To that end, at the start of the show, all the performers came out in character and played a moment from elsewhere in the show. They then--in full view of the audience--took those characters off quite literally: the actors all had specific costume pieces that signaled their different characters over neutral basic costumes, and in this moment they removed them. From the very beginning, then, we signaled to the audience that the characters were always only aspects of each performer. This allowed each performer to play several different characters and for the audience to keep track of who was who when.

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We also used the research in another way, by literally bringing it onstage with us. In the downstage left corner of the stage, we had a table with piles of paper and books which represented everything that we had collected. In the first scene, the performers who had just taken off their character costume pieces also had a stack of research materials that they held as they talked to the audience about our working process. At the conclusion of the introductory scene, the performers filed out past the table, depositing their research materials on it. Throughout the rest of the play, actors would take materials from the table to use in various scenes, literally reminding the audience where the stories they were watching came from.

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Finally, in addition to being very up front about our working process, throughout the show, each performer took a moment to talk about a character they'd created in terms of where the idea for him/her came from as well as what they connected to about that person.