Task 2: ('Proposal') Director's Notebook

Task 1 - 'Presentation'

Set design is an important part of almost any theatre production, as almost every show will utilize some sort of set, however minimal. Sets can be abstract, highly realistic, or anything in between, and they are a chance for a designer to showcase interesting concepts, new techniques, and unusual materials. The primary function of a set, of course, is to provide the audience with some context for the play, but it can also be a chance to create something stunning to draw in the audience.

Set designers orchestrate visual elements such as line, form, colour, mass, and balance. Ideally, the set should always help the performers by providing them with an appropriate background for creating mood and atmosphere and provide them with a workable apparatus. A good set design should fit the theatrical space to its best advantage and complement the costumes and the lighting, although a set design might also be crafted in such a way as to provide a deliberate contrast to the costumes. The set design should challenge or endorse the visual aesthetics of the audience, encourage creative blocking and imagery on the part of the director and the cast, and serve the needs of the script. All in all, the set design must reflect the artistic vision of the production.

Therefore, the set designer (with the director) has to consider whether the set should be a naturalistic, realistic or authentic recreation of a particular location (imaginary or otherwise), like a temple, palace forecourt, or a seashore, or whether it should be a more abstract (or even surreal) interpretation of the same location. There is also a possibility that the designer might employ both naturalistic and abstract elements for the design; this might include the incorporation of the architectural elements of the theatre space itself. Each of these choices will affect the audience’s perception of the production and the performer’s use of space. These decisions have to be decided early, as any later mistakes could prove costly, both in terms of time and finance. The set also informs the audience of the geographical location of the play, can also, with the aid of lighting, hint at weather conditions: while rumbling thunder is a common feature of modern tragic productions, few are explicit about weather conditions in the stage design itself.

Above and beyond providing the audience with an indication of the time and location of the play, the set must create the mood and atmosphere of the production. All designers hope that their creations will arouse an emotional response in the spectator as it creates the correct atmosphere for the production. The mood can sometimes be emphasized by the emblematic use of scenic elements or a particular design facet which is singled out to stand as a hallmark for a production. The designer must ensure that the set and other design elements of the mis-en-scène either merge together to form a well-conceived unity, or, if desired, that they diversify and clash, bringing deliberate discord. The purposeful correlation of the design elements of a production means that all the theatrical visual systems (set, costumes, lights, props, poster and programme design) work in harmony;

The set design process is something that is developed over time through practice, studying and simply learning form your mistakes as well. Every single set designer has a different way of creating their sets however there is a usual order which they often do.

• The set designer would begin by reading the script, taking note of any direction aimed at them, exits and entrances, location, time period etc. the set designer doesn’t necessarily have to stick with the script if they don’t wish to. Just because the room has walls doesn’t necessarily mean they wish to have the walls.

• This would be followed by a meeting with the director and the other members of the design team to discuss the details of the set and the director's interpretation of the play. The set, costume and lighting designers also meet and work together to ensure the creation of a unified look and feel for the production. The director might even have an inspiration or theme he would like to follow, however at the end it’s a collaborative task and industry. The meeting is a lively exchange of initial ideas and first impressions helps clarify the steps that each person needs to take in this intensely collaborative process.

• At this point research is done, whether that be on the era, setting, materials… anything. Using the research and script, and any notes; they would start sketching the very first rough draft. This will most likely be by hand but can also be done digitally but is just a a rough outline. At this point they consider space, scale, and audience space and sight lines as you work. If the design made is something they like, they go through what’s called a ‘mind mapping session’ where they start questioning it and rethinking it. Art is something that you make and then remake. Therefore, as set designers they try to come up with as many different things as you can and then choose ones they like and play them out.

• After the rough outline is complete a second draft is made with specific annotations of materials, location, scaling etc. this is then shown to the director. They sit and discuss how each piece fits into the overall setting. There will most likely be changes that the director would want to make, this is nothing personal as the director could have had something in mind that he already had blocked out. At this point in time the set design isn’t set in stone.

• At this point some set designers would be ready to create the final sketch whereas some might need to do more drafts. From then on it’s the construction team building the set, but communication is key. As set designer they will need to communicate with the set builders to ensure everything is being done correctly and how it was planned. Sometime the designer may wish to be involved in the building process if they were experienced.

As designer, some even research their directors, to know what he or she has done in the past and try to get a sense of how their process works. That way, creative clashes can be avoided.
Set design, evidently, is a very diverse process, there is no particular way of doing things or any rule, which is why it’s a great form of expressing creativity. This is applied by all set designers to their sets. How do sets actually convey the story that is being told though?

