The Episode

In January 2019, I produced the key visual for The Episode, Mamuka Tkemaladze’s production at the Batumi State Theatre.

Sketchbook spread: the lighting set-up and a plan for a face collage in a 4×5 frame.

Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s Episode on an Autumn Evening is a detective drama: two characters locked in a tense dialogue, swapping roles in their game again and again. In Mamuka Tkemaladze’s reading, the two might live inside one man’s head. To bring out that twist, I came up with a collage made from pieces of both characters’ faces.

An actor’s head through a hole in a lit white sheet, photographed on a large-format camera.

I wanted it to look very real, as if someone crazy had put the pieces together by hand. So I shot the actors’ portraits on 4×5 film, then cut up the negatives and composed the face collage inside a scanner.