HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES

Explosive Drama: A Month in the Life of the American Repertory Theatre

Recently the Gazette followed an A.R.T. production as it grew from conception to fully realized performance. Our behind-the-scenes account follows.

For the past six weeks, Liz Diamond has been trying to make a play explode.

The play is Phaedra by the 17th-century French dramatist Jean Baptiste Racine. Is this powder a bit old for effective combustion? Not the way Diamond sees it.

Jonathan Epstein (Theseus) holds a daggar to the throat of Benjamin Evett (Hippolytus) during a mid-schedule rehearsal at the Episcopal Divinity School.

"What we're staging here is a poem, a great heaving, primal poem that shows the colossal power of words. We have to make the floor under the theater rock. Either the play explodes or it lies there like a log."

Diamond is the resident director of Yale Repertory Theatre and has won numerous awards for her work. This fall, she is serving as visiting director at Harvard's American Repertory Theatre (A.R.T.), where she has been striving to bring Racine's drama to incendiary life. The play will be the first production of A.R.T.'s 20th season at the Loeb Drama Center.

The Birth of a Production

On an afternoon in late October, in a large, nondescript room at the Episcopal Divinity School, most of those involved in staging the play gather for the first reading. There are hugs and kisses as people wander about the room, exchanging news and greetings. Beeper, a black toy poodle belonging to Randy Danson, who plays Phaedra, the doomed heroine, conducts his own investigation of the new surroundings, finally finding a place for himself inside an empty cabinet.

The reading begins, and it is obvious at once that this cast has done its homework. There are almost no flubbed lines, and even at this early stage it seems that the actors have already begun to inhabit the skin of their characters, have taken on their attitudes and cadences. The new translation by Paul Schmidt reads smoothly, a melding of poetic rhythms and colloquial English. It is a short play; the reading takes scarcely an hour and a half. But even at this stage, the dramatic intensity of the last scene sends a shiver through the room.

In the silence that follows, Danson stretches to shake off the effects of her final death swoon and remarks: "Well, this should take us through the holidays!"

After a short break, it is Diamond's opportunity to convey to the company her vision of the play, her ideas of what it means, how it should look, sound, and feel. Of petite stature, she seems to vibrate with tightly wound energy, intent on making others see what she sees.

"What this play is for me is a vast, horrifying nightmare. It's terribly interior, terribly claustrophobic. I'm not interested in recreating the period as such, but rather in creating a deeply disturbing psychic space in which mortal beings bounce off the walls."

The walls they bounce off of will be made of copper. Standing beside a dollhouse-sized model of the set, Diamond discusses the concept, formulated by her and set designer Riccardo Hernandez, of placing the action of the play in a stark, bare box of a room lined with copper sheeting. "It's hard but warm," explains Diamond, "and it takes on the light wonderfully." The concept is loosely based on the Reich Chancellery designed by Hitler's chief architect, Albert Speer. Hernandez has designed the side walls to move inward like the jaws of a vice, coinciding with the gradual tightening of the plot.

Scenic artist Jill Hendrickson applies paint to a highly reflective copper panel that will comprise the play's minimalist walls.

"It isn't what you'd call the subtlest idea in history, but I'm excited about it because it's so disturbing," Diamond says.

She moves on to a bulletin board hung with Catherine Zuber's costume designs. They represent neither ancient Greece nor the France of Louis XIV, but some royal court of the imagination where flowing lines and dark, brooding colors seem to be the order of the day.

Diamond seems to spend an inordinate amount of time discussing the play's most minor character, Panope, played by Emily Vail. Panope is little more than a messenger, appearing first to bring the false news that Theseus is dead. But Diamond is intrigued by her.

"Panope is very strange. She has the fewest lines, but when she does speak she utterly transforms the play. I imagine her as a fallen courtier, an untouchable, a non-person."

Making It Work

Ironically, this claustrophobic nightmare, this poem of doom and death that Diamond is trying to detonate by squeezing it in a massive copper vice, is a love story, but not the boy-meets-girl variety. In this tale, love is a deadly, irrational force, a disease, a curse. Phaedra, wife of Theseus, falls in love with her stepson, Hippolytus. She is fully aware that her love is shameful, promising nothing but disaster, but the feeling gnaws at her until she lets it out in a confession to her friend Enone.

Just then, a report reaches the palace at Troezen that Theseus is dead. A perfect opportunity, advises the pragmatic Enone. Tell Hippolytus of your love, marry him, and the two of you can seize power.

But, of course, Theseus is not dead. When he does appear, he finds disloyalty and betrayal, and in his rage he invokes a deadly curse, which brings about the play's tragic denouement.

Racine, often called the "most French" of French writers, has taken the ancient Greek playwrights as his model, but has honed the story to its basic elements. The result is an experience of almost unbearable intensity, moving, as Diamond describes it, "from silence to an open-throated cry that comes from the bottom of your feet and out."