The relationship between a set designer and the director is important. All directors are unique. Some are very visual while others, get involved in the process with set ideas about the scenic design while others say work with whatever the set designer offers and therefore is more of an individual thing that a collaborative thing at that point. As set designer you want to be able to have the creative freedom to do what you want, but at the same time, you have to remember that it's ultimately the director's responsibility to keep continuity in the overall design concept for the show. The director will be conveying his or her concept to all the designers and the actors, and you want to keep with that concept. That isn't to say that you can't help the director develop the concept. Know the director's influences. Communication between the director and designer is very important, asking questions is also vital to getting the overall image the director could be aiming for. Asking how they are thinking of solving the blocking for a certain scene or what they are thinking about telling the other designers.

Directors may have a hard time following sketches, at that point a model can be created

Models are great ways to express the design in 3-D version giving more of an idea as to what it will look like as a whole. Models help directors to block the show and to understand how things work in scale. It also will help the designer to figure out lots of space issues.

Men Should Weep is a classic drama production, which Bunny Christie did the set design for, showing what life was like living in the poverty of an East End Glasgow tenement in the depression of the 1930s through the ‘Morisons family’. Maggie Morrison is mother to seven children ranging from infancy to adulthood. The play shows her trying to hold the family together and do the best she can while coping with unemployment, poor living conditions, disease, nosey neighbours, a sister who thinks she knows best and a rapidly changing society. The play is not sentimental nor humorous but it does give a real sense of the humour and sense of community apparent at this time. Men Should Weep is set in the East End of Glasgow, specifically in the Morrison’s tenement living room. Maggie works extremely hard taking care of her children, husband and elderly mother in law. Maggie’s husband, John, is out of work and struggling to find employment meaning the family survive the best they can on little and the occasional handout from Maggie’s sister, Lily.

The play exemplifies a number of trends of social background/conditions: poverty, living conditions, distribution of wealth, relationship between the individual verses the establishment etc. Issues of gender are also a major focus as we explore traditional gender roles, changing attitudes towards gender and the impact of social, political factors on gender relationships. How does Bunny Christie, the set designer of men should weep, manage to convey all these metaphors, symbols and imagery techniques through her set designs?

For starters, she honours its naturalism, with a lovingly detailed set that fills the whole stage with a tenement building. Rourke (the director) and her designer Bunny Christie have both enlarged and shrunk this world with an incredible set which reveals, dolls-house style, slices of the rooms to above, below and to left and right, as well as the communal staircase and toilet. Rourkela and Bunny Christie, also treat the play as a tenement symphony in which we are reminded that the Morrison’s are only part of the whole picture: we get a Rear Window-like perspective on the whole block in which we see glimpses of all the adjacent lives. So while the play goes on in center, we see glimpses of those neighbors: the domestic violence, eavesdropping, cooking, living, and understand what we're seeing is just part of an even bigger, sadder world. They also treat the play as a tenement symphony in which we are reminded that the Morrison menage is only part of the larger picture: we get a Rear Window-like perspective on the whole block in which we see glimpses of all the adjacent lives. Bunny Christie's split design catches the crush and tangle of tenement life. The stage enables the audience to see a series of individual events, which come together like a piece of jazz.

Colour can affect us psychologically and physically, often without us being aware, and can be used as a strong device within a story. Knowledge gives you control, and control means you can manipulate and use colour to give your work a powerful and beautiful edge. 

Being able to use colour to create harmony, or tension within a scene, or to bring attention to a key visual theme can be used to spectacular effect. Bunny uses a tetradic colour scheme, where it consists of four colours, these are milky grey, murky brown, black and tones of dark green. Grey is the colour of intellect, knowledge, and wisdom. It is perceived as long-lasting, classic, and often as sleek or refined. It is a colour that is dignified, conservative, and carries authority. Grey is controlled and inconspicuous and is considered a colour of compromise, perhaps because it sits between the extremes of black and white. Grey is a perfect neutral, which is why designers often use it as a background colour.

These specific colours may mean different things individually but together we immediately see the theme of poverty, especially through the murkiness of it all. She manages to sufficiently use dull, dreary, and tedious colours, in order to further emphasise the miserable mood that is present in the set. They create a generic unattractive yet somehow eye-drawing scene, which is exactly perfect for this entire play. It conveys the overall atmosphere and mood to the audience, showing them what they should feel almost. The colour pallet also comes through with the interior designing, as in the furniture and wallpaper. The furniture consists of bland colours showing that they actually can’t afford the more luxurious item of furniture. The bland colours could suggest they are old, worn out and overall not good quality, adding on to the overall theme of poverty.

