LOVE IN DISGUISE

BY PIERRE DE MARIVAUX

Love in Disguise is an elegant, melancholy comedy that takes place in a setting that director Ed Golden foresaw as mythical and fairytale-like, but where people behave realistically in terms of emotion and psychology . Golden saw the new translation by Dan Smith as being about characters that pursue their fate in a dangerous, threatening world.

The environment for our production was to evoke a throne room in an early 19th Century Mediterranean principality like Monaco. Apart from four entrances, the physical action of the play required a two-way mirror through which the main character, the Princess, observes the intrigues at court. With the audience on three sides of the stage in this black box theatre, I first needed to place this mirror in a central place for maximum audience visibility and only then develop the scenic architecture surrounding it as a frame that would provide atmosphere and metaphor. The sole back wall of the set contained two openings. Between them I placed a throne dais above which hung the ornately framed two-way mirror. The twelve signs of the Zodiac, referred to in the script, were depicted on a large circular mosaic on the marble floor that visually extended to a sky beyond the confines of the throne room. I intended the wall with its fading fresco to represent a Mask of Fate, the mask of reality worn by the Princess in a world ruled by chance.

The images show my design process. Research and sketches helped me find the look that felt in tune with the director’s vision.