Relative Captivity: The Director

One of the ideas director John Heckel brought to this production was to put the god Loki on stage. “Margaret and I talked early on about bringing drums into the evening, because drumming suggests mythology and history,” he said. “Then it became natural to bring that into the present by giving Loki the shape and form of a rock drummer on stage.”

Although the playwright always had songs in the script (her lyrics are set to music by Missy Hopper, who plays Sigyn), Heckel added some other musical elements. “Ryan is the kid in one of the major stories, and I wanted to bring his world into the play musically. So we have a disk jockey, a synthesizer and a rap presence. There’s also a prison connection to that culturally—in a strange way, prison style has become part of the street style for kids.”

Heckel sees the presence of Sigyn as especially significant. “The goddess narrator and her search, her attempt to create a relationship with the audience, communicates the significance of the stories she holds about prisoners and their families. The audience will experience an evening in which a number of stories are told in a highly theatrical format—stories of what’s happening all around us, that we tend to pretend doesn’t exist. Through Sigyn, the audience is being asked to hold those stories, to be present with them, and to make those stories part of their consciousness.”