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Joanie Schultz on transforming Preston Bradley Hall

Submitted by Stephen Raskauskas, Production Dramaturge

With a week before rehearsals begin for Acis and Galatea, the cast and crew is busy preparing for this exciting site-specific production in Preston Bradley Hall at the Chicago Cultural Center.  In Handel’s opera based on Ovid’s tale, the action takes place in an idyllic pastoral landscape; however Stage Director Joanie Schultz has decided to set Bradley Hall as it once was decades ago – as a library – transforming the space into a different kind of idyllic landscape among the hustle and bustle of modern urban life.  Click “Read More” to explore Joanie’s inspiration in her own words.

Preston Bradley Hall

There were so many things that inspired this production of Acis and Galatea.

The first is Handel’s opera itself.  He has taken the story from Ovid: a story of a half-goddess pursued by a powerful monster but in love with a peaceful mortal, who is killed by the monster and made immortal by being turned into a fountain by the goddess.  But he has also added complexities to it that I believe are part of his own point of view.  First, there is the chorus.  They not only set the scene, and comment on the action, they seem to encourage the action of the play, they are an active group, encouraging the lovers to come together, warning them when the monster has arrived, and mourning the loss of the hero.  Then there is the additional character of Damon, who is not only a peacemaker but seems to encourage all parties involved that they shouldn’t get involved in love, or fight over love, that these things never end well.  The addition of Damon is key in the major question that this production asks and tries to answer: “Is love worth it?”

Is love worth it?  Think about the fighting, the heartache, the responsibility, the rejection, the effort we put into love and our quest for it.  This is magnified in a world where love can lead directly to death, to duels, to these jealous rivalries that end in mortal wounds. 

Having visited the Handel House Museum in London recently, I was struck that Handel was not only incredibly private, but seemed to not have a serious love life.  He was unmarried, and while some argue that he was gay, he could have been open about that in his circles.  There is some evidence that he carried on some affairs with women, but the evidence points to the fact that he did not take these very seriously, or let them consume his life.  His work ruled his life.  When I listen to the opera I hear that voice in Damon.  He is this additional character, some people think that he was added into the opera after it was written with Acis, Galatea, and Polypheme, and he is the one trying to talk sense into each of these men.  He believes that love is not worth suffering and dying for.

I wanted to find a world to set this opera in that would bring to life that question.  I wanted to highlight the obstacles that stand between Acis and Galatea’s love even without Polypheme.  I also wanted to use the beautiful Preston Bradley Hall at the Cultural Center in the best way possible.  This room has long been on one of my favorite rooms in Chicago (perhaps only matched by Frank Lloyd Wright’s Rookery Lobby).  It seems important to me that the work acknowledge the space that it’s in, and use that the best possible way.  Bart Sher, the theater and opera director, said to a Lab I was in last year at the Lincoln Center “all work is site specific,” by which he means that even in a theater, that play is taking place in that theater, and that should be considered in the direction.  This seems especially true when creating work that lives outside of a traditional theater, as it does in this beautiful room.  The room cannot be ignored.  It asks for your attention.

So, I realized that the setting for our opera, that would solve the room and the needs of the opera itself, was to bring the Cultural Center back to the days that it was the Chicago Public Library.  These librarians, buttoned up in the more formal 1940s, are working hard, driven by a terrible and frightening head librarian.  When the chorus members uncover a book of mythology, they are inspired to encourage the budding romance that they see two of their fellow librarians, by acting out the myth, casting them as Galatea and Acis.  When their boss, whom they all detest and who has been subtly sexually harassing the woman playing Galatea, catches the lovers embracing, the chorus steps in to transform him into the monster Polyphemus.

A lot of the visual fun of the opera will come out of the librarians creating their costumes, props, and scenic elements out of books, either through stacks of books, or out of paper, the magic transformations of the people and scenes will be a feat of creativity by our Production Designer, Chelsea Warren, who is masterminding a really exciting and fun world in which this production will take place.