A different look than the average play

Alexandra Feliciano expects audience members might do a double take when they see her makeup design for “Machinal.” And she’s OK with that.

So is David Charles, director of the next show to open at Rollins College’s Annie Russell Theatre.

“This is a really nice, complex piece of writing,” says Charles, who heads the theater department at the Winter Park college. “It’s an amazing opportunity for our students to use design in a much less traditional way.”

Written by Sophie Treadwell in 1928, “Machinal” tells of a nameless woman who is trapped in the grind of society’s expectations.

“She has a job she doesn’t like, married to a man she barely knows, and has a child just because it’s expected,” Charles explains.

The challenge for the actors is the entire play is written from the woman’s point of view. That’s what inspired the unusual makeup design.

“It’s all from her perspective,” Charles says. “So while she looks fairly normal, the people around her are more grotesque — because that’s how she sees the world.”

Feliciano used the woman’s perceptions to influence her color palette.

“She’s not seeing her husband as a nice guy,” says Feliciano, a senior theater major with a concentration in costume and makeup design. “She sees him as a disgusting, cold person. So in his makeup, lots of blues with some yellow.”

Feliciano’s makeup design is full of saturated colors and harsh lines. She drew inspiration from German expressionistic paintings, popular when the play was written.

“I was seeing paint strokes,” she says of her thought process, “not cartoonish, but like a painting come to life.”

Seeing the world in this garish way connects the audience to the woman at the center of the story.

“It’s trying to make us stand with her,” Charles says. “We’re asked to step into her shoes.”

Stylized movement and symbolismfilled props add to the design. When the woman and her husband sit at the dinner table, the furniture reflects her ideas about their unequal power.

“He’s in this huge, almost thronelike chair, which is about 20 times bigger than her tiny stool,” Charles says.

The set, designed by Rollins senior Rebecca Kleinman, also reinforces the woman’s skewed version of the world.

“You’re going to see harsh angles and

SCOTT COOK monstrous scale,” says Kleinman, also a theater major. “The size of the flats, coupled with the fact that there are few right angles, make this build a challenge.”

Charles has his own challenge in overseeing the production: “I’m a man directing a woman’s voice,” he says, which leaves him anxious.

But “I often find that the things that make me the most anxious are the most challenging and ultimately rewarding,” he says.

“Machinal” is based on true events. I won’t spoil the play with the real-life details, but if you’re curious, research Ruth Snyder.

The drastic — and shocking — lengths to which the play’s young woman goes in order to break free of her stifling existence turns the play into a tragedy.

“The ending is heartbreaking and beautiful at the same time,” Feliciano says. “It’s like you’re holding your breath as you watch her — and you can’t breathe until the end.”