perro ¡Ve! presented a new challenge for Clement, who was tasked with creating sets for her youngest audience yet — children in preschool to second grade. Produced by the Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis, it’s a bilingual musical based on the 1961 children’s book, Go, Dog, Go!, by P.D. Eastman. It features six dog characters with names like Red Dog, Blue Dog, and Green Dog in a simple storyline with a lot of action.

A scene from the production Go, Dog. Go! Ve Perro ¡Ve!

Kaitlin Randolph

“If you’re trying to dig into the musical dramaturgically, there’s just not that much text there. It’s about big dogs and little dogs,” says Clement. Nevertheless, she rolled out her usual research process, studying the book’s illustrations and color palette, and researching visual representations of kinetic energy, including mobiles crafted by artist Alexander Calder. She additionally needed to ensure the actors had enough flat, open space on stage so the dogs could careen around on skates and bicycles and in wagons.

Clement was in grade school herself when she decided she wanted to be a writer and illustrator. By the time she was in high school, she set her sights on Princeton’s creative writing program. A frequent member of the audience at McCarter Theatre, Clement realized set design combined her love of visual, performing, and literary arts. “A turning point for me in seeing theatrical design as something you could do as a professional was taking a class in [set and costume design] with Christine Jones when I was a junior,” Clement says. The Tony-award-winning set designer lectured at Princeton and is now teaching at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

But the path to working as a set designer wasn’t straightforward. After earning her Princeton degree in English literature and drama, Clement studied in South Korea for a year on a Fulbright Fellowship. After returning to the United States, she worked as a production intern at McCarter and earned an MFA from Yale in 2005.

Once she began working as a professional set designer, Clement traveled around the country to work on shows, staying until all creative changes to the sets were “frozen” before opening night. She learned to balance this work while teaching undergraduate- and graduate-level set design classes using remote work tools such as Zoom. Along the way, her theater career has broadened to include costume design. “As a teacher, I think it’s really important that I’m actively involved in the field,” she notes.

Clement was based in Los Angeles for 20 years before she and her partner moved back to her hometown of Minneapolis to be near family in 2024. She continues to teach as an assistant professor in the University of Minnesota Twin Cities’ Theatre Arts & Dance Department.

Looking back, Clement says that achieving a level of skill and excellence as a set designer has been gratifying, but building a career that she truly enjoys is its own reward. “When you’re coming up, there’s a tendency to be so critical of yourself that it can be hard to actually be in the moment and participate in a way that brings you joy,” she says. “I wish I understood earlier that so much of theater-making is about the process and having goodwill for each other.”