Unmasking Theatre Design: A Designer's Guide to Finding Inspiration and Cultivating Creativity

Lynne Porter

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317813460
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medien & darstellende Kunst
• Subtopic: Theater

Every great design has its beginnings in a great idea, whether your medium of choice is scenery, costume, lighting, sound, or projections. Unmasking Theatre Design shows you how to cultivate creative thinking skills through every step of theatre design - from the first play reading to the finished design presentation. This book reveals how creative designers think in order to create unique and appropriate works for individual productions, and will teach you how to comprehend the nature of the design task at hand, gather inspiration, generate potential ideas for a new design, and develop a finished look through renderings and models. The exercises presented in this book demystify the design process by providing you with specific actions that will help you get on track toward fully-formed designs. Revealing the inner workings of the design process, both theoretically and practically, Unmasking Theatre Design will jumpstart the creative processes of designers at all levels, from student to professionals, as you construct new production designs.

Part 1

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THEATRE AND DESIGN

Live theatre is a truly magical experience. Nowhere else in our existence do we gather as a group to consider other people’s troubles, in a live event that moves us to both laughter and tears. Along the way, we get to consider elements of our shared humanity. These theatre experiences shape our thoughts and feelings, and then live with us for the rest of our lives. What a glorious thing is theatre.

As designers in the theatre, we have a gargantuan task. Some of us work in commercial theatre, which focuses on high entertainment value, with pieces that attract a wide audience, often by featuring awe-inspiring spectacle. Others work in nonprofit theatre, crafting intriguing and thought-provoking pieces. No matter which end of the spectrum, we designers share the task of creating powerful experiences for our audiences. We must provide effective environments for our characters’ journeys, while also working with high expectations, under tight deadlines and strict budgetary constraints. We often spend the bulk of our time engaged in a myriad of details and decisions. Because of this, it is helpful to take a moment to step back and consider the societal functions of theatre, as well as our overall goal as designers.

CHAPTER 1

The Nature of Theatre

THEATRE IS A SEEING PLACE

Theatre is a form of entertainment, allowing us the opportunity to escape our own lives for a few hours. We crave entertaining experiences, and seek out pleasurable and amusing activities to serve as distractions from our everyday worries. Entertainment can take many forms, from reading, listening to music, playing games, to hanging out with friends at a party. Many entertainment experiences help connect us to other people, especially through events that foster a communal setting. At the end of the day, entertainment is one of the ways we bring color and excitement into our lives.

Figure 1.1 Theatre is a seeing place.

Theatre is, first and foremost, entertaining. A well-crafted theatrical experience will usher us into a different world, engage us with interesting characters, and make us care about those characters’ lives, at least for the length of the piece.

Going to the theatre is a curious act of voyeurism. We gather as a group so we can peer into characters’ lives, just as they are experiencing unexpected crises. The etymology of the word “theatre” reveals the complexity of this. “Theatre” is related to Latin words with meanings that include both “a place for viewing” and “the act of looking.” This makes sense; we use the same word for the building and the activity within the building. Perhaps more telling, it is also related to the Greek word thauma, meaning “miracle.”¹ The roots of the word imply that we go to the theatre to watch something, but also to see past the surface of the characters’ lives into the depths of human behavior, in a miraculous and profound manner.

The basic root of a theatre piece is conflict. As people, we have a fascination with other people in trouble. Consider a common reaction to an accident on the highway. No matter how long we have been gridlocked, many of us feel the impulse to slow down and look at the wreckage. As much as we collectively disdain rubbernecking, many people do it. We have been engaging in this activity since we were children, gathering around a fight on the playground. What is so fascinating about car accidents and schoolyard fights? It is simple: we want to see how the conflict will resolve. Think back to that schoolyard scuffle: once the conflict between the fighting kids was settled, we lost interest and we wandered away. Yet, the draw of that fight was inescapable. It is a curious reaction to conflict, when you think about it. Most of us avoid conflict in our day-to-day lives, yet we are drawn to it when it involves other people. In fact, we often have a hard time pulling ourselves away.

This basic human impulse—to watch other people in trouble—is the root of all theatre. Yet, there is an added bonus. Plays are constructed so that while we are engaging in the characters’ struggles, we are also thinking about the nature of the fight itself. We identify with the actions and struggles of the characters, and that causes us to make personal and intimate bonds to them. We are attracted to complex characters acting like real people. Through them, we end up touching our own lives. We are drawn to the prospect of contemplating the mysteries of other characters—what makes them act the way that they do?

Theatre experiences are paradoxically both intimate and communal. We experience the play as individuals, yet we are also in the company of a group of people. From moment to moment, we alternatively react as individuals and as members of a mob. As individuals, we experience theatre as a private reverie. As much as it appears that the play is happening onstage, it is actually happening in each audience member’s mind. This is analogous to the dynamic experience of reading a comic or graphic novel. The images in the graphic novel are stationary, yet we activate them by imagining the movement between the panels of images. Despite the static nature of graphic novels, the experience of reading them is quite active.² As humans, our minds crave this imagined experience, and theatre allows us to exercise our imaginations. Along the way, we get to walk in another person’s shoes, imagining other people’s troubles.

Recent breakthroughs in brain imaging have affirmed the power of the imagined experience. Functional MRI machines allow us to plot the areas of the brain that are active while a person is engaged in a mental activity. Through these fMRI scans we can determine which parts of the brain are working from moment to moment. This has contributed to brain researchers’ mapping of the functions of various areas of the brain. A recent study involved reading a Jane Austen novel in an fMRI machine. As expected, the brain’s vision center was active, because reading requires using the eyes. The aural center was also active, as readers tend to hear the text they are reading, even when they are reading silently. The fascinating news is that other parts of the brain were also activated: the areas associated with both emotional and physical activity. In essence, while reading about Elizabeth Bennett dancing and sparring with Mr. Darcy, we activate the parts of our brains that experience both dancing and falling in love. Scientists are affirming what artists have been claiming for centuries: we live vicariously through narrative forms of art.³ If we have a whole-brain experience when reading a Jane Austen novel, it stands to reason that the same is true for our experiences in the theatre.

As people, we need more than a journalistic approach to life. Our daily experiences, our digital devices and electronic m...