I collaborated with designer Mark Guirguis on a number of productions at Stanford, including this staging of Joe Orton’s terrific play Entertaining Mr. Sloane.

For this production, I wanted to honor the realism of the play while also acknowledging the way it draws on old comic traditions, like French farce. I wanted a clear staging element that would lift the set, and the play, out of feeling like kitchen-sink realism.

Early on in the production process, I had a dream in which we were performing the play on a steep rake, as if it were a Molière comedy — I approached Mark with the idea, and he was not only excited, but managed to build the rake first, so we could build the show and the characters around it.

I particular loved how the rake provided a physical prompt for the quick shifts in Kath’s mercurial character — as played by Annie Abrams, she could trudge up the steep incline and then turn and descend as if on a cloud…