And one key painting, seen while Ken and Rothko are discussing the significance of the colors red (life force) and black (death) in his work — “One day the black will swallow the red,” predicts the painter, whose real-life counterpart committed suicide in 1970 — is not based on an actual Rothko painting but, rather, on the cover of the program from the play’s original production at London’s Donmar Warehouse. “Rothko did nothing like that, the black devouring the red,” Falls says. “But when I saw that cover, I said, let’s go with that.”
Glow in the dark
Another key visual element of the production determined by the script is the lighting in the studio, which Rothko deliberately kept low to enhance the paintings’ luminescent, seemingly three-dimensional qualities. In the play, Ken figures out Rothko’s strategy, which is “to help the illusion. Like a magician. Like a play. To keep it mysterious, to let the pictures pulsate.” (The effect is reproduced in the Goodman/Arena Stage production by lighting designer Keith Parham.)
Gero, a four-time Helen Hayes Award winner best known locally for more than 70 roles at Shakespeare Theatre Company, had a rare opportunity to experience that effect on some of Rothko’s actual paintings during a private visit to Washington’s Phillips Collection on a day when the museum was closed.
About halfway through the visit, as Gero later described it in his blog, someone entered and said, “Excuse me, I am sorry to interrupt, but we are doing a photo shoot in an adjacent room, and we have to turn all the lights out in the building for about 10 minutes. Would you mind?” Gero immediately grasped the serendipity. “It was as if the spirit of Rothko himself has entered and was present in the room, giving this gift of experience to me before leaving for Chicago to begin rehearsals at the end of the week! I was stunned and moved by the remarkable opportunity to view the paintings in light that I knew Rothko would have preferred, or at least, approved. Like he did himself.”
As audiences will see for themselves at the Kreeger, “Red” concludes with a unique stage tableau that depends on lighting and its effect on the paintings’ famous luminosity. You experience the painting in something like the way Gero experienced it at the Phillips Collection — which is to say, as Rothko would have preferred. Your eyes will adjust.
Nance is a freelance writer.
Red
at Arena Stage. Friday to March 11. Starring Edward Gero and Patrick Andrews. Directed by Robert Falls. Tickets are $40-$85, in the Kreeger Theater. 1101 Sixth St. SW. 202-488-3300. www.arenastage.org.
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