An emerging star of theatrical design, Shizuka Kai is known for her minimalism. But, even for Kai, the design constraints of Cock are a challenge. In Mike Bartlett’s script, the second sentence reads, “There is no scenery, no props, no furniture, and no mime.”

Meeting with the Straight in the lounge of the Performance Lab, where the artists from Rumble Theatre are putting Cock together, Kai, who is designing both the set and costumes, remembers, “One of the actors said to me, ‘Oh, this must be so easy for you!’ Um. No. It’s not! As a designer, it’s really hard! It’s like, ‘Why do you even want a designer if you don’t want a design?’ ” But there’s no such thing as a neutral design choice, so every decision matters, and the question becomes: How do you create a design without appearing to do so?

The play asks existential questions of its own. Off the top, John breaks up with his long-term male partner, M. To his surprise, John soon falls in love with W, a woman—even though he has never had a female lover and has long regarded himself as gay. John can’t make up his mind, though, and continues to vacillate between his love interests. All of the parties, including M’s father, F, decide to work things out over dinner.

The image of the cockfighting ring became Kai’s inspiration. “When I imagined a cockfight, I imagined a dirt pit,” she says, “but, when I looked at photos of cockfights, I found out that they take place in a circular space within a properly made arena. And the floor is green—almost like a tennis court. They’re very clean, neat-looking venues. So we tried a few variations on that idea, but everything looked like we were trying too hard. It was all too literal. So then we came up with this…”

Kai sets up a model. The floor is black and there’s a grey circle in the middle. It’s surrounded by a ring of eight sets of black risers that can seat 13 audience members each. The actors never leave the stage, but when they exit a scene, literally or metaphorically—when they go into another room or distance themselves emotionally—they can step out of the grey area and into the black.

Clothing the actors—or the characters—is even trickier. After all, which task is she performing? Although she hasn’t completed her costume choices on the day of the interview, Kai says that she figures the trick is going to be figuring out how to make it look like the actors are dressed as themselves, while giving a subtle nod to the characters they’re playing.

M, for instance, is a financier. “I tried putting Shawn [Macdonald], who’s playing M, in a collared shirt and business pants, but as soon as he put them on, it was obvious that they were too much. It was like the clothes were saying, ‘He is this character.’ So now I’m just going to put him in some regular pants and just a casual sweater or something”—whispering a hint rather than making a statement.

Asked if there’s a kind of liberation in restriction, including the restrictions of this script, Kai replies, “I work way better with restrictions. If somebody said, ‘Okay, you can have all of the money and all of the resources you want,’ I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.”

Rumble Theatre’s Cock runs from Friday (October 30) to November 8 at Performance Works.