Production Stills

Production stills are by Mark S. Catalano unless otherwise indicated.

Artwork is by set designer Jaime Schrank and costume designer Jess Reed.

As director Nancy Kindelan states (see From the Director) the commanding image that defined the play’s mise en scène was Drancy’s often-closed boxcar museum. Opening the museum and bringing it to life gave its silenced spirits the opportunity to speak. The staircases that the detainees (young and old) climbed to large dorm-like overcrowded rooms where they slept (crammed together in multi-tiered bunks) and where children used to play were imaginatively created by a collection of ladders of various sizes and shapes. These ladders indicated different locations throughout the internment camp. The museum artifacts (that included large blown-up duplications of Georges Horan’s realistic charcoal drawings) were not hung in an orderly fashion; instead, they were carelessly scattered throughout the mise en scène. Dust covers were thrown over the museum’s objects and dim lighting created ominous shadows suggesting the interior of the forgotten museum. Hidden throughout the closed museum, behind overturned furniture and fallen pictures, were the actors who, at first, appeared as ghost-like figures and eventually gave voice to the play’s stories.

Imagistic Explorations of the Playscript by Set Designer Jaime Schrank

Deportation image – internees putting on clothes, packing suitcases and bundles	Images of dehumanization – internees disrobe and create piles of clothing
Frozen sculptures of mothers’ agony	Woman in bourgeois comfort in tower
Hunger frenzy – piles or lines of empty blue bowls?
Company assuming various positions around and on boxcar; no one inside	After dancer closes and locks door we hear and see steam
Nightmare of no exit – brown indicates dancer trying to find her way out; maybe dances all the way across the stage inside the rows of barbed wire? Ends in crumpled heap center stage
Blum and Ketty sit between two rows of barbed wire	Close-up of Blum inbetween rows of wire
More accurate image of the bunks made from tables
March to the train – internees pick up clothes from pile with X; climb ladders	Option of having everyone climb/surround one ladder