Phaedra's Love
Stage & Media Design
Overview: This theoretical project explores how media and stage design elements can transform Sarah Kane’s Phaedra’s Love into a distinctive theatrical experience within CMU’s former Studio 201 space. The central challenge was to translate the play’s raw and brutal language and stage directions into a form that preserves its intensity while being more accessible to a broader audience.
Play by Sarah Kane
Instructor: Lawrence Shea
Project Duration: NOV 2025 - DEC 2025
Keywords: Media Design, Stage Design, Vectorworks
***Warning: This play contains sexual and violent content.
Plot Summary
Phaedra’s Love is a contemporary retelling of the classical Greek myth of Phaedra and Hippolytus. The play follows Hippolytus, a disaffected prince who rejects emotional and social responsibility. His stepmother, Phaedra, develops an unreciprocated love for him and struggles to suppress her feelings. When her desire are revealed and rejected, events are set in motion that lead to public scandal. As the royal family and the media become involved, the situation spirals into chaos, ultimately escalating into widespread violence and social breakdown.
Visual Research
Design Concepts
Children’s Playground. Throughout the play, there always stands a sense of childishness pervading the characters and their absurd actions, most notably Hippolytus, but also Phaedra, Priest, Strophe who are all affected by Hippolytus. Based on Hippolytus’s stage directions, my intention is to transform the space into a children’s playground, rendered as an irregular, arena-style configuration.
Movement. To convey the play’s underlying anxiety and sense of unsettledness, I introduce a ramped outer track on which Hippolytus rides a toy car throughout the scenes. The central “playground” is anchored by a seesaw, where every character who has a one-on-one interaction with Hippolytus will hold their conversation. The rising and falling of this device is intended to physically embody shifting power dynamics between characters.
In addition to the physical environment, projection becomes a key element in heightening the chaos. Hippolytus’s toy car carries a side-mounted projector that casts imagery into the surrounding; parts of the architecture are fitted with scrims to either receive these projections or to catch Hippolytus’s silhouette when backlit.
Two additional projectors are mounted beneath the seesaw’s seats, creating projections whose scale changes as the seesaw tilts. The projection contents consist of twisted B&W films, in a pattern sense, to echo Hippolytus’s actions and impact; during Hippolytus’s rides, there will also be low-volume sound coming out from the car, tightening to the contents he’s watching.
Supervision. At the opposite end of the stage, across from the seesaw playground, sits an area composed of two benches, echoing of the parental seating/supervision zones commonly found in children’s parks. This space is designed to embody a sense of rationality, standing in contrast to the chaotic, childlike play area; for instance, it functions as the doctor’s office and Strophe’s room at the beginning of the play. During the final riot scene, the CROWDS gather in this area, and collectively attack Hippolytus and destroy his territory, symbolizing the collapse of Hippolytus’s idealized world and the downfall of the clownish regime.
Paperworks
Cue Sheet
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Cue-by-Cue Breakdown
Thoughts about Violent Scenes
Regarding the final killing scene, all the violent actions could be illustrated literally on stage with props and costumes aids. For example, CROWDS could smash the Seesaw and the Car; HIPPOLYTUS’s costume could also be designed to have detachable parts for CROWDS to pull the “organs” out. I read this final sequence as the death of HIPPOLYTUS’s idealism and the downfall of the regime in general.
3D Mock Up in Vectorworks
