Private Lives by Noel Coward
Produced by Metropolis Performing Arts Centre
Director: Dylan S. Roberts
Stage Manager: Mike Peters
Text Coach: Sammi Grant
Fight Director: Claire Yearman
Set Designer: Katie Alvord
Prop Designer: Maggie Neumayer
Costume Designer: Cathy Tantillo
Sound Designer: Andy Kauff
Lighting Designer: Chelsea Lynn
Director’s Note
Whenever I start directing a show I first think of what makes this play accessible to a modern audience. At first this seemed easy; Noel Coward’s shows are perfect for the time and place we as a culture are living in right now. At the end of the 1920’s living glamorously was what everyone aspired to. Drinking cocktails, smoking, living in Paris and looking great while doing it were the sought after norm. One look inside the pages of GQ, Vanity Fair or any other fashion journal and you can see that all these things are coming back. The artisanal cocktail is back, along with, one of last year’s biggest hair trends, the bob or pixie cut for women and mustaches for men. In addition, men and women’s fashion websites are more numerous now than ever before. Men, especially have started returning to a time before business-casual was the norm for everyday wear. We are living in Noel Coward’s world re-born.
