Selected Press

That's the genius of a Jennifer Zeyl design—conceptually robust, beautiful, and efficient... Zeyl has an intelligence and a gale-force will that most of her peers, in small and large theater, lack. She makes things—great things—happen.

Scenic designer Jennifer Zeyl officially deserves a raise for her efforts here. Jean-Paul Sartre must be snickering wherever he is, waiting to shake Zeyl's hand for so cunningly capturing a peep-show purgatory with no exit. Halfway through, the unseen floor of Zeyl's nebulous cavern fills with water, casting wavering shadows of illumination on the walls and drenching the actors to their skin.

"Iphigenia" is splendid as far as production values are concerned. The scenery, by Jennifer Zeyl, is an abstract evocation of sails and rocks. A patchwork of cloth is stretched over soaring metal grids.

The set is by Jennifer Zeyl, and it is awesome. Is there somehow more room in this theater than the last time you were here? Is it deeper and wider than you remember? How did Zeyl do that? Everything is washed winter gray and bare trees are suspended from the ceiling and so is, in the center of it all, a chandelier. The conflation of interior and exterior is not only practical, it's intelligent.

The clever little girl from Kingston, Rhode Island... matured into a woman whose notions are often reason to desert your own idiot box (TV) and head to the theatre. Zeyl's imagination is as wide as they come, and still searching for places large enough to fit it.

The secret weapon in the arsenal of upstart company Washington Ensemble Theatre, Jennifer Zeyl is the most exciting scenic designer working in Seattle today. ... no one rivals Zeyl in pure conceptual power...she has invented as often as she has arranged, and actively conceived as much as she passively evoked. And her work just keeps getting better.

It's about time someone recognized Jennifer Zeyl, whose fringe work has helped define the world of some good shows and has often been the saving grace of productions otherwise lost in their own universes. Her see-through apartment walls let us peek into the urban angst of the protagonists of last season's stellar [sic]; the grassy, peek-a-boo fun-house hill she created for Washington Ensemble Theatre's Handcuff Girl Saves the World was the only thing the show had to offer. Her pièce de résistance, however, has to be the instantly familiar hovel constructed for the slacker twentysomething speed freaks of WET's Finer Noble Gasses--you could practically smell the manic disarray of the place. If Zeyl's name is in the program, you'll at least be safe in knowing exactly where you are.