The two women, dressed in matching black, circle the block in Duluth, scoping out a Waffle House.
Eventually, they go inside. They study the iconic breakfast restaurant as they sip black coffee. With an iPad, they snap stealth photographs of the open grill, big round lights and jukebox.
The two are building their own waffle joint and they want to get it right. Not that it will be a restaurant that serves food. It just needs to look that way.
The women are set designers, preparing for their latest project, “The Waffle Palace,” opening at Horizon Theatre this week. Moriah and Isabel Curley-Clay are also sisters, identical twins who studied together in New York, then Massachusetts, and now live together in Statham, where they design their masterpieces.
Just 32, the twins have already established themselves as some of Atlanta’s most talented and creative set designers.
They won their first Suzi Bass award, Atlanta’s version of the Tonys, last year for their clever design of “Avenue Q,” which included brick apartments with portions that flipped into other spaces, including a miniature bedroom. (They also won a Suzi award for costume design for “The Mikado.”)
Other recent set designs include “Superior Donuts” at Horizon, “The Sunset Limited” at Theatrical Outfit, “A Body of Water” at Aurora Theatre and “The Savannah Disputation” at Theatre on the Square in Marietta.
Reviewers rave about how they craft a range of styles — from a realistic, run-down doughnut shop in Chicago to a whimsical, magical forest.
Among Atlanta’s theater companies, they’ve built a reputation for hard work, thoroughness and attention to detail.
“The real key to Moriah and Isabel’s craft is that they are incredibly adept at being in tune with the script,” said Rochelle Barker, resident design associate and production coordinator at Theatrical Outfit. “Their designs are not just pretty pictures. Everything on the stage has meaning: the color of the kitchen table linoleum, the pattern of the floor, even the arrangements of the locks of the door.”
They also enjoy tackling challenging projects such as designing a two-story apartment building when there’s really only room for one.
“Many designers are very choosy about the projects they choose to take. These ladies are game for anything at anytime,” said Ann-Carol Pence, co-founder of the Aurora Theatre.
Youthful creativity
At home in their tidy studio, photographs from Waffle Houses and the Silver Skillet blanket a 6-foot-wide bulletin board.
They live in a pretty, cape-style house in Statham, between Lawrenceville and Athens, with large, open rooms with lavender walls. A carousel horse they constructed out of cement many years ago for a show stands in the front room, almost alone, by the front door.
It’s low rent, but also a quiet retreat, a place for them to work and their four cats to roam.
“We love the design process,” said Moriah.
“We love deciding what to use to make it just right and how to tell the story without giving it away,” added Isabel.
Originally from a small town in Massachusetts, the twins moved to Atlanta about seven years ago and now do back-to-back shows in metro Atlanta — as many as 10 in any given year.
They moved to Atlanta after their parents relocated to Clemson, S.C.
As kids, Moriah and Isabel moved the furniture around when their parents were out of the house. They took string throughout the house and connected doorknobs and clocks until they formed huge spider webs.
Their parents crawled underneath the tangled string, not wanting to stifle their daughters’ creativity.
“I was doing an installation and at an art gallery, and they were 8 years old, waiting for me. They didn’t have anything to play with and they found gold spray paint and sugar cubes and they made these gold cubes and stacked them into all of these designs,” said the twins’ mother, Margaret Curley, about the abstract sculptures and buildings her daughters created.
“People said it was better than anything in the gallery.”
The twins’ mother is an artist herself. Their father is the executive director of student health at Clemson University.
Still, these sisters, who don’t have other siblings, initially leaned toward pre-law (Isabel) and pre-med (Moriah) when they first enrolled at New York University.
But an elective class in set design during their junior year changed everything. Isabel made a subway car out of bass wood. It had orange seats, real tracks and doors that opened and shut. Moriah molded doll-sized furniture out of clay.
‘Great researchers’
The process for creating the “Avenue Q” set started with watching YouTube videos of old “Sesame Street” episodes with director Heidi Cline McKerley of “Avenue Q.”
