Portfolio

Five notebook drawings/entries by Elizabeth LeCompte, director of The Wooster Group, made during early rehearsals for TO YOU, THE BIRDIE! (Phèdre) in 1999/2000/2001. Paul Schmidt wrote the script, after Racine’s Phèdre, especially for The Wooster Group, in 1993. TO YOU, THE BIRDIE! (Phèdre) opened in 2001.

Andrew Quick:

I want to ask you about the design of TO YOU, THE BIRDIE! (Phèdre). In the early rehearsals it’s clear that you were interested in certain forms of modernist architecture as a source for the set.

Elizabeth LeCompte:

I was very interested in Californian modernist architecture at the time. I was looking at the Joseph Eichler houses, the work of Rudolf Schindler, modular houses, that kind of thing.

Quick:

Was it because this architecture had a certain look or tone to it?

LeCompte:

I’m not sure why. It was just something that I was exploring visually at the time and I brought it into the process. I trusted that it would work itself out in the piece. When I bring what I’m interested in visually, it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the text. Often, I am working on something completely different and then I bring this material to the text I’m looking at.

Quick:

The design works so well in terms of the openness of the space and the flat screens and sliding doors. In some ways it connects to the earlier Japanese aesthetic that we’ve talked about. Yet, it’s very American in terms of space and light. There’s a sort of grandeur to that Californian architecture.

LeCompte:

Well, it’s not only that. There is also something about that text that was so bald and bare. When I looked at pictures of some of those Californian houses that were mainly made of glass there would often be women posing with big 1950s skirts. There was something about this that resonated with Paul’s translation: a 50s piece with a big swimming pool—I think he was indicating this with his language. So, I think I followed this route to see where the language would take me.

Quick:

Were there any other influences that determined the look of this piece?

LeCompte:

Yes. While I was looking at this architecture I also spent some time looking at the Palace of Versailles. I became very interested in the techniques of creating perspective. I was interested in that singular view, that one-to-one voice and I put it just off center.

Excerpted from “Taking it off center: perspectives on TO YOU, THE BIRDIE! (Phèdre),” in The Wooster Group Work Book, edited by Andrew Quick (Routledge 2007). © Andrew Quick

All drawings are pen and pencil on notebook paper, 8¼″ × 5¾″, 1999–2001. © The Wooster Group. Courtesy of The Wooster Group.