The White Album is among the most important essays ever written, by one of America’s most incisive, essential writers.
In this seminal essay, Joan Didion traverses the tectonically shifting landscape and bold names of the late 1960’s — The Black Panthers, student protests, The Doors, Manson — and she tells this story with herself at its center. She wanted to be an actress as a child, and here she writes a shattering and uncannily theatrical monologue in her unmistakable voice: at turns unequivocally cool, impossibly illuminating, and just shy of total collapse. After a twenty-year personal obsession with the essay and an epic quest to secure the theatrical rights, director Lars Jan has been given the green light.
The stage design for Lars Jan’s timely adaptation of Joan Didion’s White Album consists of a structure of 26’ long, 16’ wide and 12’ high and is able to be assembled and disassembled in one day by a small crew. Conceived for a traveling performance which includes at least 5 cities in the US, the structure takes functionality, including simplicity and pace of assembly, economy of means and maintenance very seriously.
Utilizing a robotically manufactured, flexible space truss system by LA based Stereobot, the project hides its technical versatility aiming to provide an ethereal environment where a profound theatrical narrative can unfold. The rectilinear container is skewed in the sides: accounting for the depth of the structure, it contests just slightly the symmetry of itself and the theater. Taking advantage of the triangular truss that makes up the structure, a 3’ deep intrusion and extrusion on each side is incorporated to provide access, egress and the necessary room for theatrical artifices to occur inconspicuously.
An exterior terrace, which allows for continuous relation between interior and exterior and is outlined as a framed porch, hints to the domestic scale where Joan Didion’s original story takes place.
In this seminal essay, Joan Didion traverses the tectonically shifting landscape and bold names of the late 1960’s — The Black Panthers, student protests, The Doors, Manson — and she tells this story with herself at its center. She wanted to be an actress as a child, and here she writes a shattering and uncannily theatrical monologue in her unmistakable voice: at turns unequivocally cool, impossibly illuminating, and just shy of total collapse. After a twenty-year personal obsession with the essay and an epic quest to secure the theatrical rights, director Lars Jan has been given the green light.
The stage design for Lars Jan’s timely adaptation of Joan Didion’s White Album consists of a structure of 26’ long, 16’ wide and 12’ high and is able to be assembled and disassembled in one day by a small crew. Conceived for a traveling performance which includes at least 5 cities in the US, the structure takes functionality, including simplicity and pace of assembly, economy of means and maintenance very seriously.
Utilizing a robotically manufactured, flexible space truss system by LA based Stereobot, the project hides its technical versatility aiming to provide an ethereal environment where a profound theatrical narrative can unfold. The rectilinear container is skewed in the sides: accounting for the depth of the structure, it contests just slightly the symmetry of itself and the theater. Taking advantage of the triangular truss that makes up the structure, a 3’ deep intrusion and extrusion on each side is incorporated to provide access, egress and the necessary room for theatrical artifices to occur inconspicuously.
An exterior terrace, which allows for continuous relation between interior and exterior and is outlined as a framed porch, hints to the domestic scale where Joan Didion’s original story takes place.
Team:
Marcelo Spina
Georgina Hulijich
Daniela Atencio
Dylan Krueger
Namku Kim
Connor Covey
Julia Spackman
Shawna Meng
Dan Lu
Josh Shultz
Anthony Stoffella
Marcelo Spina
Georgina Hulijich
Daniela Atencio
Dylan Krueger
Namku Kim
Connor Covey
Julia Spackman
Shawna Meng
Dan Lu
Josh Shultz
Anthony Stoffella
Partners:
Stoss Landscape Urbanism
Stoss Landscape Urbanism
