plot line so people don’t wonder what’s going
on and where they are. But with a lot of things,
like choreography and music, there isn’t a story
line. Big Love has a plot line, but it also uses
We use all the elements of American musical comedy
but in a different way... and that’s what we both just
instinctively and deeply and insanely love like crazy.
–CHARLES MEE
these other, unconscious techniques of coherence: morning, afternoon, night, gloom, awfulness, dawn, or no dawn. Or chaos and confusion,
sweetness, disaster. There are all of these ways of
structuring things that I find wonderful, and more
like the complicated lives that we actually live.
S: Tina, can you talk about the casting process
for this play?
T: You know, as open as the text is to directorial
choices, it’s the same with casting. And you find
that any given choice you make about age, or
skin color, or anything, is possible, and changes
meaning. And so I go into the casting less with a
sense of “I need that kind of person to do that,”
and more that I’m interested in people who
feel like they are of a Chuck Mee world. Which
means that they approach the material with
a kind of play, and fearlessness, and ability to
make quick switches, and are comfortable with
living in extremes on stage, not being attached
to neat psychology. This was a process of very
slowly adding people in and seeing how the
whole picture changed, and then figuring out a
little more what we needed. It’s not about what
tricks they can do; it’s about their open hearts
and their sense of boldness.
S: Can you tell me a bit about the design?
T: I’m really excited about the design! I’m
working with a designer I’ve never worked with
before, a young man named Brett Banakis, who I
I’m interested in people who feel like
they are of a Chuck Mee world...
they approach the material
with a kind of play, and
fearlessness...and are
comfortable with
love, and we were stuck on the set design for a while.
It wasn’t until I went back and really embraced what
living in extremes
Chuck wrote, which is, “It’s less a set and more an installation,”
on stage...
that I was freed to create something in this space that is not at all
representational – “We are in Italy, this is a villa,” – but is really about a
– TINA LANDAU
feeling. And we’re just doing some things to transform the space and to
create a very fluid, evocative environment that I think is gonna be pretty cool!
S: You’ve both spent quite a bit of time at Signature. Chuck, you were the Playwright-inResidence from 2007-2008, and Tina was here as director on your play Iphigenia 2.0 and on Bill
Irwin and David Shiner’s Old Hats. What made you want to revisit Big Love this year at Signature?
T: [Founding Artistic Director] Jim Houghton. I mean, that’s the first thing. This is one of the few theatres
I’ve ever worked at where I really feel a sense of family being built and engendered and nurtured by Jim, and
[Associate Artistic Director] Beth Whitaker, and everyone who works here. It’s a prime exampl Hو H