PTT Program 6 Days 16-20.txt

As we said earlier, if your group has a set of flats that you use for every show, you'll probably need to work those flats into your design. If you're building some or all of your scenery from scratch, you'll need to draw up rear elevations or working drawings. Rear elevations are the reverse view o...

As we said earlier, if your group has a set of flats that you use for every show, you'll probably need to work those flats into your design. If you're building some or all of your scenery from scratch, you'll need to draw up rear elevations or working drawings. Rear elevations are the reverse view of the front and painter's elevations. They show every detail of how to construct your designs. Remember that you're drawing the back side of the elevations, so everything will be reversed. Look at this drawing of a door flat. The front elevation has the door on the left side of the flat, but when the flat is being built the working drawing will show the door on the right side of the flat. Every piece of the scenery must be drawn in, including the corner blocks, keystones, hinges, and so on. This is where you really must have your design together. Say you want pictures hung on the walls at different heights. You need to specify where the toggles are placed on each flat so that there's something on which the pictures may be attached. Working drawings are also very useful in keeping the designer aware that his designs actually have to be constructed. And they help keep designers from designing sets that are impossible to build. If you and the director want something fantastic on stage that you can't figure out how to do, that's a good time to ask the master carpenter or technical director for some help. And always clear your plans, not only with the director, but with the technical director to make sure that what you have planned out is going to be safe, affordable, and buildable on stage. We're extremely fortunate to have award winning set designer, Scott Neal, join us to examine how to approach designing period sets. Scott has designed sets at the Shakespeare Festival Saint Louis, the Goodman Theatre, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, the Repertory Theatre of Saint Louis, Albany Park Theater Project, Yale Baroque Opera Project, and many other theaters. He has also designed numerous attractions at major theme parks like SeaWorld and Busch Gardens, and has extensive corporate media events design experience. In addition, he's an assistant professor of scenic design at Trinity University and a proud member of United Scenic Artists Local 829. Welcome, Scott. Thank you, Marty. How does designing for a specific historical period differ from designing for a contemporary play or musical? If we ask ourselves, what is the role of the set design in any given production? The answer should be to enhance the storytelling of the play in an innovative and compelling way, by creating a supportive environment for the actors. Like we said earlier in the program, the set should never be so complex or visually stunning that it draws attention to itself and overwhelms the actors so that they have to compete for the audience's attention. No matter what style or genre of the play, you must first fully understand the script and then immerse yourself in the world of the play, meaning the world that characters eat, sleep and breathe in. You almost have to pretend that you live in their world alongside them, Observing their daily lives and empathizing with their actions and challenges. Anyone can put up 3 walls and call it a set, but a good designer understands how and why the characters decorate their walls the way that they do, just like each of us knows how we like to decorate our own bedroom. In a play that takes place in a specific historic time period, the only way to really do that is to immerse yourself in the research. There are 4 types of research to consider on any given production. Biographical, critical, factual, and intuitive. Biographical research is a basic understanding of the playwright. When he or she lived what influenced their writing. For example, we know that Shakespeare lived in Elizabethan times. So we research what sorts of cultural and socio economical influence Shakespeare lived in, to understand why he chose to write about what he did in his plays. Critical research helps us acquire a basic knowledge of well known past productions of the same play. For example, Hamilton, written by Lin Manuel Miranda, was first performed at the Public Theater in 2015 during a time of uncertainty in our own political system. A 100 years from now, future theater artists doing a revival of Hamilton may want to research research why it was relevant to our society when it was first performed. Factual research is perhaps the most important form of research when designing a period piece. This research typically consists of photographs, paintings, images and films that show us what life was like during a certain time period. In Shakespeare's Henry the 8th, we know that it was based on an actual king in a time period towards the end of the medieval era. Since the camera wasn't invented yet, we would have to study medieval tapestries, paintings, and illuminated manuscripts to get an idea of what life was like in a 16th century England. Intuitive