Big Love Stageset

Location: Dallas Theater.
Program: Stage Set.
Client: Dallas Theater.
Budget: NA.
Size: NA.
Status: Completed 2003.

“Big Love” by Charles Mee is a modern retelling of Aeschylus’ “The Suppliant Women”. The play was directed by artistic director Richard Hamburger, and performed in March 2003 at the Arts District Theater in Dallas, Texas.

The plot evolves around 50 women that flees to Italy to escape from an arranged marriage with their 50 cousins. They come ashore at a house occupied by Piero, an Italian with “connections”, and his mother Bella. The 50 bridegrooms, Greeks who have made their fortune in America, arrive by private helicopter to claim what they believe to be theirs and the play unfolds as an intensely physical war of the sexes.

The set imagines the Italian villa, somewhere between “The Godfather” and the Italian architect Guiseppe Terragni. The elements are all compressed within the frame of a minimalist house that slowly opens up in layers as the play progresses. A combination of artifice and naturalism is choreographed around a “pool” of sky which functions as the filed for confrontation, marriage and death.