Arcadia
By Tom Stoppard
Doug Eacho
deacho@mac.com
240-274-4534
A simply furnished room in a 19th century English manor. Septimus, 22, is
grading at his desk, upstage left. Thomisina, 13, is working at the table
that occupies the center of the room, papers spread around her. She looks
up, facing the audience.
Thomisina: When you stir your rice pudding, Septimus, the spoonful of
jam spreads itself round making red trails like the picture of a meteor in
my astronomical atlas. (She turns upstage to him, fiercely.)
But if you stir backward, the jam will not come together again. Indeed, the
pudding does not notice and continues to turn pink just as before. Do you
think this is odd?
Septimus: No.
Thomisina: Well, I do. You cannot stir things apart.
Septimus slowly stands, gaining more and more conviction, a rare show of
emotion in his dry, professorial demeanor.
Septimus: No more you can, time must needs run backward, and since it
will not, we must stir our way onward mixing as we go, disorder out of
disorder into disorder until pink is complete, unchanging and
unchangeable, and we are done with it for ever. (Thomisina is in rapt
attention, as Septimus stops himself.) This is known as free will or selfdetermination.
(He notices his pet tortoise has strayed to another part of his desk.)
Sit!
I finished Arcadia on the Amtrak back from visiting a friend in New Haven. I had started
it on the way there, already entranced by the charming characters, the heady diversions
into academics, and the ridiculously intricate plot. I had long held a desire to direct a fulllength play at Brown, and it had definitely occurred to me that this could be a strong
candidate: it was smart, ambitious, young, and definitely doable. But it didn’t truly grab
me until I reached the final scene. Arcadia bounces back and forth between two time
periods- the early 19th century and modern day- with two casts, both working in the same
room. In the final 20 minutes, both casts are onstage at the same time, not acknowledging
the other, but speaking over each other, complimenting each other, the two halves
composing one coherent linear story. It all builds to (or, more accurately, disintegrates to)
a final tableau of two couples waltzing, holding on to each other, confused, scared, and
trying their best to waltz even though they’re not very good at it. I nearly cried, but
stopped myself, partially because I was on the Amtrak, but mostly because I was
immediately irritated at myself. Wasn’t the play about the pitfalls of Romanticism?
Wasn’t the love story revealed at the end a bit twisted and unhealthy? What was so
moving about two couples waltzing, anyways? And I started to read it again. After all, as
I knew then, I had to direct this play. How else could I answer these questions?
Arcadia has little concern for plot. There is sex, there is death, there is Lord Byron, there
is a duel… but all of those things happen offstage. In fact, if you were to sum up the plot
of Arcadia in a sentence, you might end up with “Someone thinks Lord Byron killed
another poet over sex, but they’re wrong.” Arcadia is incredibly intelligent, witty, funny,
heartfelt, sophisticated, and fun. That said, not much happens. But, of course, that’s the
point.
Our room onstage, full of scholars and researchers, is the last hold-out against the forces
of the outside world, the very forces that would make Arcadia more “exciting”: sex,
death, violence. This shelter, though, isn’t very sustainable. All around these characters,
things are collapsing. Order progresses into Disorder. Narratives established at the
beginning of the play are shown to be inaccurate by its close, the symbolism of some
characters is pointed out and ridiculed by others, romances end or start without warning,
the Enlightenment gives way to gothic Romanticism, Newtonian physics gives way to
quantum messiness, and characters have difficulty coping with the second law of
thermodynamics. Some characters abandon their intellectual work for their desire
(whether for romance or for fame), others continue their research, only to discover the
chaotic nature of the universe. The play ends with the mess of contradictions that so
fascinated me on the train. Things don’t build, they collapse, they splinter. It’s deeply
unsettling, but in Stoppard’s telling, it’s very beautiful.
Arcadia is about how people deal with disorder. It’s about why scholars continue to
research topics that yield nothing. It’s about why we fall in love, in face of the disruption
and pain that love can cause. It’s about living in the face of death. That’s not to say that
the characters deal with pain, disappointment and death well. They struggle, and often
fail, falling into depression or anger. The best they can do- perhaps the best we all can
do- is comprehend what is going on around them, and when even that isn’t possible, hold
on to each other. And, despite everything, try to keep going.
