Lightening Season

Words and image by Assistant Director Henry C Krempels

 

13 November, 2018

Love-Lies-Bleeding is set in isolation – an artist’s house way out in the desert. It mirrors the current situation of the owner of the house, Alex Macklin, who, after recluding in the desert suffers two debilitating strokes and is subsequently unable to communicate with the outside world. Nor with the inside? (I’ll leave that question mark right where it is.) 

The surrounding environment really intrudes on this play in a fascinating way and over the last week or two we’ve been introducing the various design elements into the rehearsal room. And here’s one thing I’ve learned: the desert is noisy. 

In one of my favourite passages from the play, Lia, Alex’s wife and carer, played by Clara Indrani, tells her new house guests about “lightening season” and the time she took her husband out to watch the storm rolling in. She tells us that his usually unresponsive body twitched at the thunder drumming through the mountains. 

This passage is a beautiful example of the role nature has in this play: the heat, the storms, the cicadas, the sand and, of course, the plants. They’re everywhere you turn (even in the title) and there have been long, thoughtful discussions about the design reflecting that. I won’t say anymore.

 

Love-Lies-Bleeding I Until 8 December I Book now