Villette
by Sarah Gmitter, Adapted from the Novel by Charlotte Bronte
Directed by Tracy Walsh

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Lookingglass Theatre Company
Water Tower Water Works
February 8th - April 2nd, 2023
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Scenic Design: Yu Shibagaki
Costume Design: Mara Blumenfeld
Lighting Design: John Culbert
Sound Design: Brandon Reed & Deon Custard
 ​Photos taken courtesy of Liz Lauren

About The Play

After an unspecified family disaster, Lucy Snow without any family, friends, or funds travels alone to an unfamiliar land armed with little more than plain courage, fierce intelligence, and a dry, piercing wit. She lands a job as a school teacher, which allows her to meet an eclectic carousel of characters that begin to help her realize and develop what it means to be a human being. One that can experience love (platonic and romantic), nurture, sadness, and joy. She does all of this while confronting a complicated mental maze of her mind where there are multiple doorways that lead towards fulfillment or peril – which door should she choose? 

Our goal as a team was to find ways to reflect to the audience how isolated and closed off Lucy Snow was from the opening of the play to the end where she has finally gained a sense of who she is and what makes her a human being. With the show starting off in literal darkness, we hear the sounds of her memories and disasters that made her the closed off individual she is. As the story progresses, the design of the show opens up more as she herself opens more and comes closer to her happiness. With less doors, and more open space, the design begins reflect that internal growth. We wanted the audience to feel and hear the same growth that Lucy does as she continues to.

For the sound design, this was an interesting project for me to partake in. During the beginning of the tech process, I was asked to jump in and go from the role of supervisor to a co-designer. Deon the original sound designer had unexpected conflicts come up during the tech process. Therefore, I was forced to learn the design concept and the show at the same time as teching it. However with the grace and help of both our director Tracy and the rest of the production team, we reached a fantastic design. I mirrored the design goals, by helping the audience get a peak into Lucy's mind so that we can get a sense of how alienated and isolated she felt to her experiencing growth and finally who she ended up as by the end of the play. Working with Tracy and the playwright Sarah we provided audible clues to her past with the audience hearing various coughs and sickness, we helped establish time of day and where we were as an audience since we jumped around into various points of time and location with Lucy as she recalls it in her imperfect way. As she starts to experience love we begin to hear sounds of bells, and chimes that start off as simplistic notes, but become more like melodies and song as she learns what it means to love a friend, a family member or a partner. It was my goal to help the audience feel what it means to be human just as much as Lucy does.

The Sound Design


Childhood Trauma

We open the play in total darkness with a faint audible ambient texture that puts the audience into a calm state. The sound of a match lights as we met Lucy Snow, as she begins to explain that this won't be a story that the audience will be use to hearing. There will bits of information that is missing or told in not a linear manner. As she describes her past of once having a godmother whom was a place of refuge, we hear the sound the old grandfather clock that perhaps belonged to her. As she begins to recall the fate of the rest of her family, we hear faint breathing as Lucy tries to quickly close herself off mentally from an uncomfortable memory. Coughs can be heard echoing around the theatre hinting at what has happened.


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Feeling Moment

Shortly after arriving to Villette, Lucy lands a job as an instructor at a local school. There she meets the head of the school, as well as some of the other instructors and students. She's finally getting into a routine and feeling a sense of belonging, but once she is alone at night memories of her past begin to haunt her, reminding her to not get too close to those around her for fear of them going away.


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Long Vacation

After finding a semblance of a home in the school she's teaching at, Lucy feels like she's finally gaining some ground in Villette and is able to push through her anxieties. However, when it comes time for the winter break and students and teachers return home or leave for vacation, she's left alone to once again face her memories. In an attempt to fight back against herself she stumbles out of the school into a raging storm where she passes out, later awakening in the home of her long lost god mother.


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A Haunting In The Attic

By the end of the first act, Lucy finds herself hearing rumors of a ghost nun that haunts the school grounds from her headmaster. She's quick to dismiss this however, believing it to only be a story used to keep school girls in check and from exploring at night. However, when she is alone in the attic to read a letter from cousin, she hears the school bells toll as the sound of a wooden floor creaks and we see the nun before being plunged into darkness into intermission.


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Letters

Throughout the play, as Lucy gains small little moments of happiness or individuality, we hear these chimes or bells. One source of happiness for her has been the letters she gets from her cousin John. As she speaks to her friend and student Ginerva, she tells her about these letters. As she describes them we now hear bells ring all round the theatre as the sound of a quill writing is heard softly in the background.


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Midsummer

Towards the end of the play, Lucy believes that her potential romantic partner Paul has left to sail across the world for three months in order to explore a potential financial investment for his family. Believing to once again be alone, she struggles to sleep before her friends and family give her an opioid sedative to help her sleep. This doesn't work as begins to hallucinate and explore the school grounds during the Midsummer festival taking place in town. Everywhere she looks there is a nightmarish apparition until she finally stumbles home to fall asleep.


Endings Come At Some Hour

As the show comes to an end, Lucy has fully grown as a human being and learned to accept love and life from all angles that provide it. She mentions that, "Endings must come at some hour, though perhaps not the shape you dreamed. Our beginnings do not dictate our ends and not everything that feels like an ending, is." She begins to wrap up our play by describing what happens to the rest of the characters as an aural texture is heard giving the audience a sense of acceptance and resolution. As she describes the Nun actually being her friend Ginerva in disguise we hear the faint church bells. As she describes her God Mother and cousin the Brettons we hear the sound of the river running from before, and as she describes her headmaster retiring we hear faint children laughing. All these layers on top of each other until she finally describes her own ending, which fades to just the aural texture without anything else on top of it. As she finishes we hear the sound of a match blowing out to signify the ending and calling back to the opening of the play.