Perspectives / Paul Owen Paul Owen has designed nearly every Humana Festival set over the past three decades. The process of designing any play for production has a certain level of complexity. The addition of the playwright to the equation when designing a new play increases those levels. Designing multiple new plays, to be performed in repertory, raises the bar of complexity even higher! The first year we performed The Festival of New Plays on the Pamela Brown stage taught me lessons that remain forever etched on my psyche, and are foremost on my mind each year when I begin work on the Festival. I was designing both sets and lights for the plays Getting Out by Marsha Norman and Does Anybody Here Do The Peabody? by Enid Rudd. I made the biggest mistake I could have ever made: I fell in love with Getting Out!! Unchecked by objectivity, it took over everything – it left no room for anything or anyone. I did not realize how dominant it had become until the first tech of Peabody – and there it was!! Undeniably in possession and unwilling to share or subordinate its power. I have never worked harder, before or since, to give a play (Peabody) a fair chance. I watched it each performance, made changes, did everything I could think of, but Getting Out owned the space!! I have relinquished the set design for only four plays during Humana. I grasp the design reins tightly, not to be perverse or selfish, but rather to protect and facilitate, and do my best to prevent the aforementioned circumstance from happening again. Balance between the various projects must be maintained. Each team of director and playwright must feel secure in the knowledge that their project is the “most important.” And so must I.