The Birthday Party is about Stanley Webber, an erstwhile piano player who lives in a rundown boarding house run by Meg and Petey Boles, in an English seaside town, “probably on the south coast, not too far from London”. Two sinister strangers, Goldberg and McCann, arrive looking for him, supposedly on his birthday, and turn his apparently innocuous birthday party organized by Meg into a nightmare.

Khalil was brought on once again by AUC to guest direct a production. By that, point we had become frequent collaborators and he chose to bring me onto the project. I got informed of the project in May and I spent the Summer months reading and researching the play.

We had a design meeting over Zoom in late July with all the designers to discuss the visual direction for the play. By that point, I had my mood boards ready with my visual research. As usual, Khalil gave me complete creative freedom. His only request was that he wanted the play’s setting (time and place) to be ambiguous.