My design for Alison Bechdel’s coming-of-age story is grounded in playwright Lisa Kron’s foreword to the script:
It feels like a traditional narrative that starts with her childhood and progresses through a linear story, but a closer reading reveals that the book is actually a recursive meditation, circling around and around the four months between when Alison came out to her parents and her father’s suicide.
And though this is a memory play, it’s important to note that the past always understands itself to be the present. Every character in this piece is moving earnestly forward at all times into an unknown and unknowable future. This is even true for adult Alison, for whom looking back is an active journey forward.
Kron’s notes on the narrative direction of the story inspired the cyclical arena staging, in which the characters may fluidly traverse between each corner of the rectangular area that has been assigned to Alison’s different life stages.
Director: Tessa Kim
Producer: Ryan Nguyen
Technical Director: Ryan Lien
Set Designer: Melanie Ahn
Lighting Designer: Haley Groth
Costume Designer: Rachel Olkin
Producer: Ryan Nguyen
Technical Director: Ryan Lien
Set Designer: Melanie Ahn
Lighting Designer: Haley Groth
Costume Designer: Rachel Olkin
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