STORY
In 1817, a tutor reluctantly begins a sex-ed class with his precocious 13-year-old
aristocratic pupil. Today, an overly ambitious scholar tries to prove that Byron killed a
minor poet in a duel. In 1817, the tutor, not Byron, gets challenged to a duel, but isn’t
terribly concerned about it. Today, a mathematician tries to find a pattern in grouse
populations. In 1820, our brilliant pupil dies in a fire, and our tutor goes mad over her
death. Today, a writer tries to use him as her symbol for the transition between the
Enlightenment and Romanticism.
Along the way, we are treated (that is, those of us who are nerdy enough to think it’s a
treat are- but let’s be honest, that’s a large majority of Brown students) to monologues
and debates over romantic poetry, Fermat’s last theorem, drawing, theoretical physics,
religion, the steam engine, Cleopatra, and (my personal favorite) gardening history.
Someone breaks out into tears over Latin translation.
There are seven scenes, alternating between past and present. The room is always the
same, and transitions will be lit and fluid. There are no real set changes. If a laptop stays
on a desk through the past scenes, nobody notices it. This is one, linear story, not two. At
the beginning of the play, all props are doubled- a book in 1817 has its double, looking
considerably older, brandished about in the modern scenes. This rule, as the play goes on,
starts to get broken more and more frequently. A strange character in the present shows
up, double-cast, in the past. Finally, in the seventh scene, the two casts of the play are
simultaneously onstage, speaking over each other, next to each other, but never truly
acknowledging each other. Arcadia brings itself to the point of collapse, but doesn’t quite
get there. That’s left to the audience.
Of course, there’s a lot more going on here than people blabbing on about academics and
grandiose themes of Order and Chaos. The characters (there are 13, with one doublecasting, so 12 actors) show considerable realism and heart. Septimus, the tutor, quietly
loves the charismatic matriarch of the household, but finds refuge in the eager crush of
16-year-old Thomisina, the pupil. Thomisina’s considerably less intellectual modern
counterpart, Chloe, carelessly throws herself on the snooty Oxford don, Bernard. A poet
tries to retain his dignity, despite the fact that his poetry is terrible, and everyone is
screwing his wife. Romance is contrasted with reason, but sometimes they are shown to
be quite similar. The play is both a tribute to the intellectual life, and a biting critique of
the repressed characters who live it. It’s also, I should add, extremely funny, as the
characters sometimes fall back on their wit instead of expressing themselves. The play is
rooted in a sharp dialogue that recalls Oscar Wilde, making its departures into profound
statements and honest confessions of love all the more remarkable. And there is a live
tortoise.
DESIGN
Order progresses into Disorder. Obviously, this has a lot of design potential, and I think
our designs go beyond simple the potentially trite trappings of this theme, finding
something definitely cohesive with what Arcadia is exploring, but also very beautiful.
SET
Jenny Filipetti’s set begins with the simple room described in the script: simple walls and
furnishings that fit comfortably in both time periods. But at the end of Act 1, as the
characters exit the space and we hear a gunshot slightly out of context: a small intrusion
of violence into our composed world. And a panel of wallpaper falls off of its frame,
revealing behind it a network of string webbed over the back of the frame. As the second
act progresses, particularly in the strange, ethereal final scene, more and more panels fall.
The borders of the world the characters have created are crumbling in face of the external
forces of chaos. What is revealed is all they have left: connections, relationships,
networks that might be unreliable and certainly can’t be analyzed or understood like the
science or poetry that so preoccupies them- but that is what is left over after shock,
deconstruction, and death. At the close of the play, all of the wall panels have fallen,
leaving the characters exposed and vulnerable in the face of a beautiful disorder.
