Designing Madness

Lately, much of my time has been devoted to scenic design.  I'm currently taking two scenography classes, one from Rob Koharchik, a theatre professor here at Butler Theatre and a founding member of ShadowApe Theater Company and the other from Bernardo Rey, a visiting professor who co-created the Teatro Itineratne del Sol with Beatriz Camargo.

Bernardo is directing Woyzeck as the final production for Butler Theatre's 2009-2010 season and as one of the eight students that are in Bernardo's scenography class, I am partially responsible for the set design of the upcoming production!  It has been a lot of work and it has been very difficult...definitely have been learning a lot and have not only been forced to go outside of my box, but also been told that the proverbial locks on my box have been changed!  It's been awesome, nuts, enlightening, amazing, and crazy all at the same time.  The madness ensued in a more literal sense when Bernardo was inspired by something that Dr. Owen Schaub said when he visited our class one day:

"We are all mad."

This statement inspired Bernardo and led him to his decision to set our production of Woyzeck in an abandoned mental hospital, with all of the play's characters being patients.

So we were basically told what the setting was going to be and then told to run wild with our imaginations to start creating.  For myself, at least, it seemed to take a while to get into the right rhythm for designing the show...but after a while things started click and now we're really on the way with things!

I won't bore you all with the many details that led to how things came to be...but I will say that through the group process, my desire for using observation windows as a prominent theme in the set and the ideas of fellow classmates that the audience is isolated from the action and possibly elevated as well, became the basis for our space.

The image above is my rendering of our concept for the space that we used in our presentation for the department on Monday.  What we've ended up with, essentially, is a common area in a mental institution with large observation windows on opposing walls (through which the audience will experience the show).

The space is bare for a crucial reason.  The set pieces are all being designed by my class as well.  Each object/set piece must have its place in an old/rundown mental hospital.  It must also have the ability to change into three different objects, and by change, I do not mean that it must be utilized in different ways but actually physically transform into different things.  Each student designer has an object and mine is a chair.

1.  The chair first enters the space, not as a chair, but as a pile of wood that Woyzeck has chopped for the captain.

2.  Then, obviously, it can also be used as a chair in its natural form...for sitting purposes and such.

3.  Shortly after the chair's entrance as a pile of wood, it is transformed  by Marie (portrayed here by my bear, Bear [yes, I was über creative with names as a child]) into a makeshift cradle for her bastard son (portrayed here by a red bendy smiley face man from a college care package).

4.  And last, but not least, when this hunk-a-hunk-a-burnable wood isn't being a chair, a pile of wood, or a crib, it's being toted around as a drum and drumsticks by Marie's lover/rapist (it's creepy and awkward...just like the play), The Drum Major (once again taking one for the team is Bear, the Buckeye fan).



That's all for now.  Let me know what you think!

Peace,
LT