Alum couple weaves set for dance, puppet show ‘Strings Attached’

Set and prop designers Lisa Lechuga and Evan Bartoletti spent the past three years pulling strings to bring their latest piece to life.

Alumni Lechuga and Bartoletti founded Lechetti Art & Design, a scenic design company that specializes in creating sets for theater and live events. The two share a 12-year professional partnership, combining their talents in prop and set design. Their most recent project called “Strings Attached,” which features abstract puppetry, will premier Thursday at The Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles.

Lechuga met Bartoletti while working on her master’s in scenic design at UCLA in 2004. She helped paint the set for the then-new musical “Ephraim’s Song” as part of a production with Academy of Music and Performing Arts at Hamilton High School in Los Angeles. Bartoletti served as the scenic designer for the show, and Lechuga said they have been working together ever since.

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Bartoletti said he first noticed Lechuga’s talent and grounded personality while working on “Ephraim’s Song.” Although she joined the design team close to opening night, Lechuga took every last-minute change in stride, he said.

“Conversations with her about what we needed to work on and how to do it were all very good and reassuring to me, because it was a point in the production when things were crazy,” Bartoletti said.

Founding Lechetti Art & Design was a natural evolution in their artistic relationship, Bartoletti said. After completing the set for “Ephraim’s Song,” Bartoletti invited Lechuga to help with his later professional projects, including dance shows and freelance theatrical projects. Lechuga said they finally decided to make their professional partnership official by creating the company Lechetti Art & Design, a name derived from the combination of their last names.

One of the team’s major design gigs was in 2012, when Lechuga and Bartoletti served as guest designers for “Treasures of the Walt Disney Archives” at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum. The exhibit showcased items from the Walt Disney archives, including photographs, sketches and props from movies. They were responsible for designing and decorating the display and layout of the exhibit, Lechuga said.

Now the two are collaborating with Madeline Leavitt, the artistic director of Voices Carry, Inc., in creating the cross-disciplinary contemporary dance and puppet show “Strings Attached.” The performance explores the concepts behind emotion in a nonlinear storyline, where there is no main character the audience follows, Lechuga said.

“It’s really about our human connections, the emotional connections as human beings and how we are tied together through those,” Lechuga said. “Ultimately, it’s really about love.”

Leavitt traveled with Lechuga and Bartoletti to New York three years ago to meet with master puppeteer Hanne Tierney. It was there that they learned in three days how to create Tierney’s newly developed puppet style – abstract objects strung and operated by puppeteers based on an overhead grid system.

Leavitt, who has worked with Bartoletti since 1998, feels comfortable with both members of the Lechetti team.

“We are free to express, to improvise, to exchange back and forth – it has been just a great working relationship,” Leavitt said.

Bartoletti collaborated with Lechuga and Leavitt to design the sets for “Strings Attached.” He said he needed to create a structure suitable for all of the performers and decided he wanted the puppeteers to be visible to the audience but behind the commotion of the dancers at the forefront of the stage.

“(The set) would add another layer and create another kind of echo to the choreography that is happening with the puppets and the dancers,” Bartoletti said.

Lechuga was responsible for constructing the puppets for “Strings Attached” and creating terms that corresponded to specific choreography for the puppeteers to use. She worked with the choreographer to develop movements that complement the story of the show and with Leavitt to design abstract puppets based on emotional characters.

Bartoletti said his strengths lie in visualizing an environment for the actors, while Lechuga has good instincts in terms of detail, color and composition. He likes working with her because she brings him clarity: She can help him focus on the main concepts of a given project and encourages him to not get lost in nuanced details, he said.

Each of their individual skill set strengthens the other’s, Lechuga said. While Bartoletti serves as a stable personality when projects get stressful, Lechuga said she is more technical and handles the budget for the productions.

She admires Bartoletti and sees him as her partner in design.

“He can see any vision,” Lechuga said. “Even with limitations, he can say, ‘I can make it happen.’”