But there is a risk. Because each moment builds on the one before it, the play must hold the audience's attention throughout. Each detail must be right. There can be no distractions. The mood must not be broken.

At the beginning of the production process, Kelly Mizelli is surrounded by hands while being fitted by costume shop designer Lynn Jeffrey (left) and Amanda Comer.

It is during the rehearsal period that this unity must be achieved and all the creative and technical aspects of the production brought together and made to cohere. Rehearsals take place six days a week from noon until 11 p.m. with a break for dinner. Production associate Rosetta Lee records a daily phone message letting each actor know exactly what time to report. Because some of the actors are simultaneously rehearsing or performing in other productions, scheduling can become quite complicated.

During October and November, Diamond meets with the actors in a basement dance studio in the Loeb Drama Center, going over blocking and interpretation. There are no copper walls, only mirrors and a dance barre, but Lee has painstakingly marked the floor with colored tape so that the actors will have a precise sense of the dimensions of the set.

Benjamin Evett, who plays Hippolytus, and Stephen Rowe, who plays his friend Theramenes, are rehearsing an early scene in which Theramenes guesses Hippolytus' secret, that he is in love with Aricia, a political prisoner in Theseus' court.

"When does the light go on for him?" Rowe asks, "just before he says the line or during it?"

Diamond's brows knit as she considers the question. "During it, I think."

A moment later, she comes up with another idea. Rowe has been reading the line with a leer in his voice as if amused to uncover softer feelings in his chaste friend. Diamond suggests another interpretation. '

"Rather than taunting him with the discovery, why don't you do it like, "Why run away from something so terrific? Remember, you love this guy. He's like a brother to you."

It is time for the first entrance of Phaedra and Enone. Lee quickly clears away a small table containing a coffee thermos and paper cups to make room for them. "That's the Troezen Starbucks," Rowe quips.

Danson enters with Enone, played by Karen MacDonald. It is startling to see Danson add physical action to her interpretation of Phaedra as both lovesick and deeply ashamed. She drags herself on stage, collapsing to the floor as MacDonald, all brusque impatience, chides her for her foolishness.

Then comes Panope's entrance announcing Theseus' death. Vail, a small, slight woman, makes herself look even smaller by hunching her shoulders and walking with her arms stiffly at her sides. She stops at center stage and delivers her few lines in a breathy, timid voice, barely audible. "That was very good, but I think you need to vocalize just a little bit more," Diamond tells her when the scene is over.

Details, Details

On Nov. 24, shortly before Thanksgiving, the entire company gathers in the Loeb's main theater for three days of technical rehearsal in preparation for the first preview performance on the 27th. All the elements are being brought together for the first time - costumes, set, lighting. This is the time to discover whether everything works as planned and to make whatever adjustments may be necessary.

Randy Danson (left) playing Phaedra, and Karen MacDonald, playing Enone, direct their attention offstage during a break in the action during a late-November technical rehearsal at the Loeb Drama Center.

Anne King, the stage manager, sits at a table in the orchestra with a heavily marked script in her hands, speaking into a headset: "Light cue number five . . . light cue number six. . . ." Her voice reverberates in the vast dark space. The folds of the heavy velvet curtain, washed by an intense light that turns them blood red, cover the stage. The curtain lifts, and there is Hernandez's copper vice, its jaws open wide.

The panels shimmer darkly, reflecting every bit of light and color around them. Suddenly, the lighting director, Michael Chybowski, hits the back wall with a spot that creates an intense squiggle of white light high above the dark rectangle of the center entrance.

"Oh, my, that''s so beautiful," exclaims Diamond.

"If everyone in the house could please take a seat, we're going to begin very soon," King's voice booms from the speakers. Several people remain standing, oblivious. Minutes go by and there is no sign of the play.

At last the curtain goes up, revealing Evett with his back to the audience, Rowe to his left. Evett wheels around and begins his first speech.

Diamond stops him. "Wait a minute, honey. What if you did something a little different, something with some sort of physical energy, like on an album cover? How about putting your hands on your head?"

Evett tries it. "Like this, or with my elbows more together?"

They run through a succession of positions, trying to find one that will create just the right tableau to begin the play.

Meanwhile, a decision must be made about the opening curtain. At what speed should it go up - fast, medium, slow? And there is some problem with the lights. King speaks to Chybowski through her headset.

And so it goes, detail after endless detail. Evett, sword hanging from his belt, flails away at air guitar while he waits for the scene to begin. The other actors sit in the audience or wander about in costume. Clearly, it is going to be a long night.

But if all goes well, each minor decision, each adjustment, pushes the production closer to actualizing Diamond's initial vision. The clock is ticking, ticking, and with each tick, the play comes closer to its explosion.

Phaedra's first preview performance played to a full house on Friday, Nov. 27. Judging by e-mailed and phoned comments received by the A.R.T., audience members were moved by Racine's tale of misplaced passion. Daily newspapers will publish reviews of the play this Friday, Dec. 4. The production runs through Jan. 14, 1999.