Troy University Scenic Designers Essay

Description

OK, it’s time to try on a new “mask” – the designer. You can make your skills at the design process – bringing something you envision onto the stage as a costume or scenic designer. (Well, we won’t make it all the way to the stage, but we’ll go as far as we can within the confines of this class.) Here’s what you do:

EVERYONE

: Read

either

Dramatic Interlude 3 –

King Lear

(p.206-207)

or

Dramatic interlude 5

Bitter Cane

(p 366-367). Try to imagine the physical world of the play – the light, sound, environment, clothing, etc. – that the characters are living in. Picture it in your mind. Then, proceed, choosing one of the following options. If you change the time period state why the story would still work in that time- example 1950’s because women were still expected to stay home and keep the children.

For COSTUME DESIGNERS

– Either sketch a rendering (in color)or cut and collage an image of the costumes for three of the characters in the interlude.

Some people collage historical images off the internet.

How does their clothing tell the audience who they are and what situation they’re in? How do things like fit, color, texture, and culture work into your design? Your job is to make these characters’ costumes add to the story of the play. NOTE: It might help you to look at the section on Costume Design (p. 158) in our book – there are lots of guiding questions to give you some ideas.

Write a short description

or paragraph about why you made these choices and include it with your submission.

For SCENIC DESIGNERS

– Either sketch a rendering (in color)or cut and collage of the on-stage set/scenery for this interlude. What is the environment and “vibe” of the place? What shapes, colors, structures, etc. can be used to show the audience where and when the play takes place? There might be various locations mentioned in this interlude, so your job will be to make various locations work on one stage and still keep the overall theme of the play intact. NOTE: You might read the section on Scene Design (p. 149) for some ideas, and there are even a couple of sample renderings on p. 156.

Write a short statement

about your design idea and include it with your submission.

EVERYONE

: Once you’ve completed your design rendering, scan it or take a digital photo of it. Make it into a PDF or a Powerpoint so Canvas will open it.

Do not

just submit JPEG images as Canvas will not open them. I can’t wait to see what you come up with.

Remember, your imagination is limitless – don’t settle for “plain old” ideas. Go with your impulses and create!

If you are stuck look under module for partial student work to see some ways others approached the mask. Note: It might be from other readings etc and most of it is just partial so make sure you actually read this and don’t just copy the work. NOTE: Look back at technical words in your book and incorporate those.

