Directed by John Sipes
Costume Design by Poua Yang
Lighting Design by Kenneth Foster
Performed at the Ula Love Doughty Carousel Theatre University of Tennessee
Raft of the Medusa by Théodore Géricault (1819) served as visual inspiration for this design. The survivors clinging to the large broken raft, pitched by the seas and desperately seeking salvation had parallels to Whipping Man’s survivors, desperately clinging to their broken house.
Matthew Lopez’s The Whipping Man deals with a reunion of freed slaves and their former owner in the days immediately following the surrender of the Army of Virginia at Appomattox Courthouse. Set amid the ruins of a formerly grand Richmond townhouse, in a city devastated by war, three men attempt to celebrate Passover and new beginnings as old sins and new secrets threaten to sew discord between them.
Fully taking up a full third of the available space in the Ula Love Doughty Carousel Theatre, this set is meant to convey the loneliness and desperation of the three characters. I was asked once to explain the size of the set in relation to the number of characters. Simply put, yes, the set could have been much smaller. However, with a smaller size comes a sense of security. I did not want this set to veer towards a “prison”, small and cell-like; Instead, I wanted it to be expansive, a vast plain of possibility and danger. The characters are on the brink of new new life, their previous lives teetering at the brink of a great chasm. The choices they make will either imperil them or liberate them.
Visually inspired by the architecture of the early Federalist period but eschewing period notions of architectural symmetry, the house sits on a 3 degree rake and is meant to evoke the idea of a house that has slipped from its foundations, torn asunder by the sin of slavery. The choice of the Federalist style in lieu of a later and more stereotypically southern architectural style is meant to reinforce the idea of slavery as a sin that has existed within the house, the South and the nation from the beginning. Though the house has recently been all but destroyed by fires of civil strife, its foundation has suffered from a slow rot since the day it was constructed.
Scenic Designer: Jason Ammons
Costume Designer: Poua Yang
Lighting Designer: Kenny Foster