research is the research that really drives our ideas home. These are typically images that tie our knowledge of the time period into our understanding of the script. It's called intuitive research because this is where we use our own intuition or gut feelings. Sometimes it's an image that might not relate to a time period at all, but the designer might be drawn to it in a way that sparks a creative idea. These can be abstract paintings, art photography, or simply images that have a certain color scheme or composition that when applied to the factual research somehow inspires the set design. I think there are 2 types of questions that need to be answered. The first being the very basic and trivial types of questions. What year is it? Where in the world does the the play take place? What time of day or night is it? And does that change throughout the course of the play? What season of the year is it? When specifically defined by the script, the answers to those questions shouldn't deviate too much from what the script calls for. These are parameters that the playwright has given us, that are imperative to the storytelling. Although sometimes with Shakespeare or Greek plays, where the story is more about the relationships of the characters than the time period, directors and designers might choose, time period that is different than what the script calls for if they find a parallel to more contemporary time periods. Midsummer Night's Dream, for example, while it takes place in Athens, is less about Greek society and more about human experiences such as love, wonder, fantasy, and mysticism. Whereas, Antony and Cleopatra Is about real people in a very specific and historic time. Because the nature of the two plays, you'll see Midsummer often done in a multitude of time periods whereas Antony and Cleopatra can only take place in the 1st century BC. The second type of question that needs to be answered, deals with placement of the characters in the world of the play. These questions tell us a bit more detail about the characters than dates or geographic locations. What are the characters' social status or class? Are they wealthy or poor, royalty or common people? What else is going on in the world that might affect their lives? Is it a time of war or peace? All of these questions help to define how the characters might respond to their surroundings. So, how did you apply those concepts to Georama? Well, so with Georama, the play is set in the 18 forties and is based on real people. John Banbury was known for his depictions of the Mississippi River Valley. Some 2,000 miles of mostly wild frontier that very few people other than Native Americans had ever seen before. In the story, John travels up and down the Mississippi and the Ohio Rivers. So he starts in Saint Louis and he goes to New Orleans, Louisville, then everything in between. Eventually, he goes to New York City, London, and Egypt. So my research on this show had to be very specific. The period from 1800 to 18 fifties is known as the Romantic Era, respectively referring to architecture, art, painting, dress and music. As the play unfolds, John spends a lot of time on the river. So I began to familiarize myself with the Romantic art movement known as the Hudson River School. This was a group of landscape painters that depicted the Hudson River Valley and other rivers such as the Mississippi. One painter in particular, George Caleb Bingham was known for his paintings of lower class citizens and common people that worked on the keelboats in the docks. So these paintings are the best examples of what real life was like in and around the river and riverfront cities. The industrial revolution was in full effect during this time and, rivers were the quickest and easiest way to ship goods around the country. So I looked at a lot of images of steamboats, flat boats, and also showboats which were essentially steamboats that were adapted into floating stages for variety shows and bogboat type performances. For the scenes depicted on the scrolling panorama, it was important to research what the riverfronts of all of the towns look like from the vantage point of a boat in the middle of the river. As much as river cities are the icons of river paintings, it it was also very important to the director and myself that we represent the Native American presence along the river. In one of the scenes, we see the Piaasaw bird painted on a cliff face. A representation of the original petroglyph painted by the Illini tribe can be seen in Alton, Illinois today. In another scene, we see the famous Cahokia Mounds spotted throughout some of the landscapes. You can see small villages and native huts. This research must be pretty easy just by doing Internet searches. Well, yes. But it's important to note that while it's very easy to go on to the Internet and type in exactly what you're looking for, the Internet can also be very limiting. Design is about discovering ideas. When I research in a library, I get I grab piles and piles of books and page through them. Some of them might turn up empty, but others surprise me with their contents. While I might find the exact images I'm looking for on the Internet, more important are the images that I discover that I wasn't looking for. Those are the images that inspire me to look at the