04:23
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Theatre in Your Li…ert Barton(1).pdf
dium or corridor theatre with audiences on both sides of the action, such as
Copyright 2015 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or Chapter(s). Editorial review has
deemed that any suppressed content does not materially
affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.
chapter 5
Designers
149
in a football field. The audience can be subdivided in countless creative ways,
or even move from stage to stage rather than having the scenery change. For
many, the black box is an almost limitless theatrical toy for those conceiving
a production, and it is an ever-changing adventure for audiences who arrive
not quite knowing what to expect.
The two basic approaches in live theatre are to design each element from
scratch for each new production or to design elements that will be reused
repeatedly. We will look at the basic processes of show-specific design and
discuss one example of permanent design in each of the following sections.
FIGURE 5.5 Proscenium
stage at Sugden Community
Theatre, Naples, Florida.
Dan Forer/Beateworks/Terra/Corbi
FIGURE 5.6 Thrust stage at
the Stratford Festival’s Tom
Patterson Theatre
, ET LIBRAS EL
Ecle
WA
INTEREST
WW AWE
Stratford Festival
Courtesy of
Copyright 2015 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or Chapter(s). Editorial review has
deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.
150
part II
.
Who Does Theatre?
View pictures LTD/Alamy
04:22
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Theatre in Your Li…ert Barton(1).pdf
158
part II
Who Does Theatre?
ca
Courtesy Elizabeth E. Schuch
FIGURE 5.14 A set design rendering of Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler by Elizabeth Schuch.
FIGURE 5.15 A scenic model created by Kurt Söhnlein for Wagner’s opera Tannhauser.
Copyright 2015 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or Chapter(s). Editorial review has
deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.
chapter 5
Designers
159
Media Invades Theatre
ANITA GATES
JOURNALIST
The Projection Designer
Lately, it seems, going to the theatre
is a lot like going to the movies.
More and more live theatre incorporates media. This is There’s often a screen upstage, and
attributed to the fact that emerging theatre designers and
either film footage, photo stills, or a
directors grew up watching television and cinema is their
combination of the two-collectively
language. With a culture immersed in BlackBerry devices,
known as projections—are part of
the show.
iPhones, and various other mobile gadgets, screens are
everywhere in life, so it was only a matter of time before
they hit the stage.
The new trend is so pervasive that the Yale School of Drama now offers a
full-fledged projection design program. The technology has resulted in highly
efficient and inexpensive software such as Isadora, Eyeliner, and Pandora’s
Box, which can coordinate 20 or more video projectors and link computers
that formerly separately ran projections and moving scenery.
Projections allow the inclusion of performer/creators who are not actually
physically present onstage, as in the tribute show Sondheim on Sondheim
where the composer himself was a constant presence,
PETER FLAHERTY
albeit electronically. Projections are also one of the most
PROJECTION DESIGNER
flexible parts of a show. Actual sets can take labor-intensive
The liveness of theatre is still the
months to design and build; at a certain point, changes
reason that theatre is theatre, but
need to stop as opening night draws near. Conversely, a
video has an immense power to help
projection or video image can be added, deleted, or substi-
tell the
story.
04:21
4G
< Theatre in Your Li...ert Barton(1).pdf dramatic interlude 5 Dreams 367 LI-TAI: Drink it. It'll give you confidence. [He takes a big swallow and chokes. She laughs at him.) LI-TAI: Slow down. What's your hurry? (smiling] Talk to me. WING (still embarrassed]: About what? LI-TAI: About you. WING [blushing]: There's not much to tell. LI-TAI: Why not? WING (takes a gulp. then blurts): My name is Wing and I like to eat duck gizzards. [She bursts out laughing, then he laughs, too.] WING: On the first day of school, I remember the teacher asked us to introduce ourselves. LI-TAI: And that was what you said. WING: I couldn't think of anything else! LI-TAI (mockingly]: You still can't. WING (frustrated]: I don't know why I'm so tongue-tied. [finishes his glass] LI-TAI: Talking is not important. (refills his glass) There are other ways to communicate. (pours herself one, clicks his glass. then slumps on the bed with her glass in a provocative manner.) Your parents have a bride picked out for you yet? WING: No. (pauses.) My parents are dead. LI-TAI: I'm sorry. WING: My father died here. At Kahuku. LI-TAI: Oh? (surprised.] What was his name? WING: Lau Hing. Kuo Lau Hing. [She freezes at the recognition of his name.) He was one of those Sandalwood boys who never made it back. LI-TAI (trembling]: How old were you when he left? WING: I was just a baby. WING: And how can a father treat his family that way? Why should I pretend he was somebody he wasn't? (somberly] He was nobody to me. Nothing. LI-TAI (stung with guilt): Your mother? She loved him? WING (disgustedly]: She died. He lied to her. He lied to her every month for two years! When he got tired of lying, he stopped writing altogether. She didn't hear from him again. Then one day, she gets this letter saying he's dead. [bitterly] You want to know what killed him? (pauses) Opium. The money he should have sent home, he squandered on himself (pauses, They shipped his trunk back. She thought it was his bones. When she opened it, she fainted. The box was empty except for his hat and a few personal belongings. His body was never recovered they said, because he had drowned in the ocean. [with cruel irony) That's why I'm here. To redeem a dead man. LI-TAI: You think you'll succeed? WING: I'm not sending my ghost in an empty box home. Life is too short! (listening to the sound of rain] It's raining again. LI-TAI: It's always raining. There's no escape. (with a sense of foreboding] You do what you can do to forget. And survive. [picks up a fan and begins moodily fanning herself] I can't decide what's more boring. Living out here in the middle of nowhere or raising chickens in a puny plot back