A Communion of Ideas
Posted by Jon Berry on 11/23/2009
(Jon is directing this season’s Steppenwolf for Young Adults production of A Separate Peace)
I hadn’t been exposed to John Knowles’ A Separate Peace until I was brought in to direct the project for SYA. Somehow, I’d fallen through the cracks of all the middle school and high school students required to read it as part of their curriculum. So, while most people connect with the high school-aged characters when they first read the novel, I connected more directly with the narrator Gene, looking back at the events of that fateful year with a touch of melancholy and distance - for certain, a very different perspective than those boys who tear through that summer with fearless abandon.
Gene’s story - looking back at that last joyful, desperate breath of innocence before a crack of a branch and the crack of a gun ripped open those boys’ eyes to the painful truths that compose a life - manages to capture both the pleasurable callowness of youth and the melancholic recollection of a simpler time. Gene returns to the scene of that summer, the moment that changed his life forever, the moment where the clarity of his boyhood innocence ended as he caught his first glance of the shades of grey that comprise life as an adult.
Nancy Gilsenan’s adaptation does a wonderful job of condensing the events of the book into a clear narrative path, presentable in two hours or under. She captures the vibrant youthful spirit of blitzball, the thrill and peril of leaping from the tree, and the painful, self inflicted barbs born from insecurity and shame. In order to accomplish all this, the role of Gene as narrator has been excised from the adaptation, allowing for a heightened sense of immediacy in the telling.
I’ll admit to mourning the loss of the narrator - that voice of experience looking back - and wondered how our SYA production could address this loss. How could we capture both the immediacy of the boys and the poignant memory of a man looking back? I brought this challenge to the design team (Chelsea Warren, set; Alison Siple, costume; Heather Gilbert, lights; and Rick Sims, sound) and they all agreed that our production needed to address the idea of memory and that we could create that feeling through the design of the production.
We talked first about our experience of the novel. The term “coming of age” story was certainly bandied about, but then we talked further about what, in particular, made this story unique. So much of the experience of being a boy growing into a man is about challenge and struggle. Faced with opposition, or fear, or adversity, we are taught to confront it directly and without hesitation. When Gene feels threatened by Finny, he bares down on the challenge, seeing only the obstacle and the fight. When faced with the sudden knowledge that he misjudged the situation, he’s forced to examine who he is as a person and the shame attached to his earlier judgment. The conflict proves too much - the world plunges from black and white clarity into painful shades of grey - and Gene acts out in an animalistic outburst, attempting to destroy the thing he does not understand.
As a design team, we knew that we needed certain things in the space in order to tell the story: a tree, a bedroom, the order and structure of a college prep academy. We started by looking at pictures of Exeter Academy, the original model for the novel’s Devon School. We found, in those photos, a sense of order, and history, and beauty and tradition. We looked at pictures of trees–graceful branches, gnarled bark - and how the perspective of the image can make it feel either solid or precarious. From there, we went on to examine our thoughts about memory, and about being pulled from the cloistered darkness into the painful light. Shadows came into the discussion: how light can illuminate but the shadow it casts can obscure or make grotesque.
(Design research image of Exeter Academy)
Chelsea, our set designer, found two artists that seemed to speak to our discussion. The first, Gordon Matta Clark, splices together photos to create a disjointed whole. By slicing an image and rearranging the pieces, he makes you see the image new, as its rearranged pieces create a fresh way to experience the initial elements. This felt very much like our discussion of memory: how it can, over time, twist and shift into a new truth. She also brought in work from Jaakko Niemela, an artist who makes small, intricate, life-like model rooms, then projects an enlarged shadow of the image on the back wall of a darkened gallery. We were taken by the contrast between the pristine ordinariness of the small white rooms and the large, mysterious, looming shadow.
(LEFT: Example of Gordon Matta Clark’s artwork; RIGHT: Example of Jaakko Niemela’s artwork)
We talked about the Exeter of Gene’s memory and how all those separate moments, with the addition of time, pull together into one complete whole. While we initially thought that maybe the room and the tree would be on opposite sides of the stage, suddenly it made sense to combine the two, making the tree and room into one: the tree actually growing out of the room, the beds serving as the trunk of the tree. Our set will live on top of James Schuette’s design for The Brother/Sister Plays: a beautiful sea of black, with slices of white and grey. Our thoughts about a black and white world slowly pulling into grey fit beautifully into the world we are inheriting.
From here, now, I go back to the play: reading it through again and making sure that the design serves all of the play’s needs. We are also opening up the discussion now to include lights and costume and sound. It’s an exciting time. The pieces are all still very much in the gestation phase, but it’s been heartening to share these ideas and see everyone in the group get excited and start to dream of what’s possible. I love the design process for this reason: an idea is spreading, and growing, and everyone involved is bringing something to the conversation. Theater, for me, is a communion of ideas - and the play is now, in all the best ways, taking on a life of its own.