design in a different way. I don't feel like you can get that same sense of discovery from the Internet. You also have to be careful not to duplicate copyrighted research images in your designs without the permission of the copyright holder. So there's a big difference between being inspired by an image and duplicating it. What do your designs look like for Georama? Georama was a unique design experience for me in the sense that not only was I tasked to design the stage for the actors to perform on or what I like to call the scenic container, but I also had to design the panorama or in this case, the giorama, which ended up being about 10 feet tall by over 500 feet long, so almost 2 football fields long. The most important part of the world is that we have the most important part of the world. So we have the most important part of the world. So we have the most important part of the somewhat simple so that it could stand in for all of the various locations in the story without having to bring on a new set for every single scene. So we chose to make the set design evocative of the types of river vessels that John would have traveled on. The floor had large rough hewn wood planks resembling not only a dock, but also the floor of the wooden keelboats or flat boats. The walls of the set consisted of stacks and stacks of wooden crates, bales of cotton and steamer trunks, the types of cargo that you would find on a steamboat. In front of the crates were vertical columns similar to the support structures that you would see on the outside of showboats. And finally, centered on the stage was the giorama surrounded by the type of frame that you might see on the stage of a of a showboat, sort of like a proscenium. The giorama had to almost act as another character in the story. The first time I met with the director, we locked ourselves in the conference room with the rep for a weekend of with a roll of trace paper and some early renditions of the music. We would listen to the music on his phone and slide the trace paper underneath a frame as if it were the giorama. While the paper was moving, I'd sketch out and write ideas as they relate to the lyrics of the music. It was like an actor learning his or her lines. The giorama had to display certain things at certain times to help tell the story. There would be moments when the giorama set the location in the story like when John travels from St. Louis to New Orleans. We see the countryside scrolling past us at a leisurely play pace of the river current. Other times, the gi rama acted like a prop in the sense of it being an actual rolled up piece of fabric that John would travel around with. With that in mind, I had to come up with a style of painting that could both clue the audience into the fact that it serves as both a location and a prop. So I had to research a painting styles that were similar to John Bandvard's. There are no records or pieces of his panorama remaining. However, at the Saint Louis Art Museum, there is a similar panorama painting by another artist by the name of John j Egan. His painting titled Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley is one of very few of its kind in existence. When I went to the museum to see it, I was inspired by the elegant yet simple brush strokes and the color palette that he used. These panoramas were hundreds of feet long, so they had to paint them in a loose and painterly style in order to be able to complete them in a reasonable amount of time. I felt that this would have been the way that John Bandberg would have painted his own panorama. So the John j Egan painting ended up heavily influencing our own panorama. Were there any particular challenges taking the plans for the giorama from the designs to the actual production, like painting the diorama and executing the mechanical effects? As with any production, there are always challenges between what's envisioned and what gets built. The job of the designer is really to fill facilitate that process so that the final product is as close as possible to the original plans. Most often there are challenges related to the budget or maybe how the set fits into the stage. But with this production, the biggest challenge was that our main character, the giorama was a giant mechanical object. Essentially, it's a large scroll with 2 drums on either end. Along the top was a track with rollers that would help keep the fabric from slumping. Behind the scenes, the scroll was operated by 2 stage hands turning cranks by hand. It took quite a bit of finessing in highly experienced stage carpenters to get it to operate smoothly. If the giorama ever got stuck, the show would have to pause until it was fixed. The other big challenge was how to paint a 600 foot long backdrop in just 2 months. As the designer, I had to create highly detailed scale paint elevations so that our union scenic painters could recreate them in full scale. We had about 5 scenic painters working simultaneously to get the job done in time. The warehouse where it was painted was not long enough to lay the whole thing out, so they had to paint it in shorter segments, stitch the pieces together, and then paint over the stitched seams to ensure that the painting's lined up seamlessly. Any other things you think would be useful to beginning set designers? One very