You Lost Me

Denver Center for the performing arts

Ricketson Theater

january 2020

In Bonnie Metzgar’s poetic new play, a woman descended from a young girl who saved 161 Irish immigrants from a shipwreck runs a remote inn in her family’s ancestral home on Newfoundland’s remote southern coast. Time overlaps as we see scenes in the 1800’s interspersed (and sometimes overlapping) with contemporary scenes. The poetry of Ranier Maria Rilke inspires a young poet to find his own voice in the forbidding and starkly beautiful landscape of rocks, grass, wind and waves. The scenes took place inside and around the imaginary Shipwreck Inn in the real town of Isle-aux-Morts, Newfoundland. In the design I wanted to foreground the natural elements so strongly present in Newfoundland’s southern coast: The rocks, the grass, the sky - and to be able to avoid scene changes by having all of the playing spaces present in the space through the whole show. The interior spaces of the inn were inspired by historical homes in Newfoundland, and are essentialized to only what was needed for the action of the play. Historic characters interacted with the vintage woodstove and antique kitchen elements, modern characters used the more contemporary appliances. Beams, windows and floorboards suggest the architecture, and the two interior spaces float on raked dock-like platforms that overlap; reminiscent of a shipwreck. It was a lot of play to fit into The Denver Center’s 200-seat Ricketson theater, a proscenium space converted from a movie theater, but we figured it out!

Directed by margot bordelon•scenic design: reid thompson•costume design: valérie Thérèse Bart•Lighting design: Jiyoun Chang•projection design: Shawn boyle•Sound design: palmer heffernan•ACTORS: Marie Botha, Luke La Montagne, Tara Falk, Gareth saxe, Alexandra Milak