Plot and Structure: Eight Actors, Eighty Days
A Novel Becomes a Race Against the Clock
Jules Verne published his adventure novel in 1872, at a moment when two technologies had just made circumnavigation in eighty days theoretically possible: the Suez Canal opened in 1869 and the American transcontinental railroad was completed in the same year. Verne imagined a precise English gentleman betting £20,000 at his gentlemen's club that he could complete the journey — and the result is a breathless chase spanning India, Hong Kong, Japan, San Francisco and the Atlantic. Laura Eason's adaptation, first performed at Lookingglass Theater in Chicago in 2008 and staged at the New Vic in 2013, distils this chase into something even tighter: eight actors playing every role in the story, from Phileas Fogg himself to train conductors, customs officials, ship’s captains and a herd of elephants. Understanding the episodic structure of this adaptation is the starting point for all the staging and performance work that follows.
Eason’s adaptation was first performed at Lookingglass Theater in Chicago in 2008. Theresa Heskins directed the 2013 New Vic production, staged in the round with eight actors multi-roling throughout.
Episodic Structure and the Chase Narrative
Where a linear play builds one continuous action through rising and falling tension, episodic structure links a series of self-contained scenes whose energy comes from momentum — the audience is always aware of time ticking down and distance to be crossed. Eason borrows this structure directly from Verne, who organised his novel as a series of geographical episodes: London, Paris, Suez, Bombay, Calcutta, Hong Kong, Yokohama, San Francisco, New York, Liverpool, London again. Each episode introduces new obstacles, new minor characters, and new opportunities for the eight-actor ensemble to transform themselves and the stage space. The play opens at the Reform Club opening, establishing Fogg’s precision and the terms of the wager, and closes in London with the apparent failure and then the extraordinary reveal of the international date line.
From a staging perspective, episodic structure creates specific demands. Each scene transition must be rapid — a shift of a chair, a change of costume accessory, a change of accent — and the performers and director must find ways to signal clearly to the audience that we have moved from one continent to another without slowing the pace. A director working on this play in an in-the-round space, as the original production did, must ensure that sightlines allow every audience member to see the key physical images from every angle: a tableau of the Reform Club, the arc of an elephant crossing the stage, the moment a train accelerates through the ensemble’s bodies.
A linear play (like The Crucible) builds one sustained dramatic question — will Proctor confess? — through escalating pressure in a single community. In contrast, Around the World in 80 Days has a fresh dramatic question in every new location: will Fogg catch the next departure? Will Fix succeed in detaining him? Will Passepartout survive his mishap in the Hong Kong opium-house scene? This episodic rhythm suits physical-theatre companies because each episode is essentially a self-contained performance problem: how do eight actors turn themselves into an Indian marketplace, a Japanese acrobat troupe, or a Native American war party on the transcontinental railway? The episodic form invites creativity in every transition rather than demanding sustained psychological realism in one fixed setting.
A common misconception students should avoid: episodic does not mean “random”. Every episode advances Fogg’s race against the clock, reveals character under pressure, and raises the comic and dramatic stakes. The structure is tight — the countdown creates tension across every episode, even when individual scenes are played for comedy.
Multi-Roling and the Ensemble as Engine
Multi-roling is not simply an economic decision in this play — it is the central theatrical pleasure. Eight performers play dozens of parts. One actor might be a Reform Club gentleman in the opening scene, a Suez customs officer ten minutes later, a Bombay merchant shortly after, and then a ship’s engineer in the Atlantic crossing. The audience’s delight comes partly from recognising the transformation and partly from the skill of the performer who makes each figure feel utterly distinct. For a student writing as a performer, this means that every minor character must be performed with precision: a distinct posture, a specific walk, a clear change of vocal pitch, pace or accent to mark the transition.
The eight-actor ensemble also creates the physical world of the play. Bodies become a steam engine (performers in a line, arms pumping in unison, voices creating a mechanical rhythm), an elephant (one actor as the body, others as legs, the whole image emerging from choreographed physical trust), or the heaving Atlantic (performers shifting weight in synchrony, creating a wave motion across the stage). This use of bodies-as-objects and object transformation is characteristic of companies like Complicite and Frantic Assembly, whose physical-theatre practice underpins Eason’s script.
The ensemble uses physical theatre to transform performers’ bodies into the world of the play — steam engines, ships, elephants, storms and crowds — making multi-roling and object transformation central staging methods rather than incidental features.
A significant student error is to treat this play as a costume drama requiring a literal, naturalistic set — a train carriage for the India scenes, a ship’s deck for the Atlantic, an Indian temple for the rescue of Aouda. In fact the play’s entire aesthetic is built on the idea that the imagination of performers and audience, not scenery, creates the world. A director who specifies a realistic Victorian set is misreading the form. Stylised staging is not a compromise here — it is the artistic intention. Chairs become railway carriages; rope becomes rigging; the ensemble’s coordinated movement becomes the ocean. A strong answer understands this and describes how specific design choices support the transformation rather than substitute for it.
Narrated Transitions and Direct Address
Eason also employs a narration device: performers step out of the dramatic fiction to address the audience directly, setting the location, updating the countdown, and commenting on Fogg’s progress. This direct address functions similarly to Brecht’s use of a narrator in epic theatre — it frames the action, prevents the audience from losing themselves in pure empathy, and invites them to watch the storytelling as storytelling. From a design perspective, lighting transitions between dramatic scenes and narrator moments can be achieved with a sharp change of lighting state: for example, a warm, busy wash during action scenes and a tight top-light or single profile lantern on the narrator to isolate them from the rest of the stage, signalling to the audience that we have stepped outside the story.