One of the key objectives of the staging of this play was to negate any sense of melodrama. To ensure that any emotional resonance or pathos should occur in spite of the staging, rather than as a result of the staging signposting the audience. Claudia Sanchez, the designer, and I worked closely with this in mind.
COSTUME & MUSIC
We arrived at a perception that these two characters are 'Beckettian'. or more specifically, "Godotian'. Yet Godot himself (natch), feels as though it has been influenced by the clowns of silent cinema, Keaton and Chaplin. We made this reference overt, using music from Chaplin's films and costume that readily echoed the epoch. Both characters wear a hat in one scene, with the hat itself defining an oddness; removing the action from the contemporary, even though this is a play which would appear to take place in the here and now. Furthermore, it means that initially both characters are presented as comic, or absurd. These aren't characters who seem appropriate for a great romance. They are a far cry from conventional romantic leads, thereby steering the story away from any obvious romantic, dramatic context.
THE BED
Early on it was decided to stage the bed scenes using the wall, something pinched from Macdonald's Court production of Love and Information. Beds are hard to make work on stage and the bed in Act 2 is an essential component. The horizontality frequently acts as a alienatory effect, because the audience cannot see the faces clearly. (That simple.) Using a wall as the bed allowed us to overcome that. It also allowed us to emphasise the ready-made, theatrical aspects of the production. This is not real life. (Real life beds are never vertical.) The more the staging worked against a notion of naturalism, the stronger the piece would seem and the more in keeping it would be with the heightened gestural vocabulary exercised by the actors.
OTHER STAGING
Apart from these details and one Brookian touch in the final act, the staging was kept as resolutely simple as possible. Part of the reasoning for this was the desire that the play should retain as far as possible its universal appeal: if we can stage it anywhere, it might be that anywhere we go we will find people who can connect with it. Fosse never defines the setting with any great degree of specificity and there's no doubt that this neutrality is part of the play's appeal.
USE OF SPACE
As we were rehearsing in SUA, but knowing we would subsequently do shows in other venues, we had to resist the urge to tailor the show too specifically to this space. However, there's one aspect of the building which almost seemed to demand inclusion. SUA itself is a large old house. We were working at street level, which consists of various high ceilinged, large airy rooms, the largest of which was the space we rehearsed in and would act as the hotel space (Acts 2&4). At the rear of the building is a courtyard which, as the building is being redeveloped, is full of construction materials. It made sense to use it as a delipidated park, for Acts 1&3. It also meant that the audience had to move from one space to another. As far as possible. we sought to replicate this in the other spaces we used in Libertad and Las Piedras. The objective here was to break the audience's concentration, to remove the magic. (Or staging as theatre magic). Thereby ensuring that the script was as unadorned as possible (in contradiction to Chereau's elaborate staging.)
GENERAL
The more Fosse's texts are weighted by their staging the more they have to bear. When their beauty truly emerges from the simplicity of the human relationships he describes. It seems to me that the script should be capable of being staged on a magic carpet and nothing else. Which is not to deny the value of stagecraft, but to note that in the case of Fosse's writing the stage signifiers run the risk of obscuring the core of his texts.
COSTUME & MUSIC
We arrived at a perception that these two characters are 'Beckettian'. or more specifically, "Godotian'. Yet Godot himself (natch), feels as though it has been influenced by the clowns of silent cinema, Keaton and Chaplin. We made this reference overt, using music from Chaplin's films and costume that readily echoed the epoch. Both characters wear a hat in one scene, with the hat itself defining an oddness; removing the action from the contemporary, even though this is a play which would appear to take place in the here and now. Furthermore, it means that initially both characters are presented as comic, or absurd. These aren't characters who seem appropriate for a great romance. They are a far cry from conventional romantic leads, thereby steering the story away from any obvious romantic, dramatic context.
THE BED
Early on it was decided to stage the bed scenes using the wall, something pinched from Macdonald's Court production of Love and Information. Beds are hard to make work on stage and the bed in Act 2 is an essential component. The horizontality frequently acts as a alienatory effect, because the audience cannot see the faces clearly. (That simple.) Using a wall as the bed allowed us to overcome that. It also allowed us to emphasise the ready-made, theatrical aspects of the production. This is not real life. (Real life beds are never vertical.) The more the staging worked against a notion of naturalism, the stronger the piece would seem and the more in keeping it would be with the heightened gestural vocabulary exercised by the actors.
OTHER STAGING
Apart from these details and one Brookian touch in the final act, the staging was kept as resolutely simple as possible. Part of the reasoning for this was the desire that the play should retain as far as possible its universal appeal: if we can stage it anywhere, it might be that anywhere we go we will find people who can connect with it. Fosse never defines the setting with any great degree of specificity and there's no doubt that this neutrality is part of the play's appeal.
USE OF SPACE
As we were rehearsing in SUA, but knowing we would subsequently do shows in other venues, we had to resist the urge to tailor the show too specifically to this space. However, there's one aspect of the building which almost seemed to demand inclusion. SUA itself is a large old house. We were working at street level, which consists of various high ceilinged, large airy rooms, the largest of which was the space we rehearsed in and would act as the hotel space (Acts 2&4). At the rear of the building is a courtyard which, as the building is being redeveloped, is full of construction materials. It made sense to use it as a delipidated park, for Acts 1&3. It also meant that the audience had to move from one space to another. As far as possible. we sought to replicate this in the other spaces we used in Libertad and Las Piedras. The objective here was to break the audience's concentration, to remove the magic. (Or staging as theatre magic). Thereby ensuring that the script was as unadorned as possible (in contradiction to Chereau's elaborate staging.)
GENERAL
The more Fosse's texts are weighted by their staging the more they have to bear. When their beauty truly emerges from the simplicity of the human relationships he describes. It seems to me that the script should be capable of being staged on a magic carpet and nothing else. Which is not to deny the value of stagecraft, but to note that in the case of Fosse's writing the stage signifiers run the risk of obscuring the core of his texts.
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