In early production meetings in August 2002, Charlie and his design team discussed the power of storytelling. “A well-told story can completely involve the listener, or in our case, the audience,” Charlie said to get the ball rolling. The production team asked themselves, “How do we involve the audience in these two great stories?” Early meetings discussed the idea of setting the two plays in places ranging from a beach to a temple to a kitchen. These ideas all seemed too literal for Scenic Designer John Culbert and Charlie. What they settled on is what you see today: an almost blank canvas. An off-white carpet covers the stage spilling into the seating area of the theatre giving you, the audience, the feeling that you occupy the same space as the performers.

During the early planning phases of James Joyce’s The Dead, Charlie approached Costume Designer Linda Roethke with the idea of designing costumes for the fourteen storytellers in The Romance Cycle. While the costumes for James Joyce’s The Dead (which Linda also designed) were rooted in realistic period recreations, clothes for The Romance Cycle are “storytelling costumes” created for the actors rather than for the characters. This process was uniquely different because for the most part, Linda had no idea which characters would be played by each of these very different fourteen actors. During the two-day workshop, she asked the following questions of each actor: “What would you wear out on a hot date?” “What do you like best about your body?” and “What do you like the least?” This quickly opened a dialogue about comfort zones versus problem areas for the actor, along with a nonobjective view of her own. Linda pointed out, “Different actors are more comfortable with different style lines. I take this very seriously, having spent years as an actor myself wearing costumes that made me extremely uncomfortable. For example, Jay Whittaker feels more comfortable in a clean military cut, whereas Chaon Cross enjoys a flowing soft silhouette.” With this kind of information collected from every member of the cast, Linda developed a design that works for each actor and, at the same time, works for the company as a whole.

Charlie had numerous meetings with Scenic Designer John Culbert, Associate Scenic Designer Jack Magaw, and Properties Manager Sage Reed. Since a traditional storyteller uses very little in the way of props they decided to keep the prop choices simple. They discussed everything from masks to chairs to pillows to the trunk that Iachimo hides in to gain entry to Imogen’s bedchamber. They decided the trunk used in Cymbeline to conceal Iachimo could also double as the casket for Pericles’ wife, Thaisa. Most of the trunks Sage found were too ornate, too period or too culture-specific. They decided it would be easier to build one rather than buy one.

Charlie and John’s research showed that some of the earliest forms of storytelling employed the use of masks to differentiate characters. Masks, therefore, will be used by the company of actors to distinguish between the British and Roman Armies in Cymbeline. But how would they create vast numbers of soldiers with only fourteen actors? They came up with the idea of putting several masks on poles that can be held by the each of the actors who suddenly become a multitude of soldiers.

Andre Pluess, Lindsay Jones and Joshua Horvath, dubbed “The Sound Boys” by the company, created the sound design for the production. Still working from the idea that the actor is the storyteller, they decided that 99% of the sound will be actor-created and generated. The original Cymbeline and Pericles already have a great deal of music written into the plays by Shakespeare. “The Sound Boys” used Shakespeare’s original lyrics and composed their own music.

Throughout the rehearsal and production process, Charlie, the designers and company of actors will continue to bring their talents, creativity and ideas to The Romance Cycle. Theatre artists by nature are storytellers; they express the human condition and carry our history and traditions, our values and lessons for living, our hopes and dreams in the stories they tell. In today’s world, we are captured by the bright lights of our television sets and computer screens far too often. The Romance Cycle will give us the opportunity to gather again at the central fire, share a meal, sing, dance, and celebrate together the theatrical power of storytelling.