Like a sturdy redwood tree, Hopkinton High School graduate Sean Sanford’s career in theater continues to reach new heights.

Sanford has made his Broadway premiere as an associate scenic designer with the new musical “Redwood.” The musical, which stars Idina Menzel, premiered in New York on Feb. 13 at the Nederlander Theater.

Hailed as Menzel’s “long-awaited return to Broadway,” the show tells the story of a woman who finds herself in the redwood forests of northern California after a life-changing event. According to the “Redwood” website, the musical “explores the lengths — and heights — one travels to find strength, resilience and healing.”

Central to the story is the set, which features 26-foot-tall video screens that surround the stage and a hyper-realistic tree that takes center stage. 

In his review, chief theater critic for the New York Times Jesse Green called the staging of the show “among the most beautiful and wondrous theatrical creations I can recall.”

Sanford is part of the team that helped bring the “Redwood” set to life. An associate scenic designer for Emmy Award-winning set designer Jason Ardizzone-West, Sanford was involved with the design process in its early days.

The process for developing the set began long before the show’s first debut in California at the La Jolla Playhouse in February 2024. In early meetings with Tina Landau, the creator and director of “Redwood,” Ardizzone-West and Sanford worked to understand the creative vision and develop early ideas.

“Jason goes away with that and uses research and his own inspirations to come up with preliminary ideas,” Sanford says of the collaborative process. From his boss’ sketches, Sanford goes through an iterative process to draft the plans for the set. The team then works together to figure out the logistics of fitting their designs into a given space.

A rendering done by Sean Sanford shows a design for the video screens used in the production of “Redwood.”

For “Redwood,” the key is immersion. Everything from the floor to the screens in the background is designed to encompass the audience in the world of the musical. As scenes change, the redwood will rotate and blend in with the rest of the video background.

“When we’re in the forest, it’s a tree,” said Sanford. “For other scenes when we’re out of the forest, it’s part of the video landscape.”

“The idea is to fully immerse as much of the audience as possible into what feels like a 360 world of video,” he added.

The redwood at center stage also has been designed with immersion in mind. “You can be right next to it and feel like it’s a real redwood tree,” Sanford said. The hand-carved and painted tree also is sturdy enough that the actors can — and do — climb it.

After a successful run at La Jolla, Sanford and Ardizzone-West were tasked with adapting the set design of “Redwood” for Broadway. The biggest challenge was retaining the feeling of the show in an entirely different theater setting.

“The space at La Jolla is basically a large, black box theater,” Sanford explained. “We had to squeeze [the set] into a small, proscenium Broadway theater while maintaining the immersive feeling.”

The path to Broadway

Sanford’s debut as a scenic designer for Broadway is a culmination of years of hard work and building relationships in his industry. He has been working full-time for Ardizzone-West for two years, but had connected with him while working as a prop supervisor at the Westport Country Playhouse in Connecticut.

“He came in and designed a show there,” said Sanford. “I was able to build a relationship with him through that show.”

Upon learning Sanford had technical skills in drafting, vector work and design, Ardizzone-West first brought him on for part-time work. Eventually, the work grew into a full-time position. 

“It’s really exciting,” Sanford said. “It’s like everything that I have dreamed of it being.”

Sean Sanford (left) and Jason Ardizzone-West pose for a photo on the set of “Saturday Night Live” during work for Dua Lipa.

Sanford’s path to the stage began long before he got to New York. A longtime lover of theater, he began performing in plays and musicals in middle school. With former Hopkinton Middle School drama teacher Hallyann Gifford as a mentor, Sanford continued to pursue an interest in performing through his high school career.

He performed in shows at Hopkinton High School, along with regional theater programs like the Burt Wood School of Performing Arts, the Hopkinton Center for the Arts and programs in Woonsocket, Rhode Island.

“For the longest time, most of my theater experience in Hopkinton was performing,” Sanford said. “I thought I wanted to be a performer.”

His first exposure to set design came through his volunteer work for Gifford with the HMS drama program. He helped direct and design many of the shows he volunteered for. He also was involved in production elements with shows at HHS.

Despite the strong interest in theater, it was not Sanford’s immediate pursuit after graduating HHS in 2015. He enrolled as a history major at the University of Massachusetts Amherst “not really knowing what I wanted to do,” he said.

The pull of the stage proved to be too strong and Sanford, with encouragement from a theater director at UMass, shifted his studies. He graduated in 2019 with a double major in psychology and theater.

Sanford moved to New York in 2019 to begin his career. He worked hourly jobs at first, but eventually landed gigs with the Blue Man Group and other regional theater programs.

“[The Blue Man Group] was part-time, but it was enough to pay my rent so I could keep pursuing other theater projects,” Sanford recalled.

Sanford now is one of a team of about six or more who work on more than a dozen projects simultaneously. Beyond Broadway shows, the team develops scenic designs for concerts, regional theater projects and more. 

He reported that the group currently is working on pop artist Dua Lipa’s world tour concert and an immersive experience in Times Square.

Looking back on his trajectory so far, Sanford credits the strong theater programs in Hopkinton for helping him get to this point. “So many of my colleagues now didn’t have nearly the amount of creative support as I had with Hopkinton schools,” he said. 

Added Sanford: “I feel like both programs at HMS and HHS being as involved, supportive and large as they were totally sparked this huge part of my life and absolutely propelled me to pursue theater.”