Another site, called “fairy tale: a mermaid,” took place in a stairwell; all I was able to perceive was the outline of a body; there may have been a pulley apparatus that was supposed to pull the mermaid up.  “Storm in her head,” another site, was a dark tunnel with lights in the floor; it was somewhat difficult to walk through (a note in the program warned “watch your step”), and as one did, one heard a recorded “voice-over” text about crying and sweating the sea when we cry and sweat.  The most interesting site was the inspired number 7, “the science of things,” in which we see the beautiful back of a naked woman (Erika Rundle) lying on her side in a rectangular glass case  (suggesting an aquarium), being watched by two men surrounded by a plethora of technical equipment.  This is Ellida, of course, being observed as a scientific specimen by Dr. Wangel (Todd Peters) and Arnholm (Damen Scranton).  Wangel is in the same room with his wife, sonorously and mechanically reading Ibsen’s text off an IBM Think-pad, and Arnholm is in an adjoining room, reading his dialog off his computer.  Both men are also equipped with microphones and TV monitors, on which they watch each other.  The general impression is of a sound studio gone wild.  The “science of things,” an expressionistic vision of Ellida as an objectification of male desire and male scrutiny renders this aspect of Ibsen’s play more powerfully than any realistic production I have seen.  Erika Latta, a kind of “wandering Ellida,” visits all the sites and occasionally interacts with them, providing a thread of unity to the whole production.

           Of the outdoor sites, “Shipwreck” took place on the fire escapes of the building’s courtyard, with a man and woman (James Garver and Megan Wyler) pantomiming.  In the back alley, the site    “death of a mermaid,” showed a  video  of a  high  sea  with an impressionistic vision of Ellida (Erika Latta) drowning;    another    site,    “drowning  room,” contained a tiny TV monitor on which a miniscule version of the “death of a mermaid” played.  A kind of “finale,” called “high tide,”

took place in the courtyard, featuring seven performers doing a kind of modern dance routine on chairs. They resembled something like dada rockettes, and I could not connect this performance to the preceding sites. 

           In general, this installation/performance workshop production was a highly original and suggestive conceptualization of Ibsen’s play and one looks forward eagerly to its final form.

      Interview With Ivan Talijancic

Templeton:  How did you get interested in Ibsen’s play?
            Talijancic: I read it several years ago and it was one of those plays that fascinated me from the “get go.”  I was drawn to it first of all in a very intuitive way.  But when the time came for me to work on it,  I didn’t really want to do it because the play seemed in a way dated - 
            Templeton:  What was dated?
            Talijancic: The style in general, the presence of melodrama, the “soap opera” elements of the domestic situation:  the bad marriage, the “other man,” the stepchildren.  So the play had been sitting in my brain, but I didn’t know what to do with it.  Then I got the BAX [Brooklyn Arts Exchange] stipend for a year to work on something and it seemed like a good time to work on Lady.  I had taken a lot of notes and jottings - that’s how I work - and one thing I knew that interested me was the sea.  I grew up by the Adriatic, and then I lived away from the sea.  My father’s family were fishermen, and I must have that in the blood - there’s that in the play of course, this kind of unfathomable entity which one is terrified of and drawn to - as Ellida says.
            Templeton:So how did you eventually decide to do the play?
            Talijancic: In 1994, I was a graduate student in theatre at Columbia, and I went back to my alma mater, the University of California at San Diego, where I had  an opportunity   to do   A Doll House.