DESIGNER STATEMENTS MARK WENDLAND—SET DESIGN


“The world is violent and mercurial—it will have its way with you. We are saved only by love—love for each other and the love that we pour into the art we feel compelled to share: being a parent; being a writer; being a painter; being a friend. We live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must save from it, all the time, is love.”


“I prefer a play to be not a noose but a net with fairly wide meshes. So many of its instance of revelations are wayward flashes, not part of the plan of the author but accidentally struck off, and perhaps these are closest to being a true celebration of the inebriate god.”


“The Rose Tattoo is the Dionysian element in human life, its mystery, its beauty, its significance.” —Tennessee Williams


On the heels of his huge success on Broadway with A Streetcar Named Desire, the thirty-six-year-old Williams fell in love with Frank Merlo, a twenty-five-year-old Sicilian American. They spent the following year together on the coast of Italy. Williams later said of Frank, “He was so close to life, he tied me down to earth.” Within two years, Williams wrote The Rose Tattoo. The dedication: “To Frank in return for Sicily.” In his Memoirs, Williams called The Rose Tattoo his “love play to the world.” Williams worked his whole life to disturb the status quo. He wanted to push his art beyond the expected in an effort to get to something greater: Greater truths about the human condition... greater connection to the human spirit! He pushed himself to rethink what the theatrical event could be, even to the point


of who could be the heroine of a work of drama! If we are to honor that spirit, Theatre Artists must work to meet Williams in that space between what we think we know and what we dream—all to create “a true celebration of the inebriate god!”


CLINT RAMOS—COSTUME DESIGN The costume design for The Rose Tattoo is based on this idea of otherness. It is centered around this immigrant woman who, through tragic loss, is navigating her way through the impending tidal wave of uncertainty. Historically, we are in the early ’50s, by the sea in Louisiana. Emotionally, we are in Serafina’s heart and mind as she bumps against the box that society has placed her in. The characters that Williams parades in and out of Serafina’s house are very diverse, and their costumes reflect that range. The clothes are rooted in reality, but absurdity seeps in when we factor in faith, desire, and sometimes, madness. A large part of what is exciting for me is a central character who makes clothes. Exploring how Serafina appears and how she dresses herself versus the appearance of the characters for whom she makes clothes is how we create tension in the design. Also, because Serafina is, in essence, an outsider—I needed to make sure that we perceive her as a believable human being. Her clothes must render her in a real manner and sometimes that means choosing the simpler options that the period offers. Modulating her appearance so we don’t lose her otherness but also bridging her to the audience’s realm of understanding is of utmost importance. Ultimately, The Rose Tattoo is about humanity, acceptance, and love—and the lengths we go to to deny ourselves those. It is about the theatre of appearance and what we look like when we unmask ourselves.


Design sketches by Mark Wendland for The Rose Tattoo 18 ROUNDABOUT THEATRE COMPANY


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