Don Carlos - The Gamm Theatre
“Set designer Sara Ossana hauntingly and beautifully recreates this troublesome era, complete with the mist of a pervasive incense that evokes the religious overtone, and minimalist set changes that occasionally and effectively depict an almost cave-like atmosphere.”
– Christopher Verleger, Edge Providence
“In the first half, King Philip comments, “Our Inquisition never sleeps,” and we see a near-naked man viciously whipped. At the play’s end there is a startling scene. A cruciform section of designer Sara Ossana’s drab center wall folds down, and the stage is bathed in blood-red light (courtesy of Matt Terry)... This is one scary scene, I can tell you...”
– Caldwell Titcomb, Providence Journal
“The set design of Sara Ossana opens up hellishly in that scene, glowing crosses behind and below – the opening in the floor, full of hot coals, had earlier been used to roast a heretic to death. The design is also impressive for frescoes right and left.”
– Bill Rodriguez, The Providence Phoenix
“Sara Ossana’s set, an ancient palace with flickering lanterns and aged frescos, was wonderfully atmospheric.”
– Channing Gray, Providence Journal
Weightless - The Perishable Theatre
“All of this stark stuff is backgrounded perfectly by Sara Ossana’s imaginative scene design. Plastic is stretched over everything, from chairs to walls, windows, even mirrors, painted as gray as congealed fog but worn away in many places, as though from people tumbling about. A crack — of doom? — extends diagonally across the floor.”
– Bill Rodriguez, The Providence Phoenix
Taming of the Shrew - The Gamm Theatre
“Set designer Sara Ossana has reconfigured the Gamm into an alleyway, with Petruchio’s humble digs at one end of the space and Baptista’s opulent brownstone at the other. The audience, which is normally seated in the three-quarter round, now flanks the set and is at times thrust into the action. Cast members wander into the bleachers and sit on audience members’ laps, or hand them a bouquet of flowers.”
– Channing Gray, Providence Journal
“Sara Ossana’s innovative stage design helps the audience follow the story. She has created five separate spaces for actors to perform, each area representing a distinct place. There is a runway through the middle of the performance space, with the audience sitting on each side and two spaces on each side of the theater. The set-up means that everyone is going to have an obstructed view of the action at some point, but it veers pleasantly from the static, stare-straight-ahead theater experience.”
– Randy Rice, Broadwayworld.com
Sweet Disaster - The Perishable Theatre
“The audience sits in bleachers on opposite sides of the performance space, as though on display to each other. The scenic design by Sara Ossana is a raised platform covered with torn paper and, at first, two folding chairs at opposite ends, signaling confrontation. The black walls surrounding us are painted with white shards, the geometry of shattered mirrors. Panels in similar shapes function as a screen for Hopkins’s projections... It’s as though these people are now able to see the disorder around them, which has always been there but which they’ve been too absorbed to notice.”
– Bill Rodriguez, The Providence Phoenix
Punk Play
“Although the cavernous Pell Chafee Performance Center may seem a daunting theatrical space, Moss praised set designer and Rhode Island School of Design alum Sara Ossana for creating a single, realistic boy’s bedroom in the midst of the vast former bank space, mirroring the juxtaposition of the characters’ personal histories with the larger national and global history unfolding around them.”
– Robin Steele, The Brown Daily Herald
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