important question that I ask myself is what is the arc of the play? In other words, where do we start in the beginning of the play, otherwise known as the stasis? And then what is the conflict that needs to be resolved? What interrupts the stasis and then how does the conflict get resolved in the end? How do we return to the stasis? Understanding the arc of the play gives you insight as to what role the scene design must play to support the story and also establish the appropriate moods. Does the set ever change or evolve? Is it clean in the beginning beginning and messy at the end, or does it ever get destroyed or rebuilt? Could you show us some examples of typical time periods? Yeah. Well, Georama, for example, was staged in a period well over a 100 years before television, movies, and the Internet. The idea of having the scenery moved to give a sensation of movement on stage was a revolutionary idea that attracted large numbers of people to see this new technology. Realistic drawing room comedies relied on creating sets that were so realistic that the audience felt like they were peeking into where the characters in the play lived. Clybourn Park, for example, takes place in a Chicago bungalow in the 19 fifties in the first act and in the same home in act 2, except that it has been run down. Even though the tape play takes place in the 19 fifties, my research informed me that most houses in the Chicago inner suburbs are called Craftsman bungalows, most of which were built between 1910 1930. Some typical bungalow features you might notice are the dark hardwood trims, the glazed brick fireplaces, earthy color schemes, brick front porches, and arc glass windows. In act 2, many of the original features of the house have been stripped away and replaced with graffiti, wood blinds replaced with bed sheets, etcetera. So this is a really good example of being aware of the arc of the play and working it into the design. My design for Winter's Tale at the Shakespeare Festival Saint Louis is an example of the director's choice to place a play that was written in Elizabethan times into the romantic era, specifically known as Regency. If you remember, this is more or less the same period as Giorama, but instead focuses on King Leontes, a fictional king in Sicilia. Because of his status, the set is reflective of the architecture of royalty. Neoclassical details and ornaments adorn the set such as Corinthian columns, scrolled keystones, finials, archways, and large elegant crown moldings and trims. A similar example would be my design for taming of the shrew, also a Shakespeare Festival Saint Louis production. This version, we decided to place in the yard of a 19 fifties mid century modern home. You might notice things such as the vintage car and camper, the retro patio furniture, lawn ornaments, the low shallow pitched roof, which is very common amongst homes built in the 19 fifties, and also the pastel color scheme. Awaken seeing takes place in a working class New York City apartment during the Great Depression in 19 thirties. Some interesting details that clue us into the time period are the exposed electrical wiring, the old fashioned light switches, and the gas meter on the inside of the apartment, which is a very common thing in old style New York Apartments. Also the transom window, which is a small window above the door. And then there's a frame surrounding the stage called a portal that gives a hint of the crowded streets of New York as well. Bloodknot takes place in a poverty stricken encampment in South Africa during the apartheid movement. While the shack itself might seem like it could be set in any time period, the items that the shack is made from help place it in the 19 sixties. In my research, I found images of people living in poverty that would try to make their homes more colorful by making wallpaper out of packaging materials. If you look closely, the wallpaper is made from old recycled Rinso detergent boxes. Rinso was a common laundry detergent in the 19 sixties. Thanks, Scott. We really appreciate you taking your time to share your expertise with us. Absolutely. We're very fortunate to have Jim Kranzer here with us today, an exceptionally talented set designer who designed the set of Midsummer Night's Dream for the Repertory Theatre of Saint Louis. The scenic artists are putting final touches on the set, preparing for opening night. Welcome, Jim. Nice to be here. The set not only is beautiful, but really provides an environment that enhances the actors' performances and the audience's enjoyment of the play. Can you tell us a little bit about the production concept, Jim? Yes. With Shakespeare you can go, in a myriad of different directions because he's so flexible and so malleable. What we chose to do was look at the Victorian, late Victorian slash Edwardian period, which has a great differentiation between classes of the time. It has a great look for, wardrobe, for costumes. And from a scenic point of view, it's also a very kind of stately grand period of architecture, which I found helpful in start in placing, our court scenes. So that was our jumping off point. Are there any aspects of the set you'd like to point out to the students? Yes. One of the things that happens in Midsummer Night's Dream, it's a bookend play. So you begin in the court and