The Waiting Room at Appalachian

The Director's Concept

A director's concept for a theatre production is his/her idea of what the production should convey. Although the playwright provides a rather extensive template for production within a script, the director, cast, and production team must make many choices about how to realize on stage what the playwright has written. Months before a theatre production opens, the director, dramaturgs, and designers begin meeting to talk about their ideas. The director leads these discussions and the team collaboratively shapes the production concept under the director's guidance.

The production team for The Waiting Room began meeting in April 2007. In these early meetings, they discussed their ideas about the play under the guidance of director Anna Ward. After a few of these discussions, Anna sent the following message via email to the design team about her developing concept.

Email from Anna Ward to the design team:

Although I have communicated a bit with you all about the show, I wanted to make an effort to more clearly articulate my concept/approach ideas. I want to try to communicate my overall idea for the world we are attempting to create for the audience to you as designers.

---I still like the image of women's magazines as a starting point. The play asks us to examine what is being communicated in each of the time periods as the acceptable standards of women's health, beauty and expected behavior. Magazines are a primary contemporary source for this information, also found in waiting rooms and referenced in the play. We see images in magazines that we interpret as reality, even knowing that the images have been doctored with airbrushes and photoshop. Women's heath and relationship concerns are related though surveys and checklists with anecdotes that are frequently fabricated. Our contemporary societal definitions of what it is to be a woman are often defined and reiterated in media. The media often contradicts itself as well, making suggestions that aging and wrinkles are ok, yet advertising on the next page an anti wrinkle creme, for example.

---How can we relate that tension between what we know is real and the perceived reality through the world of the play? Visually, if we stay with the sense of heightened reality that appears in magazine imagery as well as acknowledging the heightened reality of the play I think we can accomplish the false sense of reality. However, each of the three main female characters has entered the waiting room with some part of this idealistic perception falling apart. It may be that the dialogue is enough to create that tension but it may be interesting to play with some visual cues that reveal the world breaking down alongside the characters-- just a thought...

---Liminal states also cause tension. Liminal is defined as, "of or pertaining to the threshold or initial stage of a process." When we are in a waiting room or recovery room (liminal spaces) we are between two places, what is, and what will or might be- what we think is wrong and what we find out, the process of healing, dying, changing, etc. The women are each at a threshold, physically and in their perceptions of their roles as women. Where they are in that transition is different depending on the period in which they exist and the character's choices.

---Each time period is both unique and similar in its definition of women's roles. Each time period reveals different aspects of cultural communication of those roles, asking the audience to examine the spectrum of what they believe to be true and what the choices are, around being a woman. We are asked to recognize the liminal existence of women's roles throughout history and across cultures.

So there are some BIG IDEAS! Hopefully thought provoking and stimulating.



	The Director's Concept A director's concept for a theatre production is his/her idea of what the production should convey. Although the playwright provides a rather extensive template for production within a script, the director, cast, and production team must make many choices about how to realize on stage what the playwright has written. Months before a theatre production opens, the director, dramaturgs, and designers begin meeting to talk about their ideas. The director leads these discussions and the team collaboratively shapes the production concept under the director's guidance. The production team for The Waiting Room began meeting in April 2007. In these early meetings, they discussed their ideas about the play under the guidance of director Anna Ward. After a few of these discussions, Anna sent the following message via email to the design team about her developing concept. Email from Anna Ward to the design team: Although I have communicated a bit with you all about the show, I wanted to make an effort to more clearly articulate my concept/approach ideas. I want to try to communicate my overall idea for the world we are attempting to create for the audience to you as designers. ---I still like the image of women's magazines as a starting point. The play asks us to examine what is being communicated in each of the time periods as the acceptable standards of women's health, beauty and expected behavior. Magazines are a primary contemporary source for this information, also found in waiting rooms and referenced in the play. We see images in magazines that we interpret as reality, even knowing that the images have been doctored with airbrushes and photoshop. Women's heath and relationship concerns are related though surveys and checklists with anecdotes that are frequently fabricated. Our contemporary societal definitions of what it is to be a woman are often defined and reiterated in media. The media often contradicts itself as well, making suggestions that aging and wrinkles are ok, yet advertising on the next page an anti wrinkle creme, for example. ---How can we relate that tension between what we know is real and the perceived reality through the world of the play? Visually, if we stay with the sense of heightened reality that appears in magazine imagery as well as acknowledging the heightened reality of the play I think we can accomplish the false sense of reality. However, each of the three main female characters has entered the waiting room with some part of this idealistic perception falling apart. It may be that the dialogue is enough to create that tension but it may be interesting to play with some visual cues that reveal the world breaking down alongside the characters-- just a thought... ---Liminal states also cause tension. Liminal is defined as, "of or pertaining to the threshold or initial stage of a process." When we are in a waiting room or recovery room (liminal spaces) we are between two places, what is, and what will or might be- what we think is wrong and what we find out, the process of healing, dying, changing, etc. The women are each at a threshold, physically and in their perceptions of their roles as women. Where they are in that transition is different depending on the period in which they exist and the character's choices. ---Each time period is both unique and similar in its definition of women's roles. Each time period reveals different aspects of cultural communication of those roles, asking the audience to examine the spectrum of what they believe to be true and what the choices are, around being a woman. We are asked to recognize the liminal existence of women's roles throughout history and across cultures. So there are some BIG IDEAS! Hopefully thought provoking and stimulating.
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