Assassins/The America Play

This project had Sondheim’s Assassins in rep with Suzan-Lori Parks’ The America Play. Both deal with American legacies of violence, social injustice, and hucksterism. In developing a framework that could work for both, it became clear that the basic framework could be redressed and take on a very different feeling. Assassins uses a slipstage over a planked floor to vary its many locations and banners of corrupted Americana against a black void as a backdrop. The America Play replaces that flooring with a single platform surrounded by dirt and plays against a dusty yellow drop of the sky.