then you move through the forest and then you come back to the court. So you have to develop a mechanism whereby you go smoothly from one to the next. So for us, and we're in a thrust theater, so, the bulk of your acting is gonna happen down there, we backed the set with a a a large piece of scenery, which you can see behind me, which is the court. And then that splits apart and then goes around and reveals the rest of the forest. So that's how we kind of chose to solve the technical, issues of going from one to the next. It's wherever you do the the play, either in a thrust or in the round or, in a proscenium, you've gotta have that sense of court stateliness, rigidness, and then the breadth and the breathing of the forest. How did the design concept evolve with the director and the other designers? You know, the great thing about theater is that you're working with other artists and collaborators, so you're all collectively doing it, which is exciting. It's not just you on your own solving it. That's the wonderful thing about theater. Unlike the other art forms, we're all doing this as a team. So the the costume designer for the show brought in some great research that was all kind of, inspired by by vines and metallics. So that was our jumping off, point. So I have to say it was it was Susan's, initial research that I think led us down the path that we arrived at, certainly for the look of the the the forest of the supernaturals, for Oberon and Titania. And then, as I said before, the the court was inspired by the period that we chose, which was the, Edwardian, late Victorian period. What's different on this set on a thrust stage as opposed to a set that's designed for a proscenium stage? One of the great differences and challenges of doing a show on the thrust is that you have audience members, of course, wrapped on all all the way on the side. So they paid just as much for their ticket as everybody else. So you have to consider those sight lines of folks on the sides and making sure that they can see all the action of the play. So you'll notice that where I placed the, the the the court wall is right in line with the last row of seats so that anybody sitting there is not gonna be blocked by that piece, of scenery. If you start bringing things downstage of that, then you start to impede, people's sight lines to the rest of the show. The other challenge of of doing, thrust theaters motivating people to end up downstage. So if you'll notice, I've got 2 little plinths placed there that are very helpful for people to stand on, for people to sit on, and it just gives the the actors and the director, an impetus or a reason to come downstage. Otherwise, you can tell in staging that it's sometimes forced. So it just gives them a little bit of a helping hand to do that. So that's one of the big challenges of a thrust. Is there anything else on the set you'd like to point out to the students? Yeah. About the design of the show, I'm a big fan of creating layers and depth so that if you create like, you'll notice that the trees are not just in a single line, but they all kind of stagger back in the back. And then over the stage, there are these headers, borders, if you will, of this translucent material. And there's 2 of those, and then you've got the backdrop. So you're creating these different visual layers, which help give a richness and a depth and make things not feel so flat. That's that's one thing. I'll also point out the way we built the trees. We have them built. You may not know this, but they're they're by seeing it, looking at them, but they're built out of chicken wire and then covered with this material that is like a a viny, flat, spun material that then we covered those with, and there's a little light in the bottom of each tree. And what's great about the chicken wire is that the the wire catches the light and gives it a sparkle, but you can't tell that it's good old chicken wire, you know, making up our trees. So that's one thing. It's, creating a little magic out of the simple. I'm always a big fan of, like, what's what's the, the simplest thing that we can reduce something down to? Not the most expensive, but the most achievable simplest thing that we can find to tell the story that we're trying to tell. The other thing that's a lot of fun with this design is that our backdrop is what we call a translucency. So light will pass through. So that's how we do our moon. Our moon is a big clunky box that's behind this. And when we turn it on, it shines through the material. So in painting a backdrop, you make sure that the paint isn't, thick and, saturated, but it's thin like a watercolor. And then when you put objects, shadows, stars behind that, then all that comes through, again, adding to another layer of the depth and the richness of the show. So for me, it's all about layers creating depth even in the thrust, production where you're limited to, you know, that corridor, that's upstage of that magic line of sight. We're talking earlier about less is more. Could you elaborate a little on that? Yeah. I'm a big fan of that, and I think what I always find interesting is what is the least amount of information that you can put up on the stage and still tell the story? In other words, a door with an open window can say wall. We don't have to put up a