Invisible Glass, 2005
Invisible Glass (a term for a kind of glass that is polished to eliminate reflections) is a full stage puppet theater work, incorporating actors, a highly artificial set consisting of a series of moving walls, a variety of puppetry forms, shadows and projection, and original music to create an atmospheric world of escalating tension, where appearances are deceiving and no one can be certain of anything. Working with Erik Ehn’s script, based on Edgar Allen Poe’s story William Wilson, Invisible Glass explore the idea of the doppelganger, a figure/concept which undermines our fixed notions of a unified or stable “self” or “history”, and often arouses curiosity and fear. The idea of the doppelganger suggests a construction of meaning through the metaphor of the body.
In Poe’s story, a young man arrives at a new school, only to find that there is someone there who carries the same name. In fact, there are many similarities that the two William Wilson's share. One of their main differences, however, is that the second William Wilson, because of a childhood illness, speaks only in a whisper. The story follows William Wilson for many years, as his schoolboy pranks evolve into adult crimes. The double William Wilson begins to take on more and more of his physical characteristics, but, unlike many stories of the doppelganger as a figure who embodies our worst impulses (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), the doppelganger in Poe’s William Wilson is primarily a moral figure.
Puppetry allows for a layering of figures and identities, further doubled by the use of actors who not only speak for the two William Wilsons, but eventually fully enter the action of the play. Additionally, the puppet William Wilsons grow throughout the piece from small a tiny naked figure to small rod puppets (exhibited here), to 1/2 life-size bunraku figures, to life-sized figures. As the play escalates, all figures occupy the stage, as William Wilson's fragmented stage of mind brings about his own death. The set is flexible and evolving, and makes selective use of mirrors, heightening the idea that no one can be certain that what is seen is really there.