The three walls of the set will be made up of several panels, each made of a wooden
frame with canvas stretched across the downstage side. The canvas sheets will be held in
the back by string, which can easily be snapped off (either all at once, or in sections, so a
corner drapes down, then another corner…). And behind all of the wooden panels runs a
web of strings, that- when all of the canvas sheets have been taken down and all of the
frames are bare- will be a cohesive, beautiful (though chaotic) design.
MUSIC
Music is extremely important to me, and to the play. Arcadia, as Stoppard writes it,
features a piano (offstage) that is played by several characters throughout the play, and
ends up being very crucial in the final scene (Septimus teaching Thomisina how to
waltz). I have worked with Katharine Joo, one of Brown’s best pianists, on expanding the
role of the piano throughout the play and selecting appropriate pieces. Further, instead of
using recordings throughout the play, Katharine will be playing, live, behind one of the
side walls. This will allow her to adjust the tempo and pace of her playing to match up
with the onstage action (though, obviously, this will be extensively worked through in
rehearsals), and it will provide the audience with the irreplaceable joy of engaging with
live music.
The piano, as with the entire play, begins governed by simple rules: it is always diegetic,
and it always plays music appropriate to the period. Of course, by the end of the play,
these rules have become a bit unclear, and then progressed to being blatantly violated.
The music, as with the set, will chart the progression from ordered, simple music, to lush,
strange, modal music that closes the play. Sometimes the music adds a sense of intrigue,
fragility, and etherealness to the action, at other times the music’s intense Romanticism
will be in opposition to the tenuous awkwardness that passes for romance onstage. I
would love to talk more about the music design in the interview, especially in the final
scene, which is almost entirely set to piano music, which we have wholly mapped out. I
will also come with my laptop and speakers, so I can play some of this beautiful music
for you.
COSTUMES
Period costumes! Period costumes! Yay! (Specifically, the costumes in the Past scenes
are in the Regency style- think Jane Austen movies). Regency clothes tended to be a bit
flamboyant and heavy on accessories, aspects that we’re cutting down on. Historical
accuracy isn’t really our aim with costumes. Instead, Emily and I will design costumes
that certainly are in the Regency style, but that have a simplicity and cohesiveness (with a
color palette that crosses both time periods) that emphasizes the conceptual, abstracted
nature of this production. This will also, conveniently, be cheaper. We also intend to steal
borrow from the mainstage costume shop and Trinity Rep to try to keep costs to a
minimum. (We probably won’t budget much money towards the modern costumes).
PROPS
A large part of the collapse into chaos that drives Arcadia is actually blatantly written
into the script in the form of props. Quite frankly, there’s a lot of shit onstage by the end
of the play. Characters bring on magazines, research, mounds of paper, laptop computers,
drawings, a complicated apparatus for making tea, lamps and candles, and- as I
mentioned- a live tortoise. Pretty much none of this is ever taken offstage. Information
accumulates, mixes, and ultimately is a destructive force: though the characters are often
trying to find order in their research, they usually accomplish the opposite- their work
leads them to discover how strange and chaotic the world actually is. Emily Toner will be
heading up props design, creating most of the drawings and diagrams herself, and helping
me spearhead the search for a Brown student who has a pet tortoise.
LIGHTS
Hey, you know that lighting designer you know? The one who’s not doing anything right
now? Who would totally love to take on Arcadia because that’s just how much they love
The Theatre? They’re pretty talented, I think. Their designs will be pretty impressive.
In all seriousness, though we do not have a lighting designer (and not from lack of
trying), I have put a lot of thought into lighting design. Specifically, I think Arcadia’s
lighting design will be a pretty big departure from what I’ve seen at PW over the past
year. There will be no sudden changes, no blackouts, no funky masks or effects. That’s
not to say that the lighting will be entirely naturalistic, though. Certainly, lighting will be
used to signify time of day and weather (there are points when it really has to). And, like
all of the design, it will be much more straightforward and natural at the play’s start than
at the end. What I’m really looking for is a design with flow, slow changes, and subtlety.
