Designer Ron Cesario and actress Joanne Fayan prepare for the production of The Beaux’ Strategem.

The Providence Journal / Sandor Bodo

With tough economic times staring him in the face, Ed Shea, creative head of Warren’s 2nd Story Theatre, decided something had to go. So for his summer season, which gets under way Wednesday, he is putting on a couple of plays without sets, using just two intersecting boardwalks to create a stage.

There will be no chairs, no tables, nothing for the actors to hide behind. The audience will be seated in the round, in the four sections formed by the crisscrossing runways, watching the actors from ever-shifting vantages.

Shea thinks of the configuration as being akin to a boxing ring, where actors stand opposite one another and engage in an evening of theatrical sparring, where the audience can watch the players “duke it out,” as he puts it.

“It’s like the whole Robin Hood thing of standing on a bridge and letting someone pass,” said Shea, “that’s what this crosswalk is. Who’s going to give way?

“Because it’s confined to this space, it’s almost like a dance, like a chess match.”

Actually, this kind of bare-bones staging is nothing new for 2nd Story. For its first few full seasons, starting back in the fall of 2003, the theater went with a similar set up, producing shows in an empty space shaped like an X, with just a bit of molding or a curtain to suggest a time period.

But as the theater became more established, Shea began investing more time and resources in production values. Sam Shepard’s Curse of the Starving Class took place in a grease-smeared kitchen with working appliances. William Inge’s classic Bus Stop was set in a funky roadside diner with menus tacked to the wall and vintage counter stools.

But after several years of more or less elaborate presentations, Shea has begun to rethink his approach. He has gone back to basics. And not just because of the economy.

True, he feels he must trim expenses if he is to hold ticket prices at $25, $20 for subscribers. The theater has a large building to maintain, a former social club with a ground-floor bistro. And it has five full-time employees who receive medical and other benefits.

Shea is bracing for a time when donations and ticket sales begin to fall off, as patrons find whatever cash they might have set aside for a night of entertainment going to fill their gas tanks. Rather than hand out pink slips, he’d rather cut production costs.

Because the theater’s patrons have been accustomed to such spare presentations in the past, he believes they won’t miss sets. What they will miss, he says, is calling the theater and not having someone answer the phone.

Besides, sets just end up in the Dumpster.

And Shea also believes sets can be a distraction, that they can get in the way of the playwright’s language, and interfere with the acting.

“To put a play in an empty space,” he said, “really makes you hear it like you’ve never heard it before.”

Designing and building sets eats up a huge amount of time and money, too, as much as $10,000 per show, said Shea. He said he has only so much time to devote to details, and he would much rather “worry about the craft of acting than choosing wallpaper.”

“We’re all working with limited resources,” said Shea, “not just financially, but in terms of man hours, too. So much time goes into the set, and I’m not sure the audience appreciates all that effort.

“I’m not sure in the end the set helps tell the story. I’m not sure they are all that necessary.”

Audiences entering 2nd Story’s upstairs theater this summer will find two crisscrossing pine walkways, 5 feet wide, stretching 45 feet. They poke into the audience like the aisles in a traditional theater, so the actors, who have only that space to work with, are constantly moving among the viewers.

That makes for exceptional sight lines, said Shea. He had been doing plays in the three-quarter round, which means people on the sides of the theater see the actors in profile much of the time. There is only one “sweet spot” with that configuration, said Shea, and that’s upstage center. But with his crosswalk design, there are four potential upstage centers.

“There will be part of the time when people are in the perfect location,” said Shea. “Then it gets traded around in a way that the three other sections don’t feel short-changed. They’ll always see one face in full.”

Working without a set doesn’t work for all plays, of course. There are certain plays, such as Bus Stop, in which the location is too important.

But Shea said the two offerings this summer, along with five American classics next season —including Death of a Salesman and A Streetcar Named Desire — all lend themselves to setless spaces. These are poetic plays that emphasize language and take place largely in the minds of the characters.

Shea opens the summer season Wednesday with The Beaux’ Stratagem, a 1707 Restoration comedy by Irish playwright George Farquhar. That will be followed in August by The Belle’s Stratagem, written some 70 years later by Hannah Cowley.

In The Beaux’ Stratagem, two suitors set out to court wealthy heiresses and thus improve their meager fortunes. The Belle’s Stratagem, on the other hand, deals with an arranged marriage between Doricourt and lovely Letitia Hardy. Letitia finds her fiancée to be indifferent toward her and sets out to win him over at a masquerade ball.

Although there are no sets in these productions, Shea has not skimped on the costumes, a production value that audiences are not willing to forgo, he said. He will once again be working with Trinity Rep designer Ron Cesario, who has provided costumes for almost all of 2nd Story’s shows.

Cesario, a Rhode Island College graduate who has been working at Trinity for 13 years, has come up with period costumes for The Beaux’ Stratagem, but with some contemporary touches so they won’t seem too foreign. For Joanne Fayan, who plays the unhappily married Mrs. Sullen, Cesario has designed an emerald-green gown that opens in front to a pair of gold slacks, sort of like a 1950s hostess outfit.

Mrs. Sullen’s lover, Archer, wears what Cesario calls a Restoration cloth motorcycle jacket, with Converse sneakers.

Costumes for The Belle’s Stratagem have a 1920s look, which gives the audience a bit of contrast between two similar plays, said Cesario.

Costumes become important because they are the one physical thing that tells the audience who people are, said Cesario, the one thing besides the dialogue that furthers the plot.

“We couldn’t do these plays without the costumes,” said Shea, “not just because they are the last production value people won’t allow to be taken away, but because it defines the relationship between one actor and another. It helps tell the story, and I’m not sure the sets do that.

“But I know the costumes do because they come alive when actors put them on, they move and breathe.”

Otherwise, Shea is into the idea of working with empty spaces. Interesting theater to him is two actors — not even characters, but actors — talking to one another and an audience listening.

Without tables and chairs, the actors have only their lines and the other actors as life lines. It’s a little like walking a tightrope without a safety net, said Shea.

“They don’t have anything to sit on or hide behind,” he said. “It’s just them talking, and nothing makes an actor feel more alive than being exposed like that. It’s like an opera singer hitting a high c. You either make it or you don’t.”

The Beaux’ Stratagem opens in previews Wednesday and runs through July 26 (no performance July 4) at 2nd Story Theatre, 28 Market St., Warren. Tickets are $25. Call (401) 247-4200.

The Belle’s Stratagem will open in previews Aug 6.

cgray@projo.com