Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 1988 - 18

)
Fig. 16: Antigone in "show" T-shirt.

Fig. 17: Ismene.

TD&T * SUMMER 1988

the audience and make the character seem more alien.
After considerable discussion Willis proposed that the
Chorus be given a "punk" look. Malina felt this was a good
way to capture the removed and detached quality of the
Chorus and he provided a color sketch as a guide to the
kind of makeup he felt was appropriate. This sketch, in
combination with the clothing already designed, completed the Chorus and the costume designs. Malina's final
work on the design was to prepare the technical drawings
necessary for the shops and to complete a final presentation rendering (Fig. 20).
Although construction started on sets and costumes
during a three-week absence by Malina, the shop supervisors and technicians discovered that when they examined Malina's drawings in detail they found that much
information was provided by the sketch and what information was lacking could be easily reasoned out. In other
words, the execution of the design depended upon their
active and creative engagement in the process. As Malina
noted in a conversation about his work in Action Design,
"Open communication is not just between the performance and the audience, it is also between the performance and the technician."
Discussions had already taken place on lighting during
the design conferences and it was decided that the lighting
was to be harsh, directional, colorless, and static. There did
not seem to be the need, or the desire, for a lot of lighting
cues. Certain specific cues were called for because of the
action, i.e., the entombment, or the use of projectors and
videotape. But no one voiced any interest in tight area
control, atmospheric color, psychological indications, or
any other lighting tricks. The space was to be completely
visible, open, and accessible at all times.
During the design conferences much had been made of
the idea that time, events, and human actions are inevitable, inexorable, and implacable. I, therefore, proposed that
we not consider the lighting as static but as constantly in
motion. Rather than there being no cues, there would be
one big cue that encompassed the play from beginning to
end. Further, this cue would simply be a change in the
direction of light. The dominant direction would start
from stage right at the beginning, would go to overhead,
and continue on to stage left by the end of the play. There
were, of course, obvious connections in this idea to the
specific times of day alluded to in the text. Our intent,
however, was not to re-create or suggest these times of day
but, rather, to give the lighting the sense of an inevitable
and disinterested force that was constantly in motion
throughout the production. This idea, with necessary esthetic and technical modifications, became the principle
that informed the lighting for the production.
This production challenged assumptions about theatre
and no assumption was so fully challenged as our overriding American faith and belief in Realism. It was this constant exposure to a completely different view of the theatrical event that finally was so rewarding. The experience
recalls, for me, a comment made by Robert Edmond Jones
in the Harvard Lectures in 1952:
Realism is something we practice when we aren't
feeling well, when we don't feel up to making the
extra effort. So we just come home and sit down by the
fue, and put on our slippers, and pat the dog, and
stroke the cat, and open our copy of Bartlett's Familiar

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