This play is not a jagged back and forth between two plotlines. It is one linear
progression, and lighting will have a huge role in conveying that. Colors will change over
long chunks of scenes, they will dim and brighten softly but importantly. Audience
members will feel a scene change coming pages before it actually happens because of the
forward movement of the lights. Of course, this will be a significant challenge for any
lighting designer, but I think that there is a lot of talent at Brown that’s totally up to the
task. We just have to, you know, kidnap them and lock them in downspace for a week.
PROCESS
I am extremely excited to work with Brown’s immensely talented student actors to get
this production out of my head and make it real. While I have my own specific plans for
the rehearsal process- which I’ll get to in a second- I fully intend to work with my actors
to refine this process, asking for their ideas for exercises, their feedback on what we’re
doing, and their work on their (and others’) characters.
My goal in rehearsals is to guide the actors into finding the happy balance between
naturalism and symbolism that Stoppard has written into the script. Staging will be
largely still, both emphasizing the abstract nature of the play, and allowing that much
more shock to accompany the character’s occasional breaking of rules, displays of
emotion, and child-like energy. Mostly taking from Viewpoints work, we’ll start with
two intensive, cast-wide rehearsals: one a read-through and thorough table work on every
major theme and character, the next a physical introduction to the “soft focus”
emphasized by Viewpoints, and quick exercises with the play in mind, forcing the actors
to start making impulsive, intuitive decisions regarding their characters (I have specific
exercises in mind, you can ask me about them in the interview.) Then we will
immediately begin scene work, still with Viewpoints in play: working with exaggerated
distance, tempo, emotions, and physicalities and then re-staging with those exercises in
mind, informing our work. Hopefully we will have very tentative blocking in place
within two weeks (casts, of course, will alternate nights, though a LOT of time will be
spent on the joint-cast scene 7), and have a third week to more thoroughly delve into our
characters before tech week. I’ll also have the actors do research on their respective
character’s academic focuses, to help get in the mood of the world of Arcadia (it’s the
actual researching and time with books that’s important, not whatever they’ll be reporting
back on). Throughout, I will either serve to remind the actors of the big themes they’re
grappling with, or to bring them down to earth. I’ll also work with my stage manager,
Mark Stokely (who I worked with and was extremely impressed with in TA3), to keep an
eye on the many technical aspects of the show throughout rehearsals- accent work,
keeping the dialogue fast and sharp, and working with live music. Mounting this large
production in a month will be difficult, but I feel fully prepared to do so, and can’t wait to
start.
DO IT.
Arcadia is, admittedly, a relatively well-known play by a very well-known playwright.
(Unsurprisingly, teachers enjoy assigning a play about sexy teachers and eager students.)
But we are presenting Arcadia in a way that probably departs from most people’s
expectations about the play, keeping it dark, moody, and very designed. Also, reading a
play is a poor substitute for seeing it performed, and while Arcadia is often read, it has
never been revived in New York, and is rarely done in high schools, so few Brown
students will have ever seen the play. That many Brown students know of Arcadia will
only generate excitement for the production, and, PW being PW, the audience (and make
no mistake, there will be a HUGE audience for this play) will probably come in expecting
to see an Arcadia a bit divergent than what they read in high school English, and still
expect to be amused, entertained, moved, and enthralled. I fully intend to deliver.
It has been over three years since PW put on The Invention of Love (fall first slot ’05),
and the time is certainly ripe to show Brown another full-length Stoppard play, and to
allow Brown actors to engage with such a bright, witty text. Specifically, while the
themes of Arcadia are rather obviously collegiate and academic, I think they are
particularly relevant to Brown, today. Our world is decidedly anti-intellectual. I don’t just
mean that in a political “I-can’t-believe-people-don’t-believe-in-evolution” sense; even
within Brown, there is a resistance to showing intense passion over one’s studies. I have
difficulty imagining a Brown student earnestly reacting to algorithmic graphs with
Hannah’s “Oh! But… how beautiful!” Arcadia is, in many ways, a paean to a lost world
of sincere intellectuals, an age where being intelligent meant that one was educated in a
huge host of subjects, and to people who would rather curl up in a sweater and study 19th
century landscaping than socialize. It’s not preachy, and this intellectual life is definitely
subjected to criticism. But, as a students in a modern university, it’s extremely refreshing
to see such love of learning and innocence, and I have few hopes for Arcadia as great as
the hope that the audience will walk away from the show with a more earnest but more
rich view of academics, of their relationships, and of the beauty inherent in the order and
chaos both so prevalent in our world.
