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site-specific-vada-baldwin · 5 years ago

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Presentation Prep

I wrote a script and pre recorded my presentation which was useful since I had a lot of video and digital work to show. this also helped me be able to say what I wanted to in the presentation.

So I wanted to do write design because I didn’t really know what it was and I wanted to try a different style of designing, in order to widen my understanding of the design process and designer/director/writer collaboration. I also liked the idea of working with an existing site and developing a performance that is unique to that space. Taking theatre out of its traditional space was also an exciting prospect because it makes theatre accessible to a wider range of people. I also wanted to improve my model making skills and really get to grips with working digitally. In my manifesto that I wrote at the begging they key point for me was to get the right balance between the site itself and the design I produce, making sure not to over power the site I was working with.

Why bca

I chose the bare chested adventurer for a few reasons. when we visited the site with Bridget, the way she described the text was really clear to me and it felt exciting to focus in on this small section of life that one existed in this house. I loved the idea of the houses physical state being reflective of the emotional deterioration of the characters inhabiting it ad the idea that the house itself was a character. I really wanted to find an interesting way of giving the house a voice and a presence. As you can see from the pictures of the site, it has so much to offer allready and I felt o could really get stuck into making the piece specific to the site.

Process

So the process has been different to other design projects, with agog research and developmennt of ideas. I liked going back to my research throughout the process. I began with ideas of puppetry and making the house a character and it having this almost malevolent hold on the people that live there. initially I was researching the themes of drug use and how that impacted the characters emotional statee, I then got too caught up in this, taking a completely different route, looking at video mapping and the function of the brain, but when I took a step back, I revisited my original ideas which helped me gain focus again. Niro board was really useful for me because I had all my ideas on one page and I could easily see them together. This helped me decide which design elements worked together.so I ran with the main focus of bringing the ouse to life. I found a poem by Robert cording which reads “ I have come to love slowly how old houses hold themselves” this sparked ideas of the house being a person or even multiple people and I asked myself lots of questions about how they would interact with the charactersannd if they should speak, but after discussions with Bridget we decided it would be more effective for the house to be alive in a more subtle way. this ultimately worked better wit my other ideas for the actual visual design.

So my initial inspiration for this was

this image. It got me thinking of having the scenes around the house like a museum of this familys history. This idea let itself well to the scenes and movie the audience around the space, making the most of the site.

Image 2. This image of scaffolding inside a building was the second key image for me. having the inside and outside come together since the house is already over grown with nature stood out to me. Because Scaffolding is ususlly seen on the outside of buildings, having it on the inside really empasises the feeling of unease I was looking to create in the performance and it also helps demonstrate that this family is broken and needs to be supported.

I then went on to researching magical realism. I watched pans labryth and realised that the design of it and the themes (particularly the feeling of hopelessness and a battle with a negative force ) was something I wanted for my performance. I then went onto watch the shining as the design is intended to be off putting which helped me discover ways of making my audience feel as unsettled as Laura does in this house.

Combining the framed scenes with a more magical element of puppetry and movement would really emphasise the power the house has on the characters which is why Seth finds it hard to leave so I began to find ways of realising this.

The way I imagine bringing the house to life would be using practical elements that are of the house which would create a kinetic space. I would do this in the performance buy having ivy reaching out towards Seth as if the house it trying to keep him there, having dust falling when Gillian gets angry, having water run down walls when a tap is turned on, leaves falling over the characters, rubbish rustling in a corner, and wallpaper peeling off the wall. Id also use sounds that again are like echos of the people who once lived here, maybe a phone ringing unanswered ,footsteps or a doorbell Lucy suggested I show my ideas of puppetry and movement and the house being alive in this way through a film, but I realised it was quite difficult to get this across so the film gives more an impression of the family history in the piece with some of those practical elements.

Play film.

The idea with costume was that each character looked as if they were consumed by the house in varying degrees.

So first we have Gillian, the grandma, she has simple clothes with Layers of fabric that represent all the history built up around her.She is weighed down by her life ad she is now blending Ito the walls with the graffiti, she has lost most of her identity but her sparkly shawl and She wears a cat broach which was inspired by the cat she kills in the original story show that the woman she one was was a little glamorous. and an awful 70s fur rug sits at her feet hi lighting how sort of grim she has become.

Next is Keith, yes he is still very much of the house but he has more of himself present, he has rock climbing equippment suggestive of his adventurous days. The yellow tie around his head suggests he is a bit of a joke to other people, his mad busies ideas ever work. His shorts blend into the graffiti and dirt of the house, he has spray pain on his arms and legs he doesn’t bother to remove when he paints. He wears a surfing brand t-shirt from the 70s when he bought it as a younger adventurer he wears it with his watch to time the waves but he no longer surfs.

He also has a dressing gown that is almost like a beech towel that he would remove during the performance.

