Behind the Arras

I have been wanting to do this play for a long time. I acted in it way back in 1985, as a student, at the A.R.T., where I played Dumaine, and ever since I've been looking for an opportunity to do it again. I find it such a charming, sweet, funny play. When we began talking about doing a show with a very small cast, and lots of doubling, I immediately knew that LLL was the perfect play for it. It has 3 sets of neatly divided characters: The Lords, the Ladies, and the Townsfolk - whom, thought they often interact, maintain discreet identities. It made perfect sense for each actor to take one role from each set, and have the boy Moth act as a consistent viewpoint on the follies of the adults.

Having the four lords and the four ladies they love played by two men and two women, so that there were always two characters playing cross-gender, serves several functions. First and foremost, it gives us a lot of comic potential and the constant opportunity to find the humor in gender. But thematically I think it serves the play, as well. This play, all about courtship, is thus all about play - the roles we take on when we woo and are wooed, and how our masculinity and femininity become the chief elements in our romantic interactions. I thought it would be really interesting to highlight gender behavior in these scenes by comparing the behavior of the actors playing their own gender with the interpretations offered by their colleagues crossing the gender line.

Even though the characters neatly divide into three groups, there are constant changes of character throughout the production. One of the actors told me that she changed character 28 times in the show, and that was before I added several more changes, so her count is well over 30 now. My biggest problem was how to allow the actors to make these changes without interrupting the flow of the story. This meant that they would have to change in as little as 5-10 seconds. I thought about simple costume pieces - scarves, hats, etc., but soon realized that to adequately define the separate characters these pieces would be woefully inadequate, and the move to more evocative costume pieces - jackets, wrap-around skirts, and the like - would be difficult, distracting, and mostly like take too much time.

I was in the middle of a meeting one day when I had a brainwave. We'd keep the costume constant - something clean and elegant but gender neutral - and change the silouette of the head with a hat, attached to a wig. If done properly, the actor could transform completely in a matter of seconds. I got the name of Rachel Padula from Jennie, who worked with her at the Huntington, and she proved to be exactly the right person for the job. She came up with wigs that looked great but were extremely easy to take on and off, and would hold their shape during the multiple changes each actor had to make. It proved to be the key.