Design Approach

Most of this play takes place in Brooklyn and the Bronx. In act 1, we travel to a number of locations - a subway car, two apartments, an office, a street. The action in act 2 is confined to a mysterious street location in a kind of "limbo" of streets. The city has changed so much that the main character, Marisol Perez, no longer knows where she is.

Marisol's world is a mess. Her guardian angel has joined a band of revolutionaries who battle to overthrow God. Its very likely that Marisol was killed in the first scene and the whole of the play is her purgatory. In the second act, her best friend becomes a Skinhead, a man gives birth, and all food has turned to salt. Early in the process I was able to listen to some of the techno/electronica sounds and music the sound designer was using. The world of the play became much clearer by being able to hear it. The element of sound was crucial. In fact, in this small blackbox space and the $700 budget meant that the scene changes had to rely heavily on sound and light.

Several books on street art and design inspired by street art provided the right ideas, including one image of a crumbling city dominated by speaker towers of all sizes. It also became important to allow the lighting designer some scenery through which she could create odd angles and shadows as seen in some of these graphic depictions of the street. Graffiti, trash, concrete and steel come together to create the unreal pieces that, taken as a whole, make up Marisol’s New York.

© 2001 by Gion DeFrancesco