lot of wallpaper there. I think, what you always have to believe and trust is that the audience has an incredible imagination. Audiences get excited about filling in the blanks and painting the picture in their minds. I think when we start to, as theater people, as designers, give them too too much information, then they're not participating. So the more I think we engage the audience's imagination, the more successful we are. So I when I design, I always like to start subtracting stuff and see if the design still holds up. Keep removing. Keep removing. Keep removing. And then you'll know when you reach that point when you've removed something and the design starts to fall apart. Either from a pragmatic or from an artistic point of view, you put that back in, and that's kind of where I like to end up. Not, as I say, designing in front of the play, but get behind the play. The you always have to remember the primacy of what all we do as designers, as actors, technicians, storytelling. You tell the story. Story is paramount. That's why we're all here. That's why we show up in the theaters to hear a story. Not to see beautiful scenery, We show up to hear a great story that's supported by beautiful scenery, supported by beautiful costumes. Do you have any advice for students who might be considering a career as a set designer? We all started at at a zero place. You know, just like a student in high school, I got my passion and love for theater in high school. That's where it started for me, and I've never looked back. I think if you wanna go into technical theater, certainly technical classes, I went and learned how to paint scenery. I'm not a good painter, but I can paint scenery. There's a difference. So, I think it's always about trying to surprise yourself with what you can do versus what you think you can't do. If you're heading into college, I highly recommend my point of view, but I highly recommend getting a liberal arts education for your undergraduate degree. I believe in look. We're we're we're talking about, an art form that encompasses so much, such a breadth of information, time, history. So take your history classes, take your, your philosophy classes, take art classes, take architecture classes if you're gonna be a designer. If you're gonna be a designer, look up at buildings, take pictures. I love doing that. So you're building this library inside your head of ideas and images. Write things down. Regarding tools of the trade, are there any programs you would recommend the students become proficient? Computers are part of our world these days, and gone, I think, are the days of hand drafting. And, although models are still made, but I think and that's a valuable craft. Learn how to, make models if you wanna be a designer or if you wanna be a custom designer, learn how to, paint and do renderings. You have to you have to be able to communicate your ideas effectively. Now if that is about showing a magazine clipping or doing a collage, if that's the best way of communicating the idea, do that as opposed to doing the expected, means of of telling that information poorly. In terms of practical programs, I work in a program called Vectorworks, which is a drafting lighting program. I'm doing most of my stuff, in 3 d in there, so you can do do different points of view in that thrust example. You can go look and see what it looks like real really in the theater, from those seats. So I think computer skills are so highly a pencil paper ink, paint, place anymore. You look at lighting boards, they're all computer driven. Automation is all computer driven. So the more you know about computers, the better off you're gonna be inside the arts. Thanks, Jim. That is wonderful information. Thanks. It's been great being here. We're here at the Repertory Theatre of Saint Louis with the director and designers of what many people consider to be the greatest play ever written, Shakespeare's Hamlet. We're very fortunate to be able to discuss production concept with the director of Hamlet, Paul Mason Barnes, the scenic designer Michael Gagnio, costume designer Dottie Marshall Inglis, the lighting designer, Lonnie Raphael Alcaraz, and the composer and sound designer, Barry g Funderburg. The last few days have been dedicated to technical rehearsals and today is a notes day for all the crews and performers where issues discovered during the tech rehearsals are fixed. Thanks everyone for taking time to participate in this discussion. Paul, how would you define production concept and what is the production concept of Hamlet? Well, it's an interesting term that actually doesn't get used a whole lot these days. But for me, I think what you're talking about is the very beginning of the process, when we sit down together as a team of artists working on the same script and figure out what our approach to the play is going to be. Now, I was one of those kids, in high school who, for whom Shakespeare just went right over my head. So it's kind of ironic that I actually direct his plays. So where I start in terms of conceptualizing, or working on one of his plays is simply by reading the script, and reading it a lot, so that it begins to make sense to me, and I can figure out the clearest way of telling what is always a really, really good story. Because at heart, that's what we're