Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 2005 - 36

Grand Hotel,
Pittsburgh Playhouse, 2001.

from lacerations-of their skin and egos.
In another design, I took on Sweeney Todd (pictured, page 32) in an ambitious, surreal exposition of the
drama of the human body. The overarching idea was that
the entire set was parts of the body. This symbolism illustrated humanity's enslavement to passions. The suffering
of the vengeful barber was literally an issue of the human
heart. While I was happy with the basic style of the show,
I think that I neglected an important vein of inspiration
by not thinking about the set surrounding the central
turntable/apartment/parlor/pie shop/barber shop/heart
as part of a larger body. The power of the heart image
could have been enhanced by considering the surrounding scaffolding set as shoulders, chest, neck, etc.

Teaching Exercises
To initiate design students into this sensibility, I approach
the subject indirectly in basic design and drawing
classes, and more directly in scene design classes. The
following are two examples of what I think are interesting
possibilities for introducing these concepts to students.
In my "group gesture" exercise, drawing students
focus on making the mediating space between figure and
environment by drawing first the model, in one color, at one
point in a cinematic breakdown of one action into several
poses. After ten minutes, the students move on to another's
drawing and capture in a contrasting color the next segment
of the model's movement. In this way, the students become
more aware of three-dimensional movement space.

In another design project, students go to a local
cemetery and make rubbings of motifs and information
about people at rest there. They then create a story and a
shadow-box collage, a retablo, a shallow dramatic
space. In this way, they become aware of various issues of
design, research, and imagination, but moreover they
can see a story as a kind of memorial of a living being not
here at the moment. It is no coincidence that the Greeks
created stories on funerary urns much like they created
stories for the stage. Perhaps the stage is just one big
tombstone.
I tend to steer away from the notion of concept,
which may lead students to a sort of postmodern monster-a visual vocabulary at unintentional odds with, or
worse, totally detached from, the heart of the story. For
lack of a better term, I use "emotional idiom" to describe
the mental construct that I bring to the play as a designer:
a vocabulary of visual forms and references that by itself
crystallizes the emotional ambience of the story. (Note
that I use the term "story" instead of "script.") This is an
avenue for the designer to give and take on a personal
level with the text, and for me it's an important process in
the early design phase. The power of drama lies in the
connection between the story and the living, breathing,
unpredictable sensibilities of the persons creating a given
performance.

Begin with the Body
What does this have to do with figure drawing? The emotions we try to invoke in the audience are human emotions which are rooted in our physical, sensual, bodily
experiences. How can a set designer create a visual space
that amplifies human passion, fear, torment, liberation,
etc., without seeing those emotions manifested in their
physical expressions-the structure of an elbow, the
arch of a back?
TD & T

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 2005