We have our stage and auditorium, our aims for our design and beginningto get ideas on how to go about this. Is it worth perhaps pooling some ideas on the following to inform our design?
1. Script. What is the story, the scenario? – What is it about? The story could be fairly straightforward or intricate? Familiar eg. rags to riches, happy endings ( I guess we only want a happy ending… or unfamiliar. A local story or a universal theme?
2. Type of production : Play, musical, concert, dance. ( A musical would combine many forms..)
3. Style? : Wikipedia provided these:-
Naturalism : Portraying life on stage with a close attention to detail, based on observation of real life.
Realism: Portraying characters on stage that are close to real life, with realistic settings and staging.
Expressionism: Anti-realistic in seeing appearance as distorted and the truth lying within man. The outward appearance on stage can be distorted and unrealistic to portray an eternal truth.
Absurdism: Presents a perspective that all human attempts at significance are illogical. Ultimate truth is chaos with little certainty. There is no necessity that need drive us.
Modernism: A broad concept that sees art, including theatre, as detached from life in a pure way and able to reflect on life critically.
Postmodernism: There are multiple meanings, and meaning is what you create, not what is. This approach often uses other media and breaks accepted conventions and practices.
Classical: A type of theatre which relies upon imagination (and therefore limited props) to convey the setting and atmosphere of the play. Classical theatre usually contains lofty, grand prose or free verse dialogue. Good examples are the Elizabethan dramatists William Shakespeare
4. a) Set design,
b) Costumes and make-up,
c) Lighting
etc appropriate to our show.
The main focus of this is the stage - the Elephant – with the auditorium & aisles of course also giving the flavour and advertisement of the show in their through-ways and stopping points
I think I'd go for a story of adventure or mystery - discovery, exploration, revelation... Perhaps the story should come from the history of the area: the origins of E&C, from emblem of cutlery makers to a pub name (or - more questionably - Spanish princesses)... E&C underground is supposed to be haunted... heavily bombed during the blitz - rebirth? Famous people from the area: Michael Faraday (scientific discovery), Charles Babbage (the father of computing), or from films, Michael Caine and Charlie Chaplin - classic silent films?
ReplyDeleteDiscovery, exploration revelation all sound good. It seems the symbolof the E&C used for the pub would have been a fairly familiar though exotic image around. The castle would prob have derived from the 'howdah' seats on top.
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