Far Away

Caryl Churchill

I wanted the audience to feel the warmth and nostalgia of the first scene with slow transitions easing into the discomforting nature of the events that unfold. This play and its characters feel eerily familiar. When it expands to an anarchic, surrealist world we, as the audience, are taken with it through the objects and references to which we relate. It was important to me that the set and costumes reflect this.

Although the units sit in the ‘bunker’ throughout I don’t want the audience to feel the expansive sterility of the space until the final scene when Joan returns from the river. I was interested in the scale of the actors in relation to the space. During the first scene the characters feel safe and cozy in the intimate space of the bedroom. This moves to helplessness in the expansive, bare, cement corridor in the last scene. The moving units are elevated and the actors move into the space within them. It isn’t until the final scene that they walk on the stage floor through ankle deep water.

With the costumes it was important again, that we feel a familiarity. Warfare is chosen by a few and affects many. When developing the characters I thought about my family who were present in Germany during World War 2. Being Mennonite, they were pacifists but were forced to help the army in order to survive. This choice is continually presented to people when faced with the panic of war; either you are with them or against them.

We see Harper at the beginning of the war, her husband being one of the rebels or military instigating the first attempts at stifling the “enemy”. She tries desperately to maintain the illusion of a safe environment for her niece, Joan.

We then see Joan, grown up, working in a hat factory. Again, I wanted the audience to relate with her and Todd’s situation. The parade is in stark contrast to the atmosphere. Hundreds of prisoners ascend from a staircase downstage of the acting area. First we see their hats, followed by bright orange issued jumpsuits as they walk towards their extermination.

By the end of the show I want the audience to feel the wariness and fragility of these characters. The war became chaotic and anarchic with little warning and those surviving cope with what they find. Harper, now aged and homeless, wears all of her possessions. Todd, still wears his clothes from the factory and Joan is left with a sundress and men’s boots.