Representing Pasts – Visioning Futures

Abstract

Over decades, Kit Surrey has crafted unitary stage sets that strikingly and simultaneously evoke diverse geographical locations. A relatively early case in point was his work for the Royal Shakespeare Company and Bill Alexander’s 1988 production of “The Merchant of Venice,” presented both in Stratford-upon-Avon and in London. Ghetto, Rialto, and Belmont came into focus and faded, depending on the scene and with swiftly introduced elements – such as a tent for Shylock’s “home office” and illuminated backgrounds including a stark cross for the Rialto (and the Duke’s court of law) and a shrine to the Madonna for Belmont. The competing sites were highlighted or de-emphasized but were never fully absent. Surrey’s set and costume designs for Alexander’s 1992 “Troilus and Cressida” – presented at the then-new Landsburgh mainstage for the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington DC – not only negotiated ably the spatial demands of the play text but also evoked vastly disparate times. The mythic past of Greece and Troy mingled with an imagined dystopian future, along with unmistakable visual references to recent events still resonating with the production’s own present time and place: the aftermath of the First Gulf War as experienced (and often repressed) in the capital of the United States. The potential for the stage to be a liminal site was compellingly explored and fulfilled by Surrey throughout this collaboration with Alexander.