Elizabeth Margolius
By Jen Banowetz
May 2025 View more Spotlight
Cracking the code of bringing a bestseller to the stage
Dan Brown’s 2003 mystery-thriller The Da Vinci Code has quite the mix: a symbolist, a cryptologist, a murder at the Louvre, an albino monk, secret religious orders, the Holy Grail, clues, and traps, with plenty of twists and turns. And it sold like hotcakes. (An estimated 80 million copies worldwide—not too shabby.)
So, how exactly do you take this conspiracy-laden, page-turning romp (and later a 2006 film adaptation) and translate it to the stage? To find out, we chatted with director Elizabeth Margolius (a longtime fixture of the Chicago theater scene), who’s taking the helm of Drury Lane Theatre’s Chicago regional premiere of The Da Vinci Code, running April 9 through June 1 in Oakbrook Terrace.
Q: Really, how do go from action-packed novel to stage production?
A: There are two adapters [Rachel Wagstaff and Duncan Abel] from the U.K. who took this and condensed it into a really playable piece of theater. It’s a regional premiere, [and] we are approaching it with a new concept, but I’ll say they the writers did a really fabulous job of taking the book and taking out what didn’t necessarily need to be there and making it into this very fast-paced, clear play.
I’m a minimalist when it comes to direction and concept and how I approach things, and we’ve done the same thing here. I’ve really stripped it down to its core, and the locations are represented more with imagery and movement than with anything else, so I’m really able to manipulate where we are based on where [the actors] are staged and how they move through space. There’s no large set changes; it’s very intricately designed—with video with projections, with live surveillance cameras, and with a lot of movement, and that’s what brings us from location to location.
Q: What you mean by movement?
A: I’ll say first, movement is different in my mind from choreography. I’m not a choreographer. I don’t really have any dance experience at all, but I am a movement director. I think what separates it is movement is about how an actor moves and manipulates the architecture of the space, how you carry yourself, or the speed in which you move. I’ve studied all kinds of movement techniques from all over the world, starting with you Qi Gong, which is in the same vein as tai chi, the idea of manipulating energy and manipulating bodies in space…It’s more about being in touch with your own body and then using that for the storytelling.
Q: What do you hope that the audience walks away with?
A: First of all, I just want them to have a good time and be intrigued and surprised and go on a journey with us—that’s most important, that they go on the storytelling journey, even if they’ve read the book five times, and they’ve seen the film—that they come in and go, “Oh my gosh, I forgot about that” or “I wasn’t expecting that.” But also, this piece is meant to have an audience leaving asking questions.
We plant a lot of Easter eggs all over the place, and some of them are very small—we know that probably most of the audience won’t see them, but we know they’re there—and then some of them are larger. It’s a good piece where I think, hopefully, it will ignite a lot of conversation when people leave.
Q: How did you get into theater and, specifically, directing?
A: I started playing the flute when I was 6 years old, so I started in music. I went to college with an intent to get a degree in classical flute, and then walked in to the theater department one day—because I was tired of being in a practice room by myself. And that’s where it was, in college—that sort of, “This is interesting.” I’m interested in the storytelling aspect of it, in the community of it, in collaboration—all of that—so that’s where the spark came.
I started as an actor and did that for several years and then realized what I really enjoy is being eyes on the outside and really figuring out how to tell the story from the outside.
Photo: Drury Lane Theatre
