Architecture
school taught me is how to develop a floor plan and 3-D form
simultaneously. It is one of the few
design skills that are applicable to scenic design. Proportion, scale and
composition are all three dimensional concepts and the plan relationship
between entities is equally important as how each element is shaped.
Most of the
bad buildings that populate our cities are the result of coming up with a
brilliant solution to the planning problems with complete disregard to the
building's form or even to the character of the interior spaces that it leaves.
The plan is just extruded vertically into walls and it is what it is.
Likewise,
some buildings are beautiful pieces of sculpture that are grossly dysfunctional
for their users. Most notable of these might be Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim
Museum on 5th Avenue in NYC. It is an iconic form, both inside and out. But
from a curator's perspective, it is a disaster. Built as a continuous downward
spiral, there is no gallery with a flat floor; all of the walls slope out at
the top. The guests cannot meander through the galleries and it does not foster
stopping and experiencing the art. It is all about experiencing the building.
But I digress...
With a crude
planning concept scratched out for Night of the Living Dead, the design evolves
through a looping, reiterative process. The plan is worked to scale on the
stage floor plan and then immediately looked at vertically. Individual elements
of the design are shaped and moved as related to each other until the stage
picture is composed. As part of the planning process, I have to consider the
director and staging requirements and opportunities.
In art,
there are a few compositional rules that help give an image visual dynamic.
When composing a painting, an artist will usually try to identify three major
elements and triangulate them on the canvas, forcing the eye to move between
them, creating energy.
In addition,
on stage, there are four compositional quadrants to the stage. Downstage right
and upstage left are strong, powerful and positive locations. Downstages left
and upstage right are weak, recessive and tense quadrants. I try to compose the
scenic plan to make these areas readily playable while visually triangulating
the built set.
For NOLTD,
the cellar is down right, the front door and window where the zombies
eventually break in is upstage left…strong, powerful and dominate positions. The upstairs area and kitchen are less
dominant playing areas and are placed downstage left and upstage right. Then, in my staging concept, the scene where
the truck catches fire and our first two characters die is way downstage left…a
tension location.
Night of the
Living Dead requires 3 major playing areas on three different levels. We have
the main floor of the farmhouse, an upstairs and a cellar. Obviously, I cannot
stack all three levels on top of each other. The set would be 30 feet tall.
However, it made sense to visually
“stack" a couple of levels. The majority of the action and most of the
physical movement takes place on the main floor and requires the bulk of the
stage. The cellar and upstairs are used a lot less and not nearly as actively.
These two levels could be stacked. They
couldn't be perfectly stacked because of height because we only have 16 feet of
height on the stage, so two levels had to be staggered, with the upper level constructed
upstage of the cellar. Also, stacking them would create a lighting nightmare.
I worked out
the heights and then switch back to plan. How much room do we need in these
locations? Making the space bigger or smaller changes the proportion of the
scenic elements. I triangulated the stage picture between the cellar, the
upstairs and the main floor/front door area. This created a strong, tall set on
stage right, visually falling to the front door on stage left. Then the eye crosses back right and down to
the cellar. Strong compositionally…
In my next
installment, I will discuss developing the aesthetic for the set once the stage
is composed.
Rob
No comments:
Post a Comment