Back when he was an aspiring actor in the University of California-Irvine’s undergrad theater program, Arnel Sancianco joined some classmates at an In-N-Out Burger. “And one of my friends, jokingly, with all love, was like, ‘It’s gonna be really hard for you, Arnel, because they don’t write roles for Asians.’”
For Anna Ziegler’s Photograph 51, he designed bookending spiral staircases that framed the gloomy lab where Rosalind Franklin, who helped discover the double helix structure of human DNA, labored in the shadow of her male colleagues. Sancianco notes that he couldn’t find many images of Franklin’s actual lab, and he knew he’d also have to design a set that could accommodate projections of Franklin’s groundbreaking title discovery. But he and director Vanessa Stalling also decided that Franklin’s world should suggest a series of interior windows through which she was constantly being monitored by her peers. “We knew that this is a story about a marginalized person who is suddenly put into a position of power where every person around her is waiting for her to fail. I know exactly that feeling,” says Sancianco.
The Color Purple 9/13-11/3: Wed 1:30 PM, Thu 1:30 and 8 PM (except 9/19, 8 PM only), Fri 8 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun 2 and 6 PM; also Wed 9/18, 8 PM; Drury Lane Theatre, 100 Drury Lane, Oakbrook Terrace, 630-530-0111, drurylanetheatre.com, $55-$70.A Doll’s House 9/25-12/15: Wed-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 3 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2 and 6 PM, Tue 7:30 PM, Writers Theatre, 325 Tudor Ct., Glencoe, 847-242-6000, writerstheatre.org, $35-$80.