home. WING: Why did you come here? LI-TAI: A lady in the village told me that Hawai'i was paradise. She said there was hardly anything to do there but suck on big, fat, juicy sugarcane-sweeter than honey. I was crazy for cane and waited for the day to come here. When my mother died, my father remarried. My new mother didn't like a girl with bound feet who talked back. So I told her to send me to Hawai'i. She sold me to a rich old merchant on the Big Island. I cried and begged to go back home. But I was his number four concubine. His favorite. Four is a bad luck number. So when the old man suffered a stroke in my bedroom, they, of course, blamed it on me. Number one wife, who was always jealous of me, picked up my red slippers and threw them at my face. Then she beat me with a bamboo rod and called me a good-for-nothing slave girl! [laughs bitterly] They lit firecrackers when Fook Ming took me. To rid my evil spirit. Some paradise. (Struck by the resemblance, she cups his face with her hands.] LI-TAI: Let me look at you! WING (embarrassed]: What's the matter? Why are you looking at me like that? LI-TAI [marveling]: You remind me of someone. WING: I'm as good as any man on Kahuku. LI-TAT (disdainfully]: The average man here is a pig. You don't want to be like them, do you? WING: One flop in the family is enough. It's no secret. Lau Hing was a bum. LI-TAI: How can a son talk about his own father in that way? Copyright 2015 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the cBook and/or Chapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Expansions 5 Applying Concepts of Realism and Stylization The Three Sisters is as perfect an example of early sometimes but at the same time make them clear realism as exists, so much so that it is difficult for us to the audience. This involves a double level of to imagine a time when events such as these were concentration. While most scenes will appear to not dramatized. be real and we will be allowed the “fly on the wall” sensation of eavesdropping, it will also be true that Call for Change the performance will actually be pitched forward. Actors will cheat out to the audience to be seen and Just as Stanislavski called for a different, more understood at key moments; actions might stop or go honest approach to acting than had been common into slow motion on other parts of the stage when we before, Chekhov said, “A play should be written in should be looking at a particular exchange or piece of which people arrive, go away, have dinner, talk about business. All will be truthful, though projected. the weather, and play cards. Life must be as it is and people as they are not on stilts! ... Let everything Stylization or Reality? on the stage be as complicated and at the same time as simple as it is in life.” This may seem naive to you In keeping with the tradition of magic realism, unless you realize how unreal everything was before Bitter Cane has stark and believable dialogue- he made this revolutionary statement. some of it blunt, profane, and perhaps on the cusp of naturalism. But unlike The Three Sisters, where The Look every action is as it would be in the lives of European cultures without discernible magic, consider these Each act of this play takes place in a distinct and shifts in “reality": spacious setting: Act One, the dining and living • At the opening, only the audience and Wing actu- room of the family, Act Two, bedrooms and hallways ally hear the voice of his mother charging and upstairs; Act Three, the porch and exterior of the warning him. house. In contemporary productions, these locales A ghost of his father appears immediately and . 04:21 ..11 4G GD < Theatre in Your Li...ert Barton(1).pdf Copyright 2015 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the cBook and/or Chapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 366 dramatic interlude 5 Dreams Bitter Cane (1989) Setting: Hawaii in the 1880s Characters: Lau Hing Kuo, the ghost of a middle-aged cane cutter Li-Tai, a prostitute in her mid-thirties Kam Su, a cane cutter in his early thirties Wing Chun Kuo, 16-year-old son of Lau Hing Fook Ming, a middle-aged Chinese luna (foreman) Wing's dream is the same as that of his late father and thousands of other Chinese workers: travel to Hawaii, earn enough to buy land back home, return, and start a better life. He leaves China with the haunting message of his mother ringing in his and our ears: VOICEOVER OF HIS OLD MOTHER: Now it is up to you, my son. Do not kill me with shame, as did your father. Will you break the cycle of pain or will you pursue another grievous lifetime? The lure to work in the cane fields has been largely a false one, with salaries and working conditions much worse than they have been represented and saving money nearly impossible. To keep the workers passive, the owners actually provide them with packets of opium. Wing tries to avoid all that, but an older worker, Kam, is dubious: KAM: I give you a month before you're as depraved as the rest of us. Disciples of the golden poppy. ... If opium is evil, the white man's the devil. He gave it to us and it's him who's keeping us here.... Throughout the play, the ghost of Wing's father appears to us but not to him. Wing feels great bitterness toward his father for deserting his mother: WING: She died. He lied to her. He lied to her every month for two years! When he got tired of lying, he stopped writing altogether. She didn't hear from him again. Then one day she gets a letter saying he's dead. ... You want to know what killed him? Opium. ... His body was never recovered they said because he had drowned in the ocean. That's why I'm here. To redeem a dead man. He becomes involved with Li-Tai, the plantation prostitute, exactly as his father had before him: LI-TAI: Sometimes I wonder which is more oppressive—the heat of the sun or the lust of a man. ... You see this body? It's not mine. It belongs to Kahuku Plantation. My skin even smells like burnt cane! WING: And what about your heart? LI-TAI: I cut it out. Long ago. WING: Tell me one thing. I've got to know. Do you love me, Li-Tai? Or is it my father you love? LI-TAI: When you didn't come, I wanted to die. Is that love? Wing does avoid the drug, which is eating others alive, and becomes the most admired worker on the farm. Kam still fears he will go the way of his father: KAM: In ten years, he had gone from top cutter at