dealing with. Really terrific stories. And this play in and of itself, you know, it's a love story, it's a ghost story, and it's a play about revenge. It's also a play about politics. So there's a lot going on in it, but that's where I start. And then once I'm kind of clear about my ideas, I begin sharing them with the designers, who have been assembled to work on the production and then, ask for their ideas, which they always bring to the table. And then together, we find our way to, I think, the ideas and the elements that are really important for us in creating the story, in such a way that it's gonna be really exciting for an audience. Michael, how does your design fit in with, the general Paul's general production concept? Well, I I remember, from the get go, Paul was interested in a production that had a modern feel about it Mhmm. That that was not disassociated completely with the year that Shakespeare wrote the play, so there are elements of the design that specifically in performance are very modern, very contemporary, and the overall, I think, collaborative end result of this production is one in which, it it feels like a story of today without literally being set in 2017. Dottie, how how did the costumes work with all of this? When we realized that we wanted to work on something that had a a kind of a fresh contemporary feeling that yet had a had a real sense of history behind it, I started looking at frankly fashion runway and anybody who follows fashion has an understanding that the runway is clothing for people who are not us. It's it's for it's for almost a court group of people who are wearing fancy clothing. So I tried really hard to give the clothing a a sense of history but also have a sense of what you might see in a very upper class runway world and I think doing that, we made different rules for what the whole world of the play would be and then we tried to stay within what those rules would be. Great. Lonnie, how about lighting design? For me, much of the idea early on that stuck in my head was winter and cold. It's one of the first things Paul said when Paul and Michael and I first met, and gestural, which I think was something that came from some of the early incarnations of the set in very simple statements. And I think it's where we got to. Starting with what you absolutely need, what is the particular gesture angle of light and color of light you need for this scene? And then what do you need for this scene? And and how does that add up throughout the play? So, but the governing thing for me was that coldness. So that when we do add a little bit of warmth, we know that we're dealing with family. We're dealing with a little bit of the softer sides of the play, and then we kind of are jarred back into the harshness of this reality that Hamlet lives in. Yeah. Barry, you are dealing with two things, with the composition of the music and with the the sound design. Could you speak a little bit about the production, how you fit into the production concept, and, how you started, I guess, with the the composition and how the the the sound worked into that. Well, one of the things that Paul really, wanted to do with this production was was to to make the show very tight, time wise and and just to drive from one scene to the other. In fact, some scenes almost overlap. The the dialogue of one scene will end, and the next one will just be starting. So, that leads to, a lot of very short cues to help link the scenes. So what I ended up coming up with was a very tight palette of instruments. The lead, instrument is cello. I have, like a section of upright basses, orchestral upright basses, that kind of provide the low end, foundation of that, and, and military style percussion and occasionally, very occasionally some brass, mostly for fanfares for the King and things like that. And, and then other percussion cymbals and gongs and things like that that I play in kind of unique ways. When you when you do a piece, when you when you're writing for a piece of theater and you have time for longer transitions, you will structure, you will you will do things that are very metered or have, you know, measures, and there's a kind of structure to that. But when you have to when the longest cue in the show is about 5 seconds long, the emotional the emotional content of the scene that came before and the emotional content of the scene you're going to, with a very small palette in a very small amount of time. Wow. Yeah. Paul, is there one particular aspect, dominant line or color or use of materials that is used in the, in the entire production? The things that that, you know, became important to me, I think, in terms of production concept really came out of the script and what were the images that kept recurring and that we kept hearing again and again and again. And one of the first things that one of the characters says when they're on the watch on the battlements of the castle looking for the ghost is I am sick at heart. At heartsickness, that rottenness, the poisonous atmosphere under the surface of the play. Mhmm. It's a play that deals with, fathers and sons and the deaths of fathers and what sons are going to do about them. So, you know, those kinds of images and feelings became pretty important as we talked about the play and really got into the work