Scenic Design
I had a great chuckle today in my Scenic Design class. One of my colleagues, who will be called “jim” for anonymity’s sake, is generally considered to be the class dumb ass. Jim has several issues with his design work, the largest of which is his over-reliance on strange metaphors and over-the-top imagery. The play that we were assigned to design a set for was The Cherry Orchard, by Anton Chekhov. The main assignment was to stage the play as a comedy, as Chekhov originally intended for it to be staged. Clever readers will realize that this is kind of difficult, and that the production usually results in melodramatic and depressing productions, not the least of which is the blatant tragedy that takes place pretty much the entire time. Anyhow, Jim actually had a decent idea (not very comedic, but at least a solid design) when he decided to put the entire play on a giant tree round. Hella lot better than my idea of a children’s play room, but thats beside the point
So the first major laugh occurred in the choice of venue. With the venue choice open, Jim had stuck this circle in a proscenium arch theater for the initial set of roughs. Floor visibility would be provided by raking the stage. Anyone who has designed anything for the theater before will know that this is an utterly ridiculous plan, seeing as the natural venue for a large tree round to sit in is an arena style theater (go figure, it fits in the theater with seats all around the stage. With a round platform. Never would have thunk). Fortunately, the class was able to convince the poor soul that the Arena was a good place to go, and the black box theater on campus was happily chosen.
So this is actually turning out really well at this point, I kind of wish I had though of it. So just to convince me I was glad I was blessed with different synapses in my brain than Jim, He insisted on putting these gigantic sail things over the set, which flew in and out and did all kinds of crazy shit. Actually not too bad, but kind of silly in a space with no fly space and a grid that is about 20′ off the deck. Whatever tho, its all good. I could buy that, but what Jim added next was just absurd. After the sails flew up and revealed the stage, sawdust and leaves would pour from drop boxes into the sails. This would then be dumped in various fashions twords the end of the play. The first hint that this was going down that road marked “Dead End” at 2 in the morning during a rainstorm was that the sawdust would be “trickled” out, or somehow released in a small steady stream. This was supposed to represent the felling of the Cherry Orchard. In case the huge tree round wasnt obvious enough.
To further the indignity of the theatrical art, Jim proceeded to detail an outrageous plan to have various rings of the tree to light up to symbolize various events in the life of the family. What the fuck. I mean, WHAT THE FUCK. Just use a baseball bat to beat the audience senseless with unclear metaphors. This is a classic story of a design with too much thinking going into it, and not enough practical though. Jim, congratulations on the best design fucked up in our class.
