“As for the movement of the play, as I see it—well, Vita created a lot of commotion by standing in one place while moving everyone else in, then out. From the specs you sent, I’d have room to do two platforms. Sliding from side to side. Vita’s easy shuffling of people is central to the play’s intent. So as a scene ends on one platform, it’s pulled back and the lights there go down while Vita walks onto the other, where the lights go up and—for instance—Virginia, in another situation, is waiting. I’d do heavy props, castle furniture. The two flats for Vita’s bedroom walls will be painted, then added to with tapestries and ancestral portraits. Virginia’s basement will only need masonry walls meeting at a corner, a high window letting in soft light. The garden will have only white flowers. She was famous for this garden. I’m trying for a sense of motion to counter the lack of physical movement. Motion is elision, between lovers, between rooms.” Cate clicks between screens. “Rooms leading to unseen hallways leading to the basement where she and Virginia make out, leading to her garden, then to the train platform where she plays the timetables, putting one lover on her way to London, then waiting for another to arrive from the city—to save an extra trip to the station. The only stationary piece will be a high, perched platform to represent her writing tower. A Vita stand-in will sit, back to the audience, writing letters. Come-hither letters and farewell letters. This will be before the curtain goes up, and through intermission. A soft light on the desk, the words she’s writing projected onto a screen above the stage. I’ve found a copy of her handwriting I can crib from.”

Lauren looks directly at Cate. “Yes. You have it exactly right. Vita is interesting, just in who she was. But on a level beneath that, she was also a major player in a world that doesn’t exist anymore. She worked the closet to her advantage. She shut the door and inside was a huge, darkened circus where she was on the trapeze, riding the zebra, springboarding to the top of the human pyramid.”

The three of them inhale and exhale softly while they assemble their own versions of what the play will look like.