Joyce ‘s women

Produced in the Abbey, National Theatre of Ireland

Writer Edna O’Brien ; Director Conall Morrison ; Set Design Sabine Dargent ; Costume Joan O’Clery
Lighting Ben Ormerod ;composerConor Linehan ; sound design Ivan Birthistle ; movement director : Justine Doswell ; AV Designer Neil O’Driscoll ; Assistant Director Gea Gojak ; Assistant Designer Saoirse O’Shea ; make up and hair Leonard Daly ; fight director Alan Walsh ; voice director Andrea Ainsworth and casting director Sarah Jones

About the set, text written for the New York Times:
“Reading Edna’s beautiful text, I felt the writing was so strongly feminine, the structure of the  text struck me, the glimpses, the memories being scattered, forming a whole. I had to draw what seems to me the heart of the play: the figure of Lucia, in order to understand  the centre of the design, and to extrapolate from it. There is a lightness into it, a sharpness and a lightness I express throughout the design.
Conall and me spoke about the set being realistic inside but the walls being symbolic, more abstract, reaching to another world.
The panels of the set are allowing the characters to wander,  to penetrate the space or not,  to participate in the story. They are also marking the time, the 1930-40, by the style, the art deco. They are also speaking about Joyce ‘s art and the huge modernity and deconstruction he created.
The panels have a rhythm inspired by this deconstruction Joyce invented, from a window being a window to a window becoming a Mondrian piece.
Some kind of transcendence of nature to art.
Joyce is very present, he almost IS the space. And Lucia, and the others women of his life got cut into the mirrors, the reflections, the blinding shining light….”