arcadia

south coast repertory, Orange county, CA

segestrom mainstage

cancelled before production due to covid-19

For this revival of Tom Stoppard’s brilliant play, set in alternating time periods in the same room of an English country manor house, we took Stoppard’s stage direction that “The room is plain, unornamented, except for its impressive architecture.” I believe that Stoppard had in mind an amphitheater of ideas, one that was not laden with additional visual information beyond the carefully selected symbolic objects and props used in the play. The play is an actor’s showcase; and the quicksilver dialogue and punctuation of entrances and exits is imperative for the play to function as intended. The stripped-away aesthetic also helps the scenes alternate between contemporary and the past; with the one central study-table serving to ground the action and contain all the needed props. Although we never progressed beyond a white model, the colors of the interior was to be cool and muted, with medium-warm wood tones, in contrast with a lively, colorful, watercolor-painted landscape backdrop, based on the work of regency-era landscape architect Humphrey Repton, whose work is referenced in the play. In designing the play for South Coast Rep’s vast Segestrom stage, I pulled the playing space way down onto the thrust and about 10 feet upstage, to keep the acting as “hot” as possible and build as much intamacy as we could in such a large space. We included a ceiling and angled side walls partly to reinforce the acoustics of the actor’s voices; and send the energy of the performances out into the audience. The research of Georgian-era English stately homes was great fun; and what was surprising to me was to see the variety of influences and styles even within this time period in the English countryside. A shame it never made it to production.