on developing a design for it. And I think it's reflected in a lot of the fabrics that Dottie, selected for the costumes, as well as quality of the light, the paint treatments on the stage, the paint treatment of the column behind us, you know, the sort of things decaying from within. Michael, how about, set as far as this is concerned? For the first time in a long time, I I went back to a phrase that that actors are confronted with all the time, which is, what are the given circumstances that you are presented with in this story? And, I I wasn't thinking about what anything looked like or any element of design. I was I was just trying to, deconstruct where we were at the very beginning of this play. And, in conversation with Paul and my collaborators, we're at a place where the kingdom is in a predicament that, nothing is guaranteed, that great danger perhaps is imminent, that, things are on an unsteady footing, that perhaps there's a certain amount of business that has not been taken care of very well up to this very moment in time. So the precariousness of the overall environment became a a notion in my mind from which other things sprung. Entrances and exits are are critical that they need to come from different directions. Hamlet in particular, I felt like, Elsinore Castle is really for Hamlet, for Shakespeare's story, a bit of a rat's maze or a rabbit's warren. Mhmm. Okay? Okay. And there are many corners and shadows in which there's a lot of collected dirt and out of that comes this story. And so, I I knew I was going to be working with genius lighting designer, Lonnie, and designed a set employing a great deal of what we call negative space. Mhmm. There is a lot of empty air on this set And knowing that Lonnie would light it, it is only Lonnie's transformational lighting that allows us to track through a very tight, fast paced 3 hour performance in an ever changing world. Well, you know, one of the first obligations for a costume designer is to is to help distinguish for the audience the relationships between people in terms of status, age, perhaps their their class, perhaps their their their kind of emotional, sense without telling the story. It's just to kind of give a sense of of who they are at the moment they enter because once they start speaking then then there's so much information that the actor gives. So I guess what I'm doing is kind of setting up the actor for that that moment when they start. And so in in this play of Hamlet, we have a we have a whole class system that that it's we need to make very clear when we start with Claudius who is the new king that what he wears shows I am the new king and I I I have the most decoration to prove it. You know. And and his wife, Gertrude is still a little bit in mourning for her prior husband but she is being being newly married and so there's a sense of both celebration and kind of gravity. Hamlet is in mourning, he's described constantly as as why are you so dark, why are you so black and and so we decided he had kind of ripped his trim off it as a way of kind demonstrating his grief in the midst of all this decoration and and and so it's those kind of smaller things that I try to add to the what we decided is whatever the silhouette or shape of the period is going to be to help the audience be able to kind of see in addition to hear what's being said. Bonnie, how about you? What I started sort of looking at in conjunction with the set is the texture that involved in the set. You know, when I light through that negative space, what what else do I get? I can put a pattern in in most of the lights. What did I base that on? Said everything sort of taken from this scaffolding that we have and this this sense of light and gap. So whatever I could create by just pushing light through it, I have. And that creates a certain amount of texture on the stage. And then, I'm mimicking that throughout to create this broken world, this this world of decay, as we've talked about this world of, it's not all there anymore. And I think that that really does get to the core of the of the story and that that these people are broken. How about the the sound design and and the composition? How how does, that fit into what we're talking about? I feel like I started with, something that was, in the beginning of the show, much more structured, and the orchestrations are a lot fuller. And as the play goes on, the the cues get, sort of more chaotic Mhmm. And less musical in nature and, and then get down to fewer and fewer instruments until at the very end of the show, when Hamlet is dead. It's just a simple single cello. A single note a single note of a single instrument. You know, and I think Hamlet, you know, as much as it's known as being this, you know, beautiful, stirring play, also has a certain reputation for, oh, it's that guy who can't make up his mind. And what was really important to me in my work on it and our work together, because I'm nothing without these guys, was to be able to find the drive and to really move the story along. Mhmm. Because I think that Shakespeare at its best. Well, thank you all. I mean, this has been a wonderful discussion. I have just thoroughly enjoyed myself. We really appreciate your time and, I know that our students will get a lot from your insights into production concept. Thanks.