| DREAMATIS PERSONAE:
The real challenge of this production was to seek out the reportorial aspects which lay accessible in the 18th century Akan play in Antigua; yet, replicate in each character's state delivery, a presence - particularly the unspoken dramatis personae manifested at the trial of the 1736 Antigua "Conspiracy". I was forced to explore this, if for no other reason, because elements of that drama were carried by lead characters of its resistance, when banished to St.Croix, and who later played effective roles in St. Croix's pivotal resistance drama - both in the masquerade arts, and its mirror arts of social organization building. SETS & DESIGN: The Wattle and Daub house is the backdrop image for Lazarus' opening lament for Arthur. This remaining shrine to the African Atlantic building arts of Kongo, has been the source of design balance for many elements of my props, and set design. In my lighting, where the actors will inhabit a defined space, I have been sensitive to and aesthetic of the cool. The griot's lone spotlight, the Washers' florescent footwork, the Wakers' moonlight toasts and the grieving bulls' kaleidoscopic eulogies: all are spectral vernaculars of the wattle-and-dub interior. The set formations - where characters form circular lines and receding planes of perspective: all these add visual and temporal luster to the texture and epic contexts of the individual eulogies, or soliloquies. This wattle, or posting of the woven stick (standards, thatching); and, daub or (dub) hand-massaging of earthly matters, constitute particular tenets of individual truths, and public "un-truths" - hidden in the speech of the washers, wakers and grieving bulls. |