Bravo Award Albuquerque Arts award for scenery and lighting design for  MARAT/SADE

Marat/Sade Design Concept Statement
        Peter Weiss' s The  Persecution and Assassination of Jean Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum at Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade is that kind of strange mix of philosophy, politics, sex, violence and pure  shtick that makes for simply good theatre. Radical politics and pop tunes, Büchner meets Bye Bye Birdie!
        Research into the asylums of  the period reveals that the progressive mental health practitioners of the time had hit upon water treatment as the therapy of choice for the enlightened sane; as if the actual cleansing of the body could effect the metaphoric purification of the mind. Never mind that, from a contemporary perspective, the therapy looks more like  torture than treatment. Weiss placed the action of the play in the bath house precisely for this reason and the result is theatre that would make Artaud jealous.
        The central image is the bath house itself, cavernous, antiseptic, familiar and threatening. Seen from the perspective of the inmates, the incongruous great culverts promise access to the primal mysteries of the unconscious and at the same time presage a pending catastrophe of the scope of the great flood. Guarded by Gargoyles, the hard white tile surfaces of the space offer the inmates all the comfort and the same inevitability as a tomb.
         In  the end, with the alarm sounding, the machines of healing in shambles and an ominous red light pulsing from the depths of the sewers,  we the audience, can only stare in awe and envy at the inmates bold rebellion against the forces of life, fate and death itself.