The furniture in the set could also has an emblematic and symbolic function. All furniture communicates some meaning- it's unavoidable. Its what things do. A bed speaks of inner lives, of the

body and the soul. The cupboards and cabinets imply secrets. Wardrobes suggest dreams of other worlds. And tables invite company. The set design particularly includes a lot of cupboards, this could suggest the family simply dreaming about what it would be like to be wealthy, to be living in the ‘other world’. 

In the set design of Men Should Weep the use of levels is absolutely incredible. The effect of level in any performance increases the overall visual appeal of it. Levels not only eye-appealing but it allows characters to how status, it is often symbolized that the higher up a person a standing they are more powerful especially if there are people at a lower level. As well as amplifying the status of people it allows the set designer to amplify anything in general, and to add more. In this particular case, the room are placed like building blocks on top of each other, this allows or more than just one setting to be shown on stage. This is better than the typical setting, where you just have a room laid out on the flat stage as once again its overall more appealing to the eye and allows for more to happen as whole with ease.

Another important aspect I feel should be mentioned is the fact that no windows are obviously present in the set. Although at one point they use shadows to visualise windows, not having any in the room can suggest various things and convey different symbols, especially in a psychological point of view Windows are literally the visual bridge between inside and out. As human beings we are often drawn to the bright, warm light that shines through windows, possibly representing health, growth, and the courage to change. At a deep, unconscious level, we may also fear the light that the windows allow in as they may metaphorically illuminate the darkness in the inner recesses of the soul. At times we may prefer the comfort of the familiar darkness as opposed to the risk of the exposure of parts of ourselves whether conscious or unconscious that we choose to keep hidden. Practically, windows and light traditionally symbolize an opening and illumination of darkness. This overall emphasizes the theme of social injustice/poverty

Made in Dagenham is yet another play that involves the set designing skills of Bunny Christie. The whole set id’s revolved around a Ford Co. Company where in addition to the thousands of male employees, there are also 187 underpaid women machinists who primarily assemble the car seat upholstery in poor working conditions. As a result, the women work with union rep for a better deal. However, later on learn about how this is a much larger issue, considering that women are paid an appalling fraction of the men's wages for the same work across the board on the sole basis of their sex. Due to this social injustice a strike is started at the Ford Co. Company.

In made in Dagenham its evident that both the director and Bunny Christie wanted the show to be fun and lively with a 60s poppy feel to it, but also to be gritty and a bit grimy when we are in Dagenham and pythonesque when we are in Westminster.

Although the show is about a strike in a Ford Car Factory there aren’t that many scenes in the factory so the set had to be able to become lots of different locations. Bunny Christe came up with an Airfix

concept. This concept is fun and a generally interesting thing to look at, making it obviously eye-appealing. Although the show is about a strike in a Ford Car Factory there aren’t that many scenes in the factory so the set had to be able to become lots of different locations. This airfix gives a pretty good visual metaphor to unify all the scenes. 

In ‘Men Should Weep’ through the set design she chooses to convey the character as depressed and desperate beings which choose to stay quite about the social injustice present and face the struggles of their life. On the other hand with ‘Made in Dagenham’, although the same concept, different measures are taken. The women in ‘Made in Dagenham although facing the same social injustice as the families in ‘Men Should Weep’ they choose to do something about it. The characters in men should weep simply do not have the motivation to use their voices as the women do in Made in Dagenham. This shows that unlike the characters in men should weep, who are stuck within the typical stereotype’ they show a form of rebellion by holding the strikes and protesting over the social injustice.

The use of lighting may have seemed like a minor difference however could have a major impact on the performance overall. In Made in Dagenham the lighting is more dispersed whereas in ‘men should weep’ the lighting was pretty concise to one area most of the time. Along with the spread of lighting came the spread of colours. With MID the lighting consist of a vast array of colours, where as once again the lighting of MSW is once again within that tetradic colour scheme of the green, greys, blacks and browns. 

In conclusion, we can evidently see that Bunny Christie has made
the most of her abilities and knowledge of set design to properly convey the theme of social injustice through the setting. She used multiple features ranging from lighting, colour, furniture, levels and many more to not only portray the theme but set an atmosphere for both the actors and audience.

GLOBAL CONTEXT RELATION: 

Both these theatrical mediums covered a certain theme which is societal injustice. The assigned Global Context for this unit is ‘Fairness and Development’ and I believe not only individually but even compared, they both fit the definition perfectly.  I “explored rights and responsibilities; the relationship between communities” and mainly “sharing finite resources with other people and with other living things; access to equal opportunities; peace and conflict resolution”