| Sarah L. Hunt-Frank  |  | Selkie Director: | Kassie Misiewicz Designer: Sarah L. | Hunt-Frank Lighting: | Kurt Schnable Costumes: | Maureen McGuire HOME | 
Selkie is a play about a young girl of the Orkney Islands whose mother
was a selkie/seal stolen from the sea. The young girl, Ellen Jean,
doesn’t understand the draw that the sea has on her until she finds out
the secret of her mother’s ancestry. Then she has the struggle within
herself about which world she belongs to; her father’s on the land, or
her mother’s in the sea. This is a story about the coming of age and
being content with one’s heritage.
|  In researching the Orkney Islands where this play takes place, I was
struck by the Standing Stones of Stenness and the Ring of Brodhur. The
stones, standing like the strong heroes of myth and legend of the Orkney
people, protrude from the flat horizon, creating dark silhouettes
against the bright sky. These stones spoke a myriad of tales and themes
to me. The stones used in the design represent many elements for the
play: society, isolation, weight, ancestry, mystery, truth, even Ellen
Jean herself.
| The stones exemplify the ancestry and mystical heretage of all the past
ages. The tradition of ancient, mythic scope and the power in the
legends, including rumors about the selkie, are the forces working
against Ellen Jean. The stones provide the unshakeable culture and
history of the Orkney people. Through the stones we get the feeling
that all of this history has existed simply to deliver us to the moment
in which we find little Ellen Jean standing on the heath looking out to
the sea.
| The stones also had a functionality to them for the play. The stones
that lay on the raked deck became, with the addition of a tablecloth and
lamp, a table and seats. The downstage stone camouflaged a lighting
unit that simulated the fireside hearth. A mononlith hid a ladder for
Duncan, Ellen Jean’s father, to climb as he called for his selkie wife
to return to him as she escapes to the sea. And three six-foot tall
monoliths stage right revealed the lit torches for the mid-summer
festival, called the Johnsmas Foy.
| We could not forget the powerful element of the sea. The sea has a fluidity and magic all it’s own. The play starts in the sea so that we see the mystical draw that pulls on Ellen Jean and we then understand why she wants to go there so badly. 
Blue china silk floating on the air
currents and swirling Selkie women dancing in a free and fluid style
represents the water and the wonderful world below the waves. Two
platforms representing skerries sit in either downstage corner for each
orphaned Selkie sister to sit upon and call to their lost sibling.
| 
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