The State of the Art: Scholarship

If you're a fan of the show, you may have noticed that we did not follow the doubling scheme suggested in the script. These doublings were considered standard after they were used in the 1984 Booth Theatre Broadway premiere, which was lead by Sondheim and Lapine. However, many productions have diverged from this doubling scheme as Sondheim and Lapine note them as suggestions. After reading this article from The Oxford Handbook of Sondheim Studies, the director, costume designer, and I sat down to have a chat about resonances across the two acts. The result you see in our production is a combination of those resonance considerations, actors' strengths and growth, and voice parts.

In Act I, Dot (loosely modeled after Madeleine Knobloch, Seurat's mistress) asks George for the painting of her powdering herself, which is modeled after this painting in staging. This painting is a comical one, with Madeleine not depicted in perfect likeness. However, the most interesting fact about this painting is that Seurat--of whom we have no self-portrait--used to be in it. This article covers the discovery of this hidden self portrait in the upper left through x-ray.

The chromolume scene is a famously difficult one. The audience is sometimes confused by the sudden jump in narrative, and designers must come up with something that is "post-modern" and a "Rube Goldberg type contraption." Jeffrey Rubel covers the 1984 Broadway premiere and the 2019 Broadway revival's choices in the chromolume scene, discussing how they effect the understanding of the interweaving of science and art.

Shanks offers a feminist counter-reading of the relationship between George and Dot. This article focuses on Dot's body and her centrality to the musical's workings and Euro-American modernity. Shanks utilizes the bustle as a connection between Dot's ideas of America and her original station in France.

By the time you see the play, I will have been working on it for 11 1/2 months. Last fall, I realized there was an environmental conservation theme within the play and wrote this paper about it. It is the reason I believe this play is worth producing at Villanova right now, and I find it to be heartbreakingly compelling in its condemnation of destruction in the name of progress. We have made an effort to create an environmentally conscious version of this show, the results of which you can see on the television in the lobby.