THE LAST DAYS OF JUDAS ISCARIOT - DESIGN CONCEPT
Set design concept for the 2021 production of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, by Stephen Guirgis, directed by Louise Day.
The production was originally scheduled for a run at the ADC Theatre Cambridge in January 2021, which had to be cancelled due to a new wave of COVID-19.
The production was postponed an resumed in November in 2021 as a small-scale studio performance for the design had to be adapted and cut down accordingly. Below is the original design proposal.
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"Set in a courtroom in Purgatory, The Last Days puts Judas’ case to a hilarious, riotous, piercing trial, the results of which are sure to make the inhabitants of Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory — and the audience — reconsider what each thought they knew about forgiveness, faith, and the human inside one of the history’s most infamous figures."
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THE MOOD AND CONCEPT
From a design perspective I loved the challenge of creating an imagined world of true neutrality, that is in eternal limbo between the forces of good and evil, of salvation and damnation. The courtroom in purgatory invokes the image of an elevator, temporarily stuck between floors and equally likely to resume its ascent into heaven or come crashing down into hell.
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THE COURTROOM
A room in limbo, outside of space and time. Rather than an actual courtroom, I imagine it as a place of storage and transition, where the lives of every human are neatly catalogued and kept safe to be retrieved on judgement day. I’ve often seen this sort of place interpreted in a very bright/white design, for example the station-like limbo in Harry Potter, however I’m more interested in making it a pale grey: truly neutral and emotionless - an antipode to the highly emotional matters debated.
I envision the walls of the room lined with seemingly endless filing cabinets, storing the information on everyone who has ever lived. Some of these could be designed to open, creating seats and tables, lecterns for witnesses, or simply to produce and discard props conveniently.
For the defendant’s chair I imagine a cocoon-like swing chair. I have always found this particular design very fascinating because on the surface they convey a certain sense of luxury and comfort, but anyone who has ever sat in one knows how restrictive and claustrophobic they actually are. Once seated, it is extremely difficult to get out, which would leave Judas both stuck and exposed. Additionally, the fact that the chair is kept in delicate balance by a single thread would be a subtle way of emphasising the fragility of the situation - and what is at stake. I would place this courtroom onto a raised platform, taking up the majority of the stage.
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THE REAL WORLD
Below the raised courtroom, I envision a series of doors in the podium opens towards a small strip of stage nearest to the audience for flashbacks and fourth-wall breaking monologues. Different scenes/times/locations can be differentiated by which doors the characters step out of, and the design of these doors could potentially reflect that by incorporating elements of the individual settings.
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THE GALLERY
The hollow underneath the courtroom would create quite a special place which could be used for all sorts of things, but personally I think it is best suited for the final scene. By opened all doors at once, the audience will get a view of this completely new and completely unexpected part of the stage. It could be very interesting to stage the scene in a way that it is visible only through these slice-like “windows into hell” which would give us the chance to leave much of the deeply personal interpretation of such a place to the audience’s imagination. The room itself, I envision completely in red, contrasting the neutrality of the rest of the design. I love the idea because came across when researching torture methods (for a friend, of course), and this one was actually applied to prisoners in several countries. But also, because it will give a sense of disorientation, leaving it up to the viewer how vast hell actually is.
THE ELEVATORS
On both sides of this raised platform, an elevator shaft connects the purgatory to the heavens above and the fires of hell below. On platform level, the lift opens sideways onto the stage, while on ground level, they open towards the audience. This allows for hidden stairway access and omits the trouble of actually having to install working elevators - which I’m not sure is actually possible.
In addition to creating the overall atmosphere of the borderline between good and evil, damnation and salvation, these elevators could be a fun way to integrate subtle Easter Eggs into the staging. Witnesses brought forward from the depth of hell could be “coming up” while witnesses descending from the heavens could be “going down”, as indicated by LED projections. There might even be ways to incorporate them into the tension that builds around Judas’ fate, by having the lifts indicate “going down” after particularly poignant arguments from the prosecution and “going up” when the defence made an especially good case.
Above: Render of the stage and possible elavations, provided by stage manager after initial design proposal.
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Below (left): Sketch of adjusted design proposal, taking into account the reduced hight of the space and omitting the gallery. The "stairway to heaven" was changed into an ethereal space visable through breaks in the back wall of the set. One elevator in the upstage left corner replcaing originally proposed flanking lifts.
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Below (right): Sketch of adjusted design proposal, colourcoded and annotated
WATERCOLOUR ILLUSTRATION OF FINAL SET DESIGN
