Kejia Yu
Scenic/Production Design
Las Meninas
By Lynn Nottage
Rauh Theater
The story, as I perceived it, is like a mystery, and the queen's love is like a mystery whose fate is determined after her marriage to Louis XIV. In the script all her experiences go round and round and back again, she is like a person lost in the maze of the Versailles garden, like a person lost in the choices of her life.
On the floor treatment, I chose to use mirrors, not only because Versailles impressed me with the Hall of Mirrors. It was also because I felt that the imagery of mirrors resonated deeply with the story. Mirrors can reflect the truth completely, but they can also reflect falsity, emulation, and illusion through distortion. Was Nabo really in love with the Queen? Was Louise really Queen's daughter? Did the king have any other mistresses besides La Valliere? In this court, people are lost in illusion to please and emulate their upper class.
I divided the circular maze into five parts, left and right, front and back, vertically on the stage. I think the different pieces also present the role of their respective frames very well and are more conducive to showing the different scenes in which the story takes place. I wanted to keep the frame structure that I designed at the beginning, because the characters in the story live in the past history, in the previous paintings, just like the metaphor contained in the name of the play – Las Meninas.
Model
