“Do spectators simply watch?”
(Freshwater 2009, p.2).
Being the set designer, I have been sketching down a few ideas for our performance staging. I particularly like the idea of creating quite an intimate space between the actor and audience. I feel that with the piece of theatre we want to create there shouldn’t be the traditional boundary between acting space and audience space. Adding to this, we aren’t in a sense acting as anybody else; we are placing ourselves in a scenario and performing other people’s words. This is important to distinguish in terms of the company’s manifesto.
“The presence of an audience is central to the definition of theatre” (Freshwater 2009, p.1).
Our performance needs to have an informal and relaxed atmosphere and therefore the set and staging should also match this. I had the idea for promenade staging (idea 1) which would very much include the audience amongst the action. Throughout the sketches I have drawn, I have the idea of creating different sections or stations in which either the action takes place, or the props of each scene are kept. Each station could represent a certain scene and when it is time to perform that scene, an actor will go to the appropriate station and use the props/costumes to perform with. This again reiterates the idea that we aren’t acting as another person; when it is our turn to perform, we put on our costume and use the props to represent something or someone.
These set designs include promenade staging and proscenium. Idea 4 has the audience and performance space mixed, which is similar to promenade yet the audience would not be moving with the action, as they would have a set space to sit, similar to the actor who has a set space to act.
Idea 1:
Idea 2:
Idea 3:
Idea 4:
(Photos taken: 19th February 2014)
All of the designs have at least one projection screen within the set. Idea 3 and 4 include three projection screens. After talking to Andy, the production manager, we generated a few technical ideas that meant perhaps we could use three projections showing the same recording, but from the three angles e.g. the front facing projection would be a recording from head on, then the left projection from a left hand side angle etc. During this discussion I suggested that this could work well for the Marilyn Monroe speech I briefly mentioned upon in my first blog. I thought that Andy himself could read this speech following my initial ideas and that it could be recorded from the tech box in which he will be on the evening of the performance calling the show. This will give the illusion he is saying it at that present time and give a complete spin on the text, performing it in a very casual yet visually stimulating way.
Work cited:
Freshwater, Helen (2009) theatre & audience, London: Palgrave Macmillan.