Scenic Design

Prologue

The action takes place within a large white waiting room with three portholes, reminiscent of the sheep box that the Pilot draws for the Prince. The space also recalls immigrant detention centers and the windows of a deportation plane.

The Prince’s Asteroid

As the story progresses, the characters use their clothing and the objects in the space to create the Prince’s asteroid, B612, the asteroid’s rose garden, and the forest of Baobab Trees.

The Cranes Are Flying

As the Prince departs his asteroid, the box recedes upstage, revealing a vast desert underneath. In our production, the Prince’s flock of cranes become La Bestia ("The Beast"), a network of Mexican freight trains that are utilized by U.S.- bound migrants to more quickly traverse the length of Mexico. Each planet becomes a different country a migrant might pass through on their way North.

Planet Earth

Act One concludes with the Lamplighter pointing the Prince towards planet Earth, which we situate at the border wall separating Mexico from the United States. As the Act ends, a massive fence flies in from the grid, bisecting the stage and cutting off the Prince from the box. We are now fully in the story and operating in the world of memory.

The RoSE GARDEN

On Earth, the Prince discovers a Rose Garden, here reimagined as a group of parents and children preparing laundry alongside a beautified section of the Border Wall that separates Mexico from the United States.

THE DESERT

As the Prince wanders across Earth, which in our production means traveling West along the border, he meets hunters (border patrols on both sides of the wall), foxes (smugglers and activists who evade the hunters), and a well (humanitarian volunteers who leave water for migrants in the desert).

THE FINALE

At the end of the show, the Prince encounters the snake, who in our production is a border vigilante. The snake promises to send the Prince back to where he came from, and both the Prince and Pilot turn themselves over. We step out of the memory return to the waiting room. In a moment of magic realism, the walls dissolve, momentarily revealing a world without borders.