Kahuku to a skeleton. They blamed you for his suicide, Li-Tai. LI-TAI: [bitterly] Of course. If a man is weak, it's the fault of the woman. Do you think I have the power to change men's lives? Li-Tai is officially being kept by Fook, the obsessively possessive foreman: FOOK: Li-Tai is mine! I own her. Every hair on her body, every inch of her flesh and bones is paid for in gold. WING: You don't own her soul. Just before her own death, Li-Tai reveals that Wing's father's remains have not really disappeared. She urges him to leave the impossible dreams here and to return home. For her, home means death: LI-TAI: Now you have a chance to be free. Return these bones to where they belong. They are part of you, Wing. Part of me. Home, I am ready to go home. Here is a scene from Bitter Cane: Sixteen-year-old Wing has been in the cane camp for a few weeks when his friend Kam takes him to visit the camp prostitute Li-Tai, a foot-bound, opium-addicted woman who was in love with Wing's father. LI-TAI (abruptly]: Look. I know you're not here to gossip. You have two dollars? (He fumbles in his pocket and without looking hands her several bills. She smirks at his naiveté and quickly tucks it in her kimono pocket.) LI-TAI: Sit down. [He sits.] Want something to drink? WING: Some tea would be nice, thank you. LI-TAI (amused laugh): Tea? How old are you? WING: Twenty LI-TAI (frowning]: You're lying. WING (embarrassed]: Sixteen. LI-TAI: This your first time? [He nods with embarrassment. She takes a whiskey bottle, uncorks it, pours a glass, and hands it to him.) Copyright 2015 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the cBook and/or Chapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. dramatic interlude 5 Dreams 367 LI-TAI: Drink it. It'll give you confidence. [He takes a big swallow and chokes. She laughs at him.) LI-TAI: Slow down. What's your hurry? (smiling) Talk to me. WING (still embarrassed]: About what? LI-TAI: About you. WING [blushing): There's not much to tell. LI-TAI: Why not? WING (takes a gulp. then blurts): My name is Wing and I like to eat duck gizzards. (She bursts out laughing, then he laughs, too.) WING: On the first day of school, I remember the teacher asked us to introduce ourselves. LI-TAI: And that was what you said. WING: I couldn't think of anything else! LI-TAI (mockinglyl: You still can't. WING (frustrated): I don't know why I'm so tongue-tied. [finishes his glass] LI-TAI: Talking is not important. (refills his glass) There are other ways to communicate. (pours herself one, clicks his glass. then slumps on the bed with her glass in a provocative manner.) Your parents have a bride picked out for you yet? WING. Na Inanses 1 Mw parents are dead WING: And how can a father treat his family that way? Why should I pretend he was somebody he wasn't? (somberly] He was nobody to me. Nothing. LI-TAI (stung with guilt]: Your mother? She loved him? WING (disgustedly]: She died. He lied to her. He lied to her every month for two years! When he got tired of lying, he stopped writing altogether. She didn't hear from him again. Then one day, she gets this letter saying he's dead. [bitterly] You want to know what killed him? (pauses) Opium. The money he should have sent home, he squandered on himself. (pauses) They shipped his trunk back. She thought it was his bones. When she opened it, she fainted. The box was empty except for his hat and a few personal belongings. His body was never recovered they said, because he had drowned in the ocean. (with cruel irony] That's why I'm here. To redeem a dead man. LI-TAI: You think you'll succeed? WING: I'm not sending my ghost in an empty box home. Life is too short! [listening to the sound of rain] It's raining again. LI-TAI: It's always raining. There's no escape. [with a sense of forehadinal You do what you can do 04:21 . 4G G < Theatre in Your Li...ert Barton(1).pdf dramatic interlude 3 Generations 207 Lear angrily disinherits her altogether. One of her suitors, the king of France, offers to marry her without dowry, and Lear in essence says she is dead to him. It immediately becomes apparent that his other daughters actually bear him no love. His situation is paralleled by that of the Earl of Gloucester, one of his courtiers, who fails to realize which of his sons loves him and which merely uses him. In one of the most famous speeches in all Shakespeare, Edmund the "bastard"* alone onstage, wonders why he should be "deprive(d)" because he is the younger and illegitimate of two brothers: EDMUND: Thou nature art my goddess; to thy law My services are bound.... Wherefore should I... permit The curiosity of nations to deprive me, For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines Lag of a brother? Why bastard? Wherefore base?... Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed, And my invention thrive, Edmund the base Shall top the legitimate-grow; 1 prosper- Now gods, stand up for bastards! Edmund plots to make it appear that his brother aims to assassinate their father, forcing Edgar to flee and to disguise himself as a madman. Through a complex series of events, both old men are betrayed by "trusted" family, are thrust out into a violent storm, experience a slow dawning of awareness, and are reunited with those whom they can trust. While they experience profound insights and increased compassion for all creatures of the world, this wisdom comes too late for them to be able to live it out into productive change. This is one of Shakespeare's most violent plays. At one point, Gloucester has his eyes ripped out, and at the final curtain, there have been nine deaths of major characters, with only Edgar (who has beaten his brother in battle) and Goneril's husband, the Duke of Albany, alive. The pain experienced by his elders is summarized by Edgar: EDGAR: The oldest hath borne most; we that are young Shall never see so much nor live so long. Here is a scene from King Lear, from the adaptation by Robert Barton found in Life Themes: An Anthology of Plays for the Theatre, in which the evil Edmund begins unfolding his plot against his brother, Edgar, the loyal son who stands by his father through thick and thin: melancholy, with a sigh like Tom o' Bedlam. [Enter EDGAR.] Fa, so la mi. EDGAR: How now, brother Edmund! What serious contemplation are you in? EDMUND: When saw you my father last? EDGAR: The night gone by. EDMUND: Spake you with him? EDGAR: Ay, two hours together. EDMUND: Bethink yourself wherein you may have offended him. Forbear his presence till some little time hath qualified the heat of his displeasure. EDGAR: Some villain hath done me wrong. EDMUND: That's my fear. Retire with me to my lodging, from whence I will fitly bring you to hear my lord speak: pray you, go; there's my key: if you do stir abroad, go arm'd. EDGAR: Arm'd, brother! EDMUND: Brother, I advise you to the best. Pray you, away. EDGAR: Shall I hear from you anon? EDMUND: I do serve you in this business. [Exit EDGAR.) A credulous father! And a brother noble. Whose nature is so far from doing harms, That he suspects none; on whose foolish honesty My practices ride easy!