This Mentored Advanced Project (MAP), “Scenic and Projections Design for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time at Farmers' Alley Theatre in Kalamazoo, Michigan,” combines theatrical design and construction, technological studies, and in-depth dramaturgical research to translate a textual world into a theatrical and performative one. Essentially, this MAP works through the space between text and performance. Scenic and projection design both require intense conceptual and physical work in order to bridge this gap.
Dramaturgical research entails drawing themes, settings, and characters out of the play that are crucial to the production of the work. These components are established by the text itself and by the design team’s interpretations of the text. In addition to a close reading and analysis of the text, we will investigate the context in which the production was written, the playwright’s background and experience that impacts the script, and research into the core thematic elements of the play. Some of these elements regarding this production include autism, education, and the impact of family relationships and decisions upon children. Without research prior to design work, the text may be misconstrued, the design choices inauthentic, and the world shakily constructed. As in any field in which a person is given the task of creating a product, said maker must be ready to make informed choices.
Dramaturgical research entails drawing themes, settings, and characters out of the play that are crucial to the production of the work. These components are established by the text itself and by the design team’s interpretations of the text. In addition to a close reading and analysis of the text, we will investigate the context in which the production was written, the playwright’s background and experience that impacts the script, and research into the core thematic elements of the play. Some of these elements regarding this production include autism, education, and the impact of family relationships and decisions upon children. Without research prior to design work, the text may be misconstrued, the design choices inauthentic, and the world shakily constructed. As in any field in which a person is given the task of creating a product, said maker must be ready to make informed choices.
In this part of the process, we engaged in a close reading of the script using a scene and action breakdown. This tool provided us an opportunity to map out each action and discover its subtext. Starting with the last action of the play, we examined the script to determine what primary action caused the final action, why the action occurred, and the impact of the action upon the play script and us as readers. We maintained a response bank of reactions, both initial and revised, which enabled us to determine how our views of the play changed over time. This exercise shaped both our dramaturgical and visual and conceptual research and determined the most important visual information to create the world of the play for theatre audiences.
A scene breakdown chart is also a way to visualize the more concrete needs within the text, so that designers may ensure that objects, locations, clothing etc. that are provided in the script are also made manifest on stage. A scene breakdown chart provides basic context, and initial thoughts of the designers as reference points. Throughout the design process, the scene breakdown was revisited and revised to be an up-to-date representation of the designer’s thoughts on different moments in the script.
This work, like dramaturgical research, aimed to contextualize the content with which the designers were working. Visual and conceptual research was the next step in the translation between text and stage. This research was often image-based and focused upon the concrete objects within the play (exactly what does a London Tube station look like, for example) as well as visual representation of thematic ideas and also visual reflections upon the emotional arc of the play. Many of the visual components of this process were directly incorporated into the finalized designs or translated through the design process into new ideas to explore through visual research. This element of the project marked the beginning of the collaborative artistic process in which we engaged with the director and other visual and aural designers. We presented our initial research to the creative team, discussed design ideas for the scenic elements, created new ideas, and then returned to revise the visual research and visual ideas in advance of additional collaborative meetings. This process was repeated throughout the MAP, even after design implementation had begun.
Scenic design is a complex process. For the purposes of this MAP, it was broken down into concrete processes and products—making stage models to experiment with visual ideas, drafting of the design using 2D and 3D modeling software, creating paint elevations of the scenic elements, etc. that allowed for the creative team to understand the design and implement that design. These concrete artifacts were important for communication with other designers and essential to the transition from the conceptual to the staged. Scenic carpenters, painters, and technicians required these renderings in order to begin constructing the designed world for the stage, and the director and actors required them to understand the physical world that their words and actions had to bring to life.
Projections offer a certain freedom that concrete scenic elements do not. They can change a quotidian object, like a white wall, into a complex space, like the interior of a person’s mind. Similar to scenic design, projection design can be broken into concrete processes and products. In this case, these products emerged directly from the visual research process. Visual research allowed us to utilize both analog and digital tools to create animations, static visual compositions, and visual motif throughout the production of this play. Accompanying this artistic work, we created an organizational method that enabled the team to program computers to layer these materials in a series of cues for the show. Additional paperwork was then created so we could hand off the running of the production to the theatre company. This laid out the steps to recreate the exact same visuals for each performance during the run of the show.
The culmination of this process was the performance. This production ran from March 15 - 31, 2019 at Farmers Alley Theatre in Kalamazoo, MI. There were approximately 3,000 tickets available over the course of its run, and it was peer reviewed by theatre critics across the Michigan and Chicago, Illinois areas. We spent the remainder of the term translating the design materials into new methods for presentation, compiling reflections on the process, and preparing to present these materials and the process both on campus and at the United States Institute for Theatre Technology conference the following year.
All the previously mentioned project components required that we had a rich and varied understanding of visual storytelling and the design process. To effectively support the narrative of the script, one needs to understand not only how to calculate projector angles and the stress limits of platforms but also how to use visual elements as anchors for the story. We drew upon and integrated ideas from not only the various courses in theatre that we had taken but also from courses across the disciplines, particularly as we performed dramaturgical research so that our contributions to the production reflected a nuanced understanding of the story and its characters.
For Nolan and Anjali, this project built upon pre-existing knowledge of scenic design taken from THD 115 as well as various other courses in the field. THD 115 introduces students to the design process from scene breakdown to first draft to construction and painting. Additionally, Nolan has taken Digital Media in Performance, Digital London, and Lighting for the Stage. These courses focused on storytelling through digital platforms (lighting, audio, video, projection design and multimedia performances/instillations) and building the relevant cue structures. Although Anjali has taken fewer courses within the Theatre and Dance department, her experiences in Generational Memory, Critical Literacy, and Studies in Dance inform the ways in which she constructs and analyzes narratives. Besides acting (THD 117 and THD 217) and directing (THD 235) classes, Ahon has taken Digital Literary Studies (ENG 295). Over the summer of 2018, he worked on a Shakespeare digital mapping project with the Digital Bridges for Humanistic Inquiry grant and currently, as a Vivero Fellow, he continues to expand his knowledge in the digital humanities.
Nolan, Anjali, and Ahon all drew on practical production experience as well. At the time that they were going into this project, Nolan had served as sound designer for four department mainstage productions besides serving as sound board and projections operator for several others. Anjali serves as the Production Stage Manager for the Theatre and Dance Department. At Grinnell, she had assistant stage managed for two shows (one mainstage, one MAP production), and stage managed for Dance Ensemble/ACTivate. She had also served as a sound board and projections operator for several shows. In theatres outside of Grinnell, she had worked in lighting, set construction, stage management, and sound. Anjali and Nolan also worked in the scene shop, building and painting scenic elements for the department’s productions. Ahon had been involved with four department mainstage productions but in different aspects (assistant director and run crew, actor, and stage manager). In the fall of 2018, he was directing a one-act for class while preparing for his role in this semester’s MAP production. His stage-managing experience that same semester served as a crash course in the technical and production side of theatre, which he was excited to keep exploring through this MAP.
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