Set Design

The title itself, Talley’s Folly, has several meanings: Folly as an architectural term referring to an ornamental and decorated building (the boathouse in the story) that doesn’t necessarily fit within the style of the surroundings nor have any practical purpose. Folly is also a noun, referring to someone who may be foolish and lacks good sense. Both certainly apply to “Whistler” Talley, who built the structure. I also think the title could refer to Sally Talley herself, both in having started a romance with Matt Friedman and now with her resistance to admitting that she actually fancies him. That the story is about these two people, who both feel out of time and place, having this particular conversation in this boathouse, which is also out of time and place, just tickles me to no end.

Matt describes the surrounding as “a Valentine”, so a lot of the images I sought out were looking at real places with a romantic lens - the beautifully dilapidated boathouse, a moonlit river, worn out wooden dock planks and posts, river reeds and rowboats, willow trees by the bend - all these textures and compositions and that the story takes place at the height of summer means that the colors and ambience wanted to be lush, vibrant, and tactile.

We wanted to take Matt’s description of the place and rather than do a realistic, literal approach to the architecture with all the “lattice and geegaws in place,” we instead wanted to capture the more poetic essence of the space to really heighten the valentine Matt needs to win Sally over. The result was us inverting the visual image so that the silhouette of the boathouse and gazebo structure ends up as an open space with Matt and Sally always framed by the willow tree, the river, the sky, and the moon in full view, allowing the conversation to take place as these two characters find each other and perhaps fall in love in real time. Renderings, scale model, and set progress of Talley’s Folley.