How the game is played: Aquitania

This is the twentieth anniversary of Aquitania. So to celebrate that, we are producing it again this summer.

Aquitania is a Ziggurat Theatre Ensemble play which I wrote and directed in 2001. I had just written and produced a three-hour Greek tragedy, and the year before that, a play about the 1996 Everest disaster. It was time for something “funny.”

It’s hard to know what to say about a play whose chief feature is ambiguity. But here is a little of the plot:

Malagigi (Michael Klock) and The Girl (Britney Ann Tuba)
Aquitania, Ziggurat Theatre Ensemble, 2001 • Costumes by Robert Velasquez

In the country of Aquitania in 1910, a 10-year-old girl on a beach learns to play a board game from her French tutor. 25 years later, a young woman, Marguerite, has been summoned to Aquitania to solve a military crisis: the evil and mysterious Gano has seized part of the land and is threatening the entire country. Why was Marguerite asked to come to Aquitania? She is no political tactician. In fact, she’s a librarian. 

Bradamante (Sharon McMahon, Marguerite (Kiersten Van Horne), Fleurdelis (Jenny Woo),and Roland (Dean Purvis)
Aquitania, Ziggurat Theatre Ensemble, 2001 • Costumes by Robert Velasquez

The scenes of Marguerite and her friends trying to foil Gano are intertwined with the girl and her board game, as we jump back and forth in time. Marguerite is in a quandary, because she is now in a world where magic exists, but she does not believe in magic. Consequently, she will not play by the rules of the world that she has entered, even though it might mean the difference between saving and losing the country.

Foreground Fleurdelis (Jenny Woo) and the Thug (Matthew Smith)
Background: Mary Kate Karr, Lauren Clark, Helle Schoubye
Aquitania, Ziggurat Theatre Ensemble, 2001 • Costumes by Robert Velasquez

We come to discover that Marguerite and her new friends are enacting the same plot that the little girl is working out on her game. And that the girl is actually Marguerite as a child. Which one is real – the girl’s game? Marguerite’s predicament? Or both? This confounds perception when the Girl and Marguerite finally meet.

Both Marguerite and the audience set off on a strange and wondrous journey, much like Alice in Wonderland, where everyone must embrace a new kind of logic in order to survive.

Here’s something that the Los Angeles Times said:

“A work of haunting visual beauty and mythological resonance, "Aquitania" at the Gascon Center Theatre continues author-director Stephen Legawiec’s inventive synthesis of stage, dance, and song in a whimsical fable that plays off the archetypal heroic quest. With stylistic and thematic nods to such eclectic sources of inspiration as Lewis Carroll and the surrealist painter Rene Magritte, this new production from Legawiec’s Ziggurat Theatre Company transforms the Gascon Center Theatre into a playground of the unconscious.”

We also produced the play in 2012. It was fascinating to revisit the show with a new cast.

Left to right: Rachel Kodweis, Kathleen Nation, Melody Stollp, Astrea Campbell-Cobb, Zoe Raphael, Carolyn Glaude, and Michael Dix-Thomas
Aquitania, Ziggurat Theatre Ensemble, 2012 • Costumes by Robert Velasquez and Tessa Kingsley

The actors in our current production have asked me where the idea for the play came from. I’d like to know that myself. 

I have a lot of notebooks where I work out my plays and have saved them all, but I cannot find the one from Aquitania. But I have said that I wanted to write an Alice in Wonderland type story with an adult Alice. I think that’s true.

Son of Man by Magritte

The design of our production is based on the paintings of the Belgian surrealist René Magritte. The blue, cloud-filled sky; the bowler-hatted man. The elision of two competing realities.

I had previously only used mythic literature a source material for my plays. But I wanted to break out of that by drawing inspiration from the arresting images of Magritte’s surrealism.

Decalcomania by Magritte

One of the fun things about doing that production was that we employed two different playing styles at the same time. The Marguerite actress played in a naturalistic style while everyone in Aquitania played in a very extended, delightfully grotesque manner. This accentuated Marguerite’s position as an outsider - a weakness which Gano exploits late in the play.

Aquitania, Ziggurat Theatre Ensemble, 2001 • Costumes by Robert Velasquez, Set design by Stephen Legawiec

Another thing that was very satisfying was the climax of the play where the entire stage becomes the girl’s game board and Marguerite matches wits with Gano on those squares.

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Susan Coromel directed Aquitania at Willamette College in 2010, where she is Professor of Theatre. It was the first Ziggurat play to be interpreted by another director. I had a lot of suggestions for Ms. Coromel (which I believe I wrote up and emailed to her), but thank goodness she didn’t take any of them.

The Girl (Cassie Gutterman-Johns) and Malagigi (Trevor Latal)
Aquitania, directed by Susan Coromel, Willamette University, 2010
Photo by Dale Peterson

When I write a play that I am going to direct, (which has been about 25 of them), the playwright (me) spends a lot of energy trying to keep the director (also me) out of the room during the writing process. This is not always successful, however. What is lost sometimes is the director’s fresh take on the material, because the playwright is weaving the material so carefully stand by strand, and the director is intimately acquainted with each strand as they are put in place.

Foreground: Gano (Aaron Smith) on the game board. Background L to R: Ilaska (Victoria Smith), Fobliar (Sasha Kool), Roland (Dylan Angell), Bradamante (Kristin Light), Fleurdelis (Breanna Jagodnik) • Aquitania, directed by Susan Coromel, Willamette University, 2010 • Set by Chris Harris, Costumes by Bobby Brewer-Wallin, Lighting by Rachel Steck • Photo by Dale Peterson

The Girl (Cassie Gutterman-Johns) • Aquitania, directed by Susan Coromel, Willamette University, 2010 • Photo by Dale Peterson

Gano (Aaron Smith) in foreground “eating” the ring, and Marguerite (Sarah Rothaus)
Aquitania, directed by Susan Coromel, Willamette University, 2010

So, yes, thank goodness, that Ms. Coromel listened to me (politely) but then did Aquitania her own way, following her own artistic vision. I saw her production and it was both wonderful and wonderfully inventive.

***

As I set out to direct the play for a third time, I am excited to see what the new actors will bring to the script; to set up the game again; and to see what the outcome will be.