This Is the Color Described by Time
conceived & directed by Lily Whitsitt
created by Door 10
with Stephanie Roth Haberle, Christina Rouner, Ean Sheehy, Ben Williams
set design Amy Rubin
costume design Alice Tavener
lighting design Reza Behjat
sound design Ben Williams
associate director Jim Dawson
dramaturg Morgan Jenness
additional sound design Christina Campanella
Door 10 producer Sarah Peterson
stage management Elizabeth Emanuel, Molly Shea
At THIS IS THE COLOR DESCRIBED BY THE TIME, your very own headphones drop you inside the imagined unconscious of avant-garde writer Gertrude Stein, pursuing her everyday routine in France as World War II erupts all around her. In Gertrude’s constantly shifting mind, Alice B. Toklas, Thornton Wilder, and Vichy official Bernard Faÿ flutter in and out of the frame.
READ! IN AMERICAN THEATRE
and IN THE BROOKLYN RAIL
“Lingers in the memory! Creates a simultaneous sense of dislocation and intimacy… an unsettling descent into the writer’s inner world. The show liberally borrows from horror tropes: flickering lights, strange apparitions, people popping out of cupboards and a dense sonic environment incorporating everything from cicadas to tectonic grumblings to the crack of snapped necks as Toklas kills pigeons for dinner. In that last case, there are no birds on stage: Ms. Haberle is merely digging her thumbs into tomatoes. But we visualize something gruesome, and that is what lingers in the memory, anchored by one simple, queasy-making sound effect.
— The New York Times
“If you’re a theatre-maker, and especially if you’re a playwright, this really does change everything. The (vital)(audio) connection to the physical space and the human presence is severed, and in so doing, the whole hierarchy of dramatic “reality” is reversed. The stage space–the actual room–becomes subservient to the audio track, and in many ways the theatrical experience is suddenly richer than any you have ever seen before. If you want to experience something truly new and radically transformative in the theatre first-hand, buy yourself a ticket and slap on those headphones.” — Jeffrey Jones
presented in rep with SOUND HOUSE