— see the business. Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit. All with me's meet that I can fashion fit. [Exit.) *While Edmund behaves like a "bastard" in our contemporary usage of that term, in this instance, it refers to the fact that he is the result of his father's affair outside his marriage (probably with a non-aristocrat), while Edgar's mother was probably titled and wed to Gloucester, so Edgar is the rightful, legal heir to his father's estates. Roosters (1987) Like Lear, Roosters involves a father who was so absent and distant in the crucial growing-up periods of his children that he really does not know them in adulthood. But there are significant differences as well. Whereas Lear has no mothers of any kind, Roosters is filled with the force of both mother and aunt, actively engaged in raising children. Whereas Lear has only grown children, Roosters features a teenage girl clinging to childhood and still in need of guidance. The play has much female energy surrounding the machismo. While it is no surprise that Shakespeare has speeches of power, poetry, and extraordinary eloquence, Milcha Sanchez-Scott also has characters frequently launch into breathtaking poetry. Both plays (EDMUND stands alone.) EDMUND: I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing. Edgar! Ha! He comes like the catastrophe of the old comedy; my cue is villainous Copyright 2015 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or Chapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 208 dramatic interlude 3 . Generations alternate between the most direct down-to-earth language and soaring elegant imagery. Setting: Exterior of the Morales house, somewhere in New Mexico Characters: Gallo, patriarch of the Morales family, just released from prison Juana, his wife, hardworking, patient, exhausted Hector, his son, who currently works in the fields Angela, his daughter, who wears angel wings and often prays aloud Chata, his sister, brassy, boozy, sarcastic Adan, Hector's friend Shadow 1, Shadow 2, mysterious figures who come looking for Gallo Zapata, a rooster San Juan, a rooster, each represented alternately by actual roosters and by actors portraying them The play begins on the day that family patriarch Gallo, a legendary rooster fighter, returns home. It is also the day that his son is scheduled to take his own rooster into the ring for the first time. Gallo shows his intense involvement with the rooster Zapata: GALLO: Take my blood, honey. ... I'm in you now.... Morales blood the blood of kings and vou're my sity School of Theatre/Peter Guither 04:22 11 4G Theatre in Your Li...ert Barton(1).pdf 158 part II Who Does Theatre? ca Courtesy Elizabeth E. Schuch FIGURE 5.14 A set design rendering of Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler by Elizabeth Schuch. FIGURE 5.15 A scenic model created by Kurt Söhnlein for Wagner's opera Tannhauser. Copyright 2015 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or Chapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. chapter 5 Designers 159 Media Invades Theatre ANITA GATES JOURNALIST The Projection Designer Lately, it seems, going to the theatre is a lot like going to the movies. More and more live theatre incorporates media. This is There's often a screen upstage, and attributed to the fact that emerging theatre designers and either film footage, photo stills, or a directors grew up watching television and cinema is their combination of the two-collectively language. With a culture immersed in BlackBerry devices, known as projections—are part of the show. iPhones, and various other mobile gadgets, screens are everywhere in life, so it was only a matter of time before they hit the stage. The new trend is so pervasive that the Yale School of Drama now offers a full-fledged projection design program. The technology has resulted in highly efficient and inexpensive software such as Isadora, Eyeliner, and Pandora's Box, which can coordinate 20 or more video projectors and link computers that formerly separately ran projections and moving scenery. Projections allow the inclusion of performer/creators who are not actually physically present onstage, as in the tribute show Sondheim on Sondheim where the composer himself was a constant presence, PETER FLAHERTY albeit electronically. Projections are also one of the most PROJECTION DESIGNER flexible parts of a show. Actual sets can take labor-intensive The liveness of theatre is still the months to design and build; at a certain point, changes reason that theatre is theatre, but need to stop as opening night draws near. Conversely, a video has an immense power to help projection or video image can be added, deleted, or substi- tell the story. 04:21 4G < Theatre in Your Li...ert Barton(1).pdf dramatic interlude 5 Dreams 367 LI-TAI: Drink it. It'll give you confidence. [He takes a big swallow and chokes. She laughs at him.) LI-TAI: Slow down. What's your hurry? (smiling] Talk to me. WING (still embarrassed]: About what? LI-TAI: About you. WING [blushing]: There's not much to tell. LI-TAI: Why not? WING (takes a gulp. then blurts): My name is Wing and I like to eat duck gizzards. [She bursts out laughing, then he laughs, too.] WING: On the first day of school, I remember the teacher asked us to introduce ourselves. LI-TAI: And that was what you said. WING: I couldn't think of anything else! LI-TAI (mockingly]: You still can't. WING (frustrated]: I don't know why I'm so tongue-tied. [finishes his glass] LI-TAI: Talking is not important. (refills his glass) There are other ways to communicate. (pours herself one, clicks his glass. then slumps on the bed with her glass in a provocative manner.) Your parents