Finally, Arcadia will demonstrate PW’s ability not just to create challenging, subversive
art, but to craft a more straightforward play with polish, excellence, and grace. It will
show that PW can put on a more lengthy play, and that Brown students will sit through it.
It will be funny, grieving, charming, sinister, sincere, witty, light and dark, romantic and
intellectual… a mess of contradictions that is ultimately incredibly grandiose and
ambitious and still irrevocably human. It’s life, brought to you for two hours by 12 actors
and a tortoise. And you, PW. Here’s one last moment I’ll leave you with. The italics are
my own notes (as with the top).
The end of scene 6. The play is beginning to approach its ending. It is the
middle of the night, the set is bathed in blue. Several walls have already
come down, the intricacies of string webbing behind revealed. The piano
begins, Romantic but with very strange, modern opening harmonies- a
spacious, beautiful piece that has shown itself in snatches throughout the
earlier scenes and transitions.
Lady Croom confronts Septimus about a love letter to her she discovered,
and his recent tryst with the house’s resident ho-bag, Mrs Chater. He is
seated, deferring to Croom’s striking self-confidence and beauty as she
stands, center, berating him.
Lady Croom: Your letter to me goes very ill with your conduct to Mrs
Chater, Mr Hodge. I have had experience of being betrayed before the ink
is dry, but to be betrayed before the pen is even dipped, and with the
village noticeboard, what am I to think of such a performance?
Septimus: My lady, I was alone with my thoughts in the gazebo, (a panel
begins to fall) when Mrs Chater ran me to the ground, and I being in such
a passion, in an agony of unrelieved desireCroom: Oh! (More of the panel peels off, the music builds)
Septimus: - I thought in my madness that the Chater with her skirts over
her head (snap! More of the panel peels off, picking up pace as Septimus
goes with it, more and more energized by his uncharacteristic sincerity)
would give me the momentary illusion (snap!) of the happiness to which I
dared not put a face. (The entire panel collapses.)
(Pause. Septimus is still seated, but barely. Croom takes a second to
compose herself, and while a lesser woman might show her
embarrassment, Croom meets Septimus’s slightly fearful gaze.)
Croom: I do not know when I have received a more unusual complement,
Mr Hodge. I hope I am more than a match for Mrs Chater with her head in
a bucket. Does she wear drawers?
Septimus: She does. (slowly, the lights begin to shift, the sun rising for the
next scene)
Croom: Yes, I have heard that drawers are being worn now. It is unnatural
for women to got up like jockeys. I cannot approve.
(Croom crosses to the stage left door, and pauses.)
I know nothing of Pericles or the Athenian philosophers. I can spare them
an hour, in my sitting room when I have bathed. Seven o’clock.
Bring a book.
Septimus stays seated, unsure what sort of invitation he has just received,
and finally exits when he has no choice, the play is moving on without him.
The music and lights continue their development into the next, and final
scene. The present-day cast marches on with more stuff, more papers,
more chaos, as everything mixes together. Always moving forward. Never
looking back.
I am bursting with ideas, excitement, and energy. Please let me create this before that
energy goes stale, and please let Brown experience this masterpiece the only way it really
can be understood: performed, in a theater, live, intimate, immediate. Thank you.
STAFF
Production Manager- Alex Lubensky
Stage Manager- Mark Stokely
Assistant Stage Manager- freshman!!
Set Designer- Jenny Filipetti
Music (selection and performance) - Katharine Joo
Costume Designer- Emily Fishman (mentor: Lucy Sedgwick)
Props Designer- Emily Toner
Lighting Designer- my new best friend
BUDGET
Set: 200
Costumes: 200
Props: 120
Lights, Sound: 30
Printing/stuff: 100