The Apartment Above the Sea

01. The Project

An apartment built on stage and taken apart over the course of a play. Walls, ceiling, window, door and furniture are the same eleven elements from the first scene to the last; only their state changes. A home in Act 1, a home coming loose in Act 2, a home suspended in Act 3.

02. The Play

After her mother’s death, Mara returns to the apartment where she grew up to empty it after eleven years away. As she sorts through objects, memories and unsent letters, the apartment slowly begins to distort around her: walls shift, the floor tilts and familiar objects lose their place, until the room itself comes apart. What begins as the practical act of clearing a home becomes a quiet confrontation with memory, absence and everything about another person that can never fully be known.

03. Process

First the home, then the theatre. The first studies are realistic: a closed box set, low sun through the window, moving boxes on the table. On a second reading the theatre shows through. The ceiling becomes a loose plane, the window becomes a translucent screen on a scaffold frame, and the fly tower is left in view. The audience sees a home and, at the same time, sees that it is a set.

Coming loose. In Act 2 the walls, built on castors, are pushed off plumb in an open-scene change. The ceiling tilts, and two rotating gobos throw water light across every surface. The apartment is still standing, but it has lost its square.

Suspension. In Act 3 everything flies, each piece at its own angle: ceiling, walls, sideboard, lamp, the table tipped over with its chair. The first version took the door up with the rest. In the revision it came back down, to the exact spot it held in Act 2, and became the only fixed point in the show — the last part of the apartment that still works as a home, and the way Mara came in.

From image to stage. The studies were drawn up as a working set: ground plans for the three acts, a rigging plan (23 steel cables on 11 counterweight line sets), a long section and a front elevation. Trim heights were set so that every flown element sits below the 8 m border.

04. Where, when, with whom

Set design by ALGAZAL//CO for Basalto, 2026.