“They are great researchers, great, great collaborators,” said McKerley. “Sometimes, you work with designers and they go off. They are always available, they are there every step of the process. They just come up with these ideas and details that are just perfect.”
Moriah and Isabel designed a miniature-sized bedroom for Kate, the sweet blue monster, complete with unicorns, rainbows and hanging lights. They carefully arranged plants behind a window so the place looked lived in.
“They do what no one else does or very few do, and that is come back to the set at the end of the process and put the final touches on. They get dirty and put ... these touches on that make the set stand out,” said Lisa Adler, co-artistic director of Horizon.
For “Superior Donuts,” another show at the Horizon, about a family-owned doughnut shop in Chicago, the sisters wanted not only to show the age of the business but also the main character’s attachment to the old doughnut hole, a place where he grew up.
So the counter was peeled back; the floor was dingy. And on the door next to the receipts, Moriah and Isabel gave the set a special touch: they added height marks of the main character.
Seamless process
Inseparable, the twins have just one cellphone for work-related calls. Moriah answers the phone. They finish each other’s sentences.
While some twins might for fight for differences, they accept their likeness — the long brown hair, the same black-framed glasses.
Their process is seamless. Moriah might start with a sketch and put it down. Then Isabel picks it up and works on it.
“They are like one mind with ideas bouncing back and forth,” said Adler. “One may take the lead in one aspect, and the other take a lead in another, but they are totally in sync.”
Still, Moriah and Isabel don’t always see eye to eye. They often have very different ideas about a project.
“Sometimes we meet in the middle. Sometimes we meet somewhere totally different,” said Moriah. “I think we force each other to really think through our ideas.”
A labor of love, they receive anywhere between $1,000 and $3,700 per design (not each; that’s for the duo). They supplement their income by also designing costumes for some shows, including some Atlanta productions. They’ve also done several set designs for a theater in New Orleans. And during the summer, they often go to Maine and spend time with their parents, while also making extra money painting murals and selling photography in galleries.
They begin every project with a master binder that holds everything from the script and research, to sketches and photographs.
They never leave the house without a camera or paper.
Spiritual element
One of their most challenging projects — “Freud’s Last Session” at Theatrical Outfit last fall — was also deeply rewarding.
The play takes place in a stately study and features just two characters, famed psychoanalyst (and atheist) Sigmund Freud and noted author and theologian C.S. Lewis, who ponder the meaning of life and the existence of God. Moriah and Isabel wanted to fill the big space with more than a realistic-looking office.
Given direction to create a spiritual element to the set, they started the process by Googling “inspiration” and “spirituality.” At first, they sketched a toppled church and broken stained glass window.
But it wasn’t quite right. Relentless, they kept looking at images online, in books and magazines — until they stumbled upon a dramatic photograph of swirling string. Colorful and blurry, it was a time-exposure photograph.
“We liked it because it was really open to interpretation,” said Moriah.
“It wasn’t like we were taking a point of view,” added Isabel.
They carved foam into the fanciful design, producing a three-dimensional image. The 17-foot-tall structure stood behind the stately office.
“So did it represent the universe? Synapses of the brain? Or some mystic, spiritual revelation?” asked Jessica Phelps West, director of “Freud’s Last Session.” “Like a Dylan song, it means what it means to you.”
The set design not only wowed critics and audience members, but also the playwright, Mark St. Germain, who came to Atlanta to see the show, and then sent the sisters an email calling it “tremendously thoughtful and imaginative.”
For “The Waffle Palace,” the sisters are still tweaking their design to make the set look like a breakfast spot and also to help tell the story of the play.
“We haven’t gotten that far yet,” said Moriah. “As the script evolves, new moments or memories may pop out [that] we will try to capture or evoke visually.”
--------------------
On stage
“The Waffle Palace” opens May 11 and runs through July 1. 8 p.m. Wednesdays through Fridays; 3 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. Saturdays; 5 p.m. Sundays. $20-$40. Horizon Theatre, 1083 Austin Ave., Atlanta. 404-584-7450, www .horizon theatre.com.