have a bride picked out for you yet? WING: No. (pauses.) My parents are dead. LI-TAI: I'm sorry. WING: My father died here. At Kahuku. LI-TAI: Oh? (surprised.] What was his name? WING: Lau Hing. Kuo Lau Hing. [She freezes at the recognition of his name.) He was one of those Sandalwood boys who never made it back. LI-TAI (trembling]: How old were you when he left? WING: I was just a baby. WING: And how can a father treat his family that way? Why should I pretend he was somebody he wasn't? (somberly] He was nobody to me. Nothing. LI-TAI (stung with guilt): Your mother? She loved him? WING (disgustedly]: She died. He lied to her. He lied to her every month for two years! When he got tired of lying, he stopped writing altogether. She didn't hear from him again. Then one day, she gets this letter saying he's dead. [bitterly] You want to know what killed him? (pauses) Opium. The money he should have sent home, he squandered on himself (pauses, They shipped his trunk back. She thought it was his bones. When she opened it, she fainted. The box was empty except for his hat and a few personal belongings. His body was never recovered they said, because he had drowned in the ocean. [with cruel irony) That's why I'm here. To redeem a dead man. LI-TAI: You think you'll succeed? WING: I'm not sending my ghost in an empty box home. Life is too short! (listening to the sound of rain] It's raining again. LI-TAI: It's always raining. There's no escape. (with a sense of foreboding] You do what you can do to forget. And survive. [picks up a fan and begins moodily fanning herself] I can't decide what's more boring. Living out here in the middle of nowhere or raising chickens in a puny plot back home. WING: Why did you come here? LI-TAI: A lady in the village told me that Hawai'i was paradise. She said there was hardly anything to do there but suck on big, fat, juicy sugarcane-sweeter than honey. I was crazy for cane and waited for the day to come here. When my mother died, my father remarried. My new mother didn't like a girl with bound feet who talked back. So I told her to send me to Hawai'i. She sold me to a rich old merchant on the Big Island. I cried and begged to go back home. But I was his number four concubine. His favorite. Four is a bad luck number. So when the old man suffered a stroke in my bedroom, they, of course, blamed it on me. Number one wife, who was always jealous of me, picked up my red slippers and threw them at my face. Then she beat me with a bamboo rod and called me a good-for-nothing slave girl! [laughs bitterly] They lit firecrackers when Fook Ming took me. To rid my evil spirit. Some paradise. (Struck by the resemblance, she cups his face with her hands.] LI-TAI: Let me look at you! WING (embarrassed]: What's the matter? Why are you looking at me like that? LI-TAI [marveling]: You remind me of someone. WING: I'm as good as any man on Kahuku. LI-TAT (disdainfully]: The average man here is a pig. You don't want to be like them, do you? WING: One flop in the family is enough. It's no secret. Lau Hing was a bum. LI-TAI: How can a son talk about his own father in that way? Copyright 2015 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the cBook and/or Chapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Expansions 5 Applying Concepts of Realism and Stylization The Three Sisters is as perfect an example of early sometimes but at the same time make them clear realism as exists, so much so that it is difficult for us to the audience. This involves a double level of to imagine a time when events such as these were concentration. While most scenes will appear to not dramatized. be real and we will be allowed the “fly on the wall” sensation of eavesdropping, it will also be true that Call for Change the performance will actually be pitched forward. Actors will cheat out to the audience to be seen and Just as Stanislavski called for a different, more understood at key moments; actions might stop or go honest approach to acting than had been common into slow motion on other parts of the stage when we before, Chekhov said, “A play should be written in should be looking at a particular exchange or piece of which people arrive, go away, have dinner, talk about business. All will be truthful, though projected. the weather, and play cards. Life must be as it is and people as they are not on stilts! ... Let everything Stylization or Reality? on the stage be as complicated and at the same time as simple as it is in life.” This may seem naive to you In keeping with the tradition of magic realism, unless you realize how unreal everything was before Bitter Cane has stark and believable dialogue- he made this revolutionary statement. some of it blunt, profane, and perhaps on the cusp of naturalism. But unlike The Three Sisters, where The Look every action is as it would be in the lives of European cultures without discernible magic, consider these Each act of this play takes place in a distinct and shifts in “reality": spacious setting: Act One, the dining and living • At the opening, only the audience and Wing actu- room of the family, Act Two, bedrooms and hallways ally hear the voice of his mother charging and upstairs; Act Three, the porch and exterior of the warning him. house. In contemporary productions, these locales A ghost of his father appears immediately and . 04:21 ..11 4G GD < Theatre in Your Li...ert Barton(1).pdf Copyright 2015 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the cBook and/or Chapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 366 dramatic interlude 5 Dreams Bitter Cane (1989) Setting: Hawaii in the 1880s Characters: Lau Hing Kuo, the ghost of a middle-aged cane cutter Li-Tai, a prostitute in her mid-thirties Kam Su, a cane cutter in his early thirties Wing Chun Kuo, 16-year-old son of Lau Hing Fook Ming, a middle-aged Chinese luna (foreman) Wing's dream is the same as that of his late father and thousands of other Chinese workers: travel to Hawaii, earn enough to buy land back home, return, and start a better life. He leaves China with the haunting message of his mother ringing in his and our ears: VOICEOVER OF HIS OLD MOTHER: Now it is up to you, my son. Do not kill me with shame, as did your father. Will you break the cycle of pain or will you pursue another grievous lifetime? The lure to work in the cane fields has been largely a false one, with salaries and working