DESIGN APPROACH

When John Whiting was given the commission to write an epic play for the Royal Shakespeare Company, he had been pondering for nearly ten years on Huxley's The Devils of Loudun. He'd always wanted to turn it into a film. Here was the perfect chance to turn it into a piece of theatre.

Whiting did his best to write a play, but he never let go of the screenplay format. The scenes are short, the locations many (at least 20 in the first act alone), and the flow is unbroken. In film, its easy to do this. On stage, it poses a great challenge to the design team. Bringing in scenery to represent each location would interrupt the flow. Scenes change so often, the play would run the risk of becoming about scene changes.

We decided the filmic flow of scenes was more important than specific locations. Scene design can suggest time and place with minimal detail. The play takes place in Loudun, France, in and around 1630. Loudun is a provincial town built in the middle ages. Its buildings still have the stonework of the medieval masons. This is a play about power and the church, and nothing visually connects power and the church like the gothic style. Suggestion of the gothic fit in well with other resonances of the play; everyone in this town is watching each other, and they are all being watched by Paris and by God. The watchful eye is suggested in the scenery as well.

Finally, this is not a colorful world. The color comes from its citizens and from the mysterious world outside of Loudun. Beyond the walls of the city lay not just Poitiers, Paris, and Rome but the unknown place to which Grandier, Sister Jeanne, even Richelieu himself will one day be.

© 2004 by Gion DeFrancesco