Miss Julie
A kitchen built as a cage, where dreams flicker behind barbed wire.
A speculative set and costume design for Strindberg's naturalist play Miss Julie, conceived for the Royal Court Theatre, London (proposed). I placed Kristin's bedroom and the kitchen on one stage, so she is present throughout the night; the kitchen becomes a cage, with Julie's and Jean's dreams projected onto a curved screen. The work focuses on the play's social class and female desire.
About the Play
Strindberg shows people bound by heredity, environment and chance: beyond the conflict between a man and a woman lies a struggle between classes. Many read it as a feminist story, but I don't see Julie's as a true awakening. She longs to escape the manor that confines her, yet pleads with a man who has neither means nor responsibility. What interested me more was the play's social class, and female desire.
What I find sharpest is that Kristin, traditional, conservative and servile, is the one who holds the upper hand with Jean. Unthinking obedience to the rules often earns more than rebellion, while restless, transgressive searching can lead to ruin.
Two Spaces
I had seen extreme naturalist stagings that move everyday life onto the stage wholesale, lit only by daylight or real lamps, and found them too much. I chose a gentler realism: enough to read as a bedroom and a kitchen. All the furniture follows 1880s designs, in yellow-brown wood that speaks of the period.
Inspired by two spaces sharing one stage in The Red Barn, I put Kristin's bedroom and the kitchen side by side. The script says Kristin is asleep, but is she? I don't think so. She can hear everything through the wall, and she has her own thoughts. Through the fourth wall, the audience can even tell whether she is truly asleep. Her room takes only a small part of the stage, both on it and off it.
Her room has two doors: one to an unseen drawing room, so she can answer her master's call at any moment; one to the kitchen, where she feels most at home. Here a door is a symbol of psychological defence.
Cage and Dreams
The kitchen is the heart of the design. I kept the furniture sparse, with knives and utensils on the dresser; three high windows sit out of reach, like class itself. The whole kitchen is a cage.
At the back is a curved, mosaic-like screen. Inspired by the surreal theatre piece Rooman, when Julie and Jean speak of their dreams, the screen shows what they imagine, giving the monologues images and the spare stage another layer. Projection comes from behind, so the actors cast no shadows. In front of the screen hangs barbed wire: they can dream, but cannot break free of the society that holds them.
Jean's Eden
Jean recalls his childhood: a large family crowded into a ramshackle thatched hut, a boy gazing over the wall at the nobles' garden as if at Eden, angels guarding the gate. Fate is unfair: some are born masters, others servants. Following the script and my imagination, I drew the scene: the broken hut, the wall, the tempting apples, under a dark sky like his sinking heart.
Light
The light follows the shifting relationship. Jean deliberately steers Julie with his words as she confides her family's shame; pink light marks her temptation. After the night, Jean has the upper hand, and sloping walls show a space thrown off balance; blue light is Julie's heart turning cold and desperate, and Jean's, cold all along and full of endless desire. As they plan to run away, a yellow beam from stage right is Julie's returning hope, until Jean kills her bird and drives her to ruin.
Costume
The costumes are based on 19th-century dress, using the large-scale prints then in fashion to mark class: lilacs on Julie's skirt, grass on Kristin's.
