Reading Notes

Update on the reading notes. So far we've posted 5 different readings, so we've got 5 left guys. Reply in the comments which reading you want to work on if you haven't posted one yet.

Reading Notes that are done:
"Behind the Screen Door" - Jimmy
"World on Stage" - Allie & Keith
"Can Theater and Media Speak the Same Language?" - Kira & Keith
"Directors and Designers is there a Different Direction" - Nate
"The Stage as Dangerous machine" - Allie

Reading's not done:
"The Metaphor"
"Poet's Creed"
"Richard Foreman as a Sceneographer"
"Scenography as a Machine"
"Use of Mettapatterns"

The Stage is a Dangerous Machine: the Designs of George Tyspin

The theater can be dangerous aesthetically as well as practically. George Tyspin, classically trained in architecture in Moscow and then as a designer at New York University, is among one of the foremost modern designers.
Style:
- Steel is Tyspin’s favorite material for it’s “sleek beauty and strength”, it is used in many of his designs and sculptures.
-“I’m not interested in periods; I feel incredible freedom. I was never indoctrinated in the sense of ‘this is from this period and that is from that period’. I have total freedom t use whatever I like.” This freedom is most often connected with the postmodern movement, with historical and contemporary elements juxtaposed together.
-Tyspin insists that his approach is organic, “I’m more interested in the essence of things, the textures, the shapes, the space, the historical elements as long as they serve the meaning”
-Influenced by David Mitchell, in his ease with mechanical transformations.
-employs the vertical to achieve a “spiritual dimension” as well as adding additional focal points.
-Islamic architecture in how it makes an understanding of how a building is put together impossible, as well as how it seems to melt into the air.

Shows:
1)The Screens by Genet.
- Created