Next is Seth, he sits looking sad and worn down, his clothes are stained and imprinted with some graffiti but he is less consumed by the house than Keith, he watns to leave , the grey and blue of his clothes are quite dull and come from the house . The stripes on his shirt are the. Colours of Lauras clothes so that he mirrors her a little, showing he wants to leave and be with her but he can’t

And last we have Laura, she doesn’t blend into the house at al, she is quite normal, she has dirty white trainers from the site to show she dosnt belong there.

Its summer so she has shorts but its Wales so a huge jumper, her clothes. Odd socks because o one is perfect.

Render 1

Here is how I imagine the main room of the house would look. The audience has been lead to this point by Laura, listing to words of the text and sounds of the house and they enter the house, this is where we meet. Seth sitting on the scaffolding that is suggestive of a bedroom, ivy reaches out to him, It has probably collected there as he spends a lot of time here and the house is constantly reaching out to him through this use of ivy. the scaffolding is old, over grown and was probably one of keiths failed attempts to fix the house many years ago. Seth would sit not playing his cello probably looking out of his window at the sea

Model

The next moment I chose to focus on is the kitchen scene between Seth and his dad Keith. They talk and make fritters. I wanted the scene to be in this room of the house because it is a bridge between Keith and Seths spaces, a place they can meet in the middle and the audience can observe this from the end of the kitchen.

I wanted to use the site as it is and build onto of it in order to give an impression of what the house would have been like Almost like the past and present merging together to create a feeling of the characters being ghosts in their own house

My aim with the design was to further the feeling of ueasemin subtle ways much like I the shining. There is a 4 seater table but only 2 chairs in the kitchen, the other chairs are placed randomly else where in the site, to suggest that Andrea the mother left years ago. Because of this the design of the kitchen would be outdated for the time. This late 90s early 200-s house has a dated 80s carpet in the kitchen which isn’t practical and to an audience today this would be more rare, the ugly marble pink tiles which were taken from a tile I found at the site would also look. Very 80s. They almost grow. Out from the corner suggesting there would have been a full room of them. I chose the outdated AGA cooker that would be common in a farmhouse is rusty.

Graffiti on the walls and furniture that Keith has done himself read smoke and worlds best fritters.. rubbish piles in the corner, pizza boxes, beer bottle and banana peels and a rusty sink hangs off the wall.

The carpet is also becoming a part of the earth and the vines are taking over the walls. This is actually less over grown than the site itself.

I also wanted to mention that I made one of my walls with mount board and no foam board to see how I could use it to make designing more sustainable and it was really useful to do, I think ill use it again.

Image 3. This image was the inspiration for my next and final moment. When I saw this image it was exactly how I pictured the end of the performance. Keith and Seth sitting among their rubbish and old belongings which Seth removed from the house having one last Sesh leaving the audience wondering if they will actually change their ways or if they will carry on as before. The house looks inviting, drawing Seth back in, Keith is a part of the house, also tempting him to to go. This image for me was one that was clear from the beginning and really helped guide the rest of my design.

Reflect

So at the beginning I said I wanted to improve my model making and digital skills which I think I have, im really happy with my costumes. I also thing I got the balance of site and design right. My film didn’t really communicate what I wanted it to but it was helpful for me to realise the difficulty in communicating movement in a design and actually that id need to consider how this movement would be realised in the show.

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site-specific-vada-baldwin · 5 years ago

Text

Fitting my ideas with the text.

so i see scene 1 as Laura leading the audience to the house, a trail of house hold items house speakers which have sounds of the house that are much like those in my film. they will gradually get louder as we reach the house and the speech of the house plays here. Then we reach the house, Laura sees Seth, goes in with the audience, she looks up at him but in the text he looks out to see not seeing. Then i imagine Laura is no longer our focus, a shift in lighting depending on how dark it is outside at this point so the audience now know to focus on Seth. Laura would go by the door to smoke or something and Seth goes to the kitchen where the fritter scene happens. Then Keith would leave and the scene with Laura and Seth where she offers to help him would happen and they would run out of the house to go for a swim and sounds of the sea and them laughing would play and fade and this is where Keith would play his music and we would observe him, maybe Gillian screams shut that shit up or ear torture again to draw the audience focus back to the house. We follow Keith maybe he comes to the kitchen to grab the remaining bananas and he goes to the back room where he climbs a wall with his adventure like rock climbing costume to get on his ledge. maybe he spray paints the wall and the piles of. rubbish are huge here. Then Seth would come in through the back door the focus would be brought back to him maybe the sounds of gentle water come in and Keiths music fades out and we follow Seth to the pill box for his last scene with Laura where she says she won't come again if he doesn't do anything and then she walks down the beach Seth decides and returns to the house, he cleans with the house items and rubbish piled out the front of the house. he'd sit there among it and Keith looking inviting in the light of the house tempts Seth back in for one last sesh. then all the lights in the place would go down leaving one small light on the two of them smoking and then that would go out too. leaving the audience in complete darkness (it gets really dark there at night). then they would have a path lit to guide them back out of the path, which id like to make more accessible for the performance.

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