Exploring Theatre Design: From Textual Demands to Practical Considerations

1. Introduction to Design

2. What is theatre? What makes theatre theatre? Now.

3. What is the difference between performance and production? Tomorrow.

4. What is the difference between production/design and everyday life? Here

5. Us

6. Our

10. Context • Collaboration • Choice/Intention • Communication Wicked, scenic design Eugene Lee

11. Context • Given circumstances • What the text demands • What the production demands The Turn of the Screw scenic designer Robert Klingelhoefer

12. Textual demands • Text is our framework. Most of what we do as designers begins with the text • Play text - words to be spoken and the stage descriptions concerning action • Performance text – characterization, space, action • What information can we get from the text?

13. Time • Why is the knowledge of time important for designers? • Esoteric reasons • Practical reasons • Historical reasons – Neoclassicism, Verisimilitude and the Three Unities (place, time, and action) Broadway Bound Old Globe Theatre Directed by Scott SchwartzSet Design by Ralph Funicello

14. Period • The historical age, decade, or era when the play is set. • Practical considerations – what does a 1950s typewriter, Roman toga, 1970s hairdo, Medieval chair look like? Why is this information important? Lion in Winter. Directed by Trevor Nunn, Design Stephen Brimson Lewis, Lighting Peter Mumford

15. Thematic considerations – people in other time periods had different motivations than we do, even though we cannot separate our modern sensibilities from the understanding of a text (Oedipal complex, modern ideas of racism and Othello.) This will change how the audience perceives the production and is something the team might have to take into account. • Researching the major intellectual/political/social/cultural ideas of the play’s time period will give insights into the motivations of the characters. Pacific Overtures, set design: Aronson

16. Knowledge of period styles will also be very useful if the production is removed from its time – conceptualized/modernized.

17. La Boheme. Lyric Opera of Chicago. Director: Louisa Muller Set design: Michael Yeargan Costumes: Walter Mahoney Lighting: Duane Schuler Rent, the Broadway Tour. Director: Michael Greif Set Design: Paul Clay Costume design: Angela Wendt Lighting design: Blake Burba

18. Place and Locale • The environment inhabited by the characters. This is the context in which all action occurs. • This is not only the physical environs, but also the genius loci – the spirit of the place. A Streetcar Named Desire. Guthrie Theatre Scenic: Todd Rosenthal

19. In a play like A Streetcar Named Desire, the place is a small, messy, two-roomed apartment in New Orleans – summer, 1940s • The genius loci is a poor, run-down section of the city but with raffish charm. It is hot, muggy – a pressure cooker for the action that is to follow. Fertile ground for Stanley’s lust and rage and Blanche’s descent to madness. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56ExGsnLtP8

20. Revelation of character • One of the most important because characters are the drivers of plot. Non-verbal communication by the characters – how they are dressed, how they walk, gestures, business, what they carry – allows the audience to understand the story more fully. Carmen. Boston Lyric Opera. Set: J. Conklin, Costumes: G. Berry, Lighting: T. Hase

21. Threepenny Opera. Willamstown Theatre Festival Director: Peter Hunt Lighting Design: Rui Rita Set Design: John Conklin Costume Design: Laurie Churba

22. Practical Demands • Budget, space - venue, time, personnel, method, equipment, materials. Sound of Music. Millburn Stone Theatre. Director: S. Lee Lewis, Lighting: David Allen, Costumes: Gale Bareham

23. Sound of Music. Lyric Opera of Chicago. Director Marc Bruni Set: Michael Yeargan, Costume: Alejo Vietti, Lighting: Duane Schuler

24. Collaboration Anything Goes, scenic-Derek McLane, lighting-Peter Kaczorowski

25. Choice/Intention

26. Communication

27. What does a production have to have?

28. Jerzy Grotowski asked the same question. • Can the theatre exist without costumes and sets? • Can it exist without music to accompany the plot? • Can it exist without lighting effects? • And without a text? • But can the theatre exist without actors? • Can the theatre exist without an audience?

29. “So we are left with the actor and the spectator. We can thus define the theatre as ‘what takes place between spectator and actor’. All the other things are supplementary – perhaps necessary, but nevertheless supplementary.” -Jerzy Grotowski Towards a Poor Theatre So why do we bother?

30. What is design?What does design “do” for a production?

31. What is design? • The telling of the visual story. • A physical representation of the world of the play or of the interior life of the play. • The realization of the playwright’s and director’s intentions in visual terms. • The interpretation and visualization of the text. • The shaping and filling of the stage space. • A collaboration by many artists towards an unified vision of a production.

32. Design is the look of the environment around the actor, the clothes on their back, the music in their world, light so they may see, the furniture so they may sit, and a million different pieces of the characters’ lives. Oleanna

33. Design is life. Design is the interpretation of life. Design is the fulfillment of life – the fruition of text, intention, and ideas. Gem of the Ocean – costume design - Constanza Romero

34. Design is reality – the creation of a specific reality made for a unique world that exists briefly.

35. Design can be anything or nothing – it can be a recreation or an interpretation.

36. Quick definitions • Concept • Visual metaphor

37. Concept • An idea. The meaning behind the words. • Concept goes deeper than mere representation.

38. 'One and Three Chairs‘ Joseph Kosuth

39. Visual Metaphor • When one object is used to stand in for another. • Metaphor usually leads to a greater understanding of what is being conveyed.

40. Umberto Boccioni, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913) Funeral of the Anarchist Galli by Carlo Carrà, 1911

41. Theme • Theme is the intellectual aspect or the main idea contained in the script – its what I mean when I ask, what’s this play about. • The theme is typically universal – most readers can agree on the main theme. • Theme is partially communicated through subtext – the meaning behind what the characters say and do. • Think about WHY.

42. The Crucible

43. Mood • The emotional impact on the audience – how we feel when we see a play performed. • Atmosphere, ambiance, immediate reaction, visceral response. • Mood is intensified in climatic moments. • Lighting and sound design are the two design aspects that link directly and unintellectually to mood.

44. Macbeth

46. Style • Method of expression, how the piece is written/presented • Literary • Abstract or realistic, stream of consciousness or naturalistic • Artistic • Based on artistic movements- symbolism, surrealism, expressionism, cinematic • Period style • Ancient Greece, modern France, the future, the 1920s

47. The style, whether textual or conceptual, must be clearly presented in the design.

48. Genre • Category of expression – comedy, tragicomedy, melodrama, romance, musical theatre, farce, satire • Each of these have their own mode of expression, but they are rarely purely one thing or the other – Hamlet is considered one of Shakespeare’s funniest plays

49. Areas of Design • Scenery and props – the stage picture, including realistic elements like walls, doors, windows, stairs and non-realistic, conceptual elements.

50. Also included under the umbrella of scenery are props, set decoration, furniture, scenic art, and sometimes even the alteration of the stage house itself.