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ARTicles vol. 6 i.4: Deep Waters
MAY 1, 2008
The wizadry of Les Waters.
An elevator opens, revealing a girl in a pink dress holding an umbrella. Gallons of water crash down like a waterfall, hitting the umbrella with a thump, rushing out of the elevator, and pouring down a drain in the middle of the stage. The girl steps out, and the elevator doors close behind her serenely. The New York Times called this moment from Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice “rhapsodically beautiful.”
Director Les Waters, the man who dreamt up this damp vision, conjures soul-stirring images. He starts his work by immersing himself completely into the world of the play at hand, in the case of Cardenio, a pastoral love story. Waters describes his method as “getting out of the way of the play.” The playwright’s intentions guide his direction. Only after he uncovers the bones of the story does Waters find his visual poetry. “Directing means revealing the skeleton of the material you’re working on. Like an archeologist, you’re digging into the piece to figure out what the rules of its world are.”
Though Cardenio follows rules closer to the real world than many of Charles Mee’s plays, it retains the hallmark of his work: a world governed by serendipity. One of the reasons Waters enjoys directing Mee’s work is “that amidst chaos people find love.” Waters has a knack for dramatizing the astonishing ways people fall for each other. No matter how cracked the world, he builds connections between characters.
After Waters uncovers the bones of a piece, one task remains: making the play breathe. As an archaeologist, Waters studies a play, as a wizard he awakens it.
Sarah Ollove is a second-year dramaturgy student at the A.R.T./MXAT Institute for Advanced Theatre Training.
