Saturday, March 07, 2009

Mabou Mine's Doll's House

It was around 1993 or 94, I wrote a proposal for a grant for directors. In that proposal I had to describe how would I direct Cloud 9 by Caryl Churchill. One of the elements that I proposed in my description was that I wanted to cast very short men and very, very tall women for the play. My intention was to impose a feminist vision of the world, stressing how women are sometimes invisible, I wanted to make them oversized. My idea was inspired by Sandy Allen, the giant woman in Fellini’s Caanova, this idea of the oversized women was the only strong visual element that was going to travel through the play.
I didn’t win the grant, so I didn’t produce the show because I didn’t have any money and don’t think I saved my rejection letter.
About 10 years later I heard that Lee Breuer, from Mabou Mines directed A Doll’s House with that same idea.
I thought, could it be a coincidence? I didn’t go to see the play, I was upset, and I don’t have any prove of who read my proposal. Mabou Mines is a very well established and respected theater company and I was nobody, new in New York.
Yesterday I went to see a re-staging of the same production at St Ann’s Warehouse and I found myself thinking again, could it be a coincidence? I guess I’ll never know.