conditions much worse than they have been represented and saving money nearly impossible. To keep the workers passive, the owners actually provide them with packets of opium. Wing tries to avoid all that, but an older worker, Kam, is dubious: KAM: I give you a month before you're as depraved as the rest of us. Disciples of the golden poppy. ... If opium is evil, the white man's the devil. He gave it to us and it's him who's keeping us here.... Throughout the play, the ghost of Wing's father appears to us but not to him. Wing feels great bitterness toward his father for deserting his mother: WING: She died. He lied to her. He lied to her every month for two years! When he got tired of lying, he stopped writing altogether. She didn't hear from him again. Then one day she gets a letter saying he's dead. ... You want to know what killed him? Opium. ... His body was never recovered they said because he had drowned in the ocean. That's why I'm here. To redeem a dead man. He becomes involved with Li-Tai, the plantation prostitute, exactly as his father had before him: LI-TAI: Sometimes I wonder which is more oppressive—the heat of the sun or the lust of a man. ... You see this body? It's not mine. It belongs to Kahuku Plantation. My skin even smells like burnt cane! WING: And what about your heart? LI-TAI: I cut it out. Long ago. WING: Tell me one thing. I've got to know. Do you love me, Li-Tai? Or is it my father you love? LI-TAI: When you didn't come, I wanted to die. Is that love? Wing does avoid the drug, which is eating others alive, and becomes the most admired worker on the farm. Kam still fears he will go the way of his father: KAM: In ten years, he had gone from top cutter at Kahuku to a skeleton. They blamed you for his suicide, Li-Tai. LI-TAI: [bitterly] Of course. If a man is weak, it's the fault of the woman. Do you think I have the power to change men's lives? Li-Tai is officially being kept by Fook, the obsessively possessive foreman: FOOK: Li-Tai is mine! I own her. Every hair on her body, every inch of her flesh and bones is paid for in gold. WING: You don't own her soul. Just before her own death, Li-Tai reveals that Wing's father's remains have not really disappeared. She urges him to leave the impossible dreams here and to return home. For her, home means death: LI-TAI: Now you have a chance to be free. Return these bones to where they belong. They are part of you, Wing. Part of me. Home, I am ready to go home. Here is a scene from Bitter Cane: Sixteen-year-old Wing has been in the cane camp for a few weeks when his friend Kam takes him to visit the camp prostitute Li-Tai, a foot-bound, opium-addicted woman who was in love with Wing's father. LI-TAI (abruptly]: Look. I know you're not here to gossip. You have two dollars? (He fumbles in his pocket and without looking hands her several bills. She smirks at his naiveté and quickly tucks it in her kimono pocket.) LI-TAI: Sit down. [He sits.] Want something to drink? WING: Some tea would be nice, thank you. LI-TAI (amused laugh): Tea? How old are you? WING: Twenty LI-TAI (frowning]: You're lying. WING (embarrassed]: Sixteen. LI-TAI: This your first time? [He nods with embarrassment. She takes a whiskey bottle, uncorks it, pours a glass, and hands it to him.) Copyright 2015 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the cBook and/or Chapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. dramatic interlude 5 Dreams 367 LI-TAI: Drink it. It'll give you confidence. [He takes a big swallow and chokes. She laughs at him.) LI-TAI: Slow down. What's your hurry? (smiling) Talk to me. WING (still embarrassed]: About what? LI-TAI: About you. WING [blushing): There's not much to tell. LI-TAI: Why not? WING (takes a gulp. then blurts): My name is Wing and I like to eat duck gizzards. (She bursts out laughing, then he laughs, too.) WING: On the first day of school, I remember the teacher asked us to introduce ourselves. LI-TAI: And that was what you said. WING: I couldn't think of anything else! LI-TAI (mockinglyl: You still can't. WING (frustrated): I don't know why I'm so tongue-tied. [finishes his glass] LI-TAI: Talking is not important. (refills his glass) There are other ways to communicate. (pours herself one, clicks his glass. then slumps on the bed with her glass in a provocative manner.) Your parents have a bride picked out for you yet? WING. Na Inanses 1 Mw parents are dead WING: And how can a father treat his family that way? Why should I pretend he was somebody he wasn't? (somberly] He was nobody to me. Nothing. LI-TAI (stung with guilt]: Your mother? She loved him? WING (disgustedly]: She died. He lied to her. He lied to her every month for two years! When he got tired of lying, he stopped writing altogether. She didn't hear from him again. Then one day, she gets this letter saying he's dead. [bitterly] You want to know what killed him? (pauses) Opium. The money he should have sent home, he squandered on himself. (pauses) They shipped his trunk back. She thought it was his bones. When she opened it, she fainted. The box was empty except for his hat and a few personal belongings. His body was never recovered they said, because he had drowned in the ocean. (with cruel irony] That's why I'm here. To redeem a dead man. LI-TAI: You think you'll succeed? WING: I'm not sending my ghost in an empty box home. Life is too short! [listening to the sound of rain] It's raining again. LI-TAI: It's always raining. There's no escape. [with a sense of forehadinal You do what you can do 04:21 . 4G G < Theatre in Your Li...ert Barton(1).pdf dramatic interlude 3 Generations 207 Lear angrily disinherits her altogether. One of her suitors, the king of France, offers to marry her without dowry, and Lear in essence says she is dead to him. It immediately becomes apparent that his other daughters actually bear him no love. His situation is paralleled by that of the Earl of Gloucester, one of his courtiers, who fails to realize which of his sons loves him and which merely uses him. In one of the most famous speeches in all Shakespeare, Edmund the "bastard"* alone onstage, wonders why he should be "deprive(d)" because he is the younger and illegitimate of two brothers: EDMUND: Thou nature art my goddess; to thy law My services are bound.... Wherefore should I... permit The curiosity of nations to deprive me, For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines Lag of a brother? Why bastard? Wherefore base?... Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed, And my invention thrive, Edmund the base Shall top the legitimate-grow; 1 prosper- Now gods, stand up for bastards! Edmund plots to make it appear that his brother aims to assassinate their father, forcing Edgar to flee and to disguise himself as a madman. Through a complex series of events, both old men are betrayed by "trusted" family, are thrust out into a violent storm, experience a slow dawning of awareness, and are reunited with those whom they can trust. While they experience profound insights and increased compassion for all creatures of the world, this wisdom comes too late for them to be able to live it out into productive change. This is one of Shakespeare's most violent plays. At one point, Gloucester has his eyes ripped out, and at the final curtain, there have been nine deaths of major characters, with only Edgar (who has beaten his brother in battle) and Goneril's husband, the Duke of Albany, alive. The pain experienced by his elders is summarized by Edgar: EDGAR: The oldest hath borne most; we that are young Shall never see so much nor live so long. Here is a scene from King Lear, from the adaptation by Robert Barton found in Life Themes: An Anthology of Plays for the Theatre, in which the evil Edmund begins unfolding his plot against his brother, Edgar, the loyal son who stands by his father through thick and thin: melancholy, with a sigh like Tom o' Bedlam. [Enter EDGAR.] Fa, so la mi. EDGAR: How now, brother Edmund! What serious contemplation are you in? EDMUND: When saw you my father last? EDGAR: The night gone by. EDMUND: Spake you with him? EDGAR: Ay, two hours together. EDMUND: Bethink yourself wherein you may have offended him. Forbear his presence till some little time hath qualified the heat of his displeasure. EDGAR: Some villain hath done me wrong. EDMUND: That's my fear. Retire with me to my lodging, from whence I will fitly bring you to hear my lord speak: pray you, go; there's my key: if you do stir abroad, go arm'd. EDGAR: Arm'd, brother! EDMUND: Brother, I advise you to the best. Pray you, away. EDGAR: Shall I hear from you anon? EDMUND: I do serve you in this business. [Exit EDGAR.) A credulous father! And a brother noble. Whose nature is so far from doing harms, That he suspects none; on whose foolish honesty My practices ride easy!— see the business. Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit. All with me's meet that I can fashion fit. [Exit.) *While Edmund behaves like a "bastard" in our contemporary usage of that term, in this instance, it refers to the fact that he is the result of his father's affair outside his marriage (probably with a non-aristocrat), while Edgar's mother was probably titled and wed to Gloucester, so Edgar is the rightful, legal heir to his father's estates. Roosters (1987) Like Lear, Roosters involves a father who was so absent and distant in the crucial growing-up periods of his children that he really does not know them in adulthood. But there are significant differences as well. Whereas Lear has no mothers of any kind, Roosters is filled with the force of both mother and aunt, actively engaged in raising children. Whereas Lear has only grown children, Roosters features a teenage girl clinging to childhood and still in need of guidance. The play has much female energy surrounding the machismo. While it is no surprise that Shakespeare has speeches of power, poetry, and extraordinary eloquence, Milcha Sanchez-Scott also has characters frequently launch into breathtaking poetry. Both plays (EDMUND stands alone.) EDMUND: I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing. Edgar! Ha! He comes like the catastrophe of the old comedy; my cue is villainous Copyright 2015 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or Chapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 208 dramatic interlude 3 . Generations alternate between the most direct down-to-earth language and soaring elegant imagery. Setting: Exterior of the Morales house, somewhere in New Mexico Characters: Gallo, patriarch of the Morales family, just released from prison Juana, his wife, hardworking, patient, exhausted Hector, his son, who currently works in the fields Angela, his daughter, who wears angel wings and often prays aloud Chata, his sister, brassy, boozy, sarcastic Adan, Hector's friend Shadow 1, Shadow 2, mysterious figures who come looking for Gallo Zapata, a rooster San Juan, a rooster, each represented alternately by actual roosters and by actors portraying them The play begins on the day that family patriarch Gallo, a legendary rooster fighter, returns home. It is also the day that his son is scheduled to take his own rooster into the ring for the first time. Gallo shows his intense involvement with the rooster Zapata: GALLO: Take my blood, honey. ... I'm in you now.... Morales blood the blood of kings and vou're my sity School of Theatre/Peter Guither 04:23 ..11 4G GD Theatre in Your Li...ert Barton(1).pdf dium or corridor theatre with audiences on both sides of the action, such as Copyright 2015 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or Chapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. chapter 5 Designers 149 in a football field. The audience can be subdivided in countless creative ways, or even move from stage to stage rather than having the scenery change. For many, the black box is an almost limitless theatrical toy for those conceiving a production, and it is an ever-changing adventure for audiences who arrive not quite knowing what to expect. The two basic approaches in live theatre are to design each element from scratch for each new production or to design elements that will be reused repeatedly. We will look at the basic processes of show-specific design and discuss one example of permanent design in each of the following sections. FIGURE 5.5 Proscenium stage at Sugden Community Theatre, Naples, Florida. Dan Forer/Beateworks/Terra/Corbi FIGURE 5.6 Thrust stage at the Stratford Festival's Tom Patterson Theatre , ET LIBRAS EL Ecle WA INTEREST WW AWE Stratford Festival Courtesy of Copyright 2015 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or Chapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 150 part II . Who Does Theatre? View pictures LTD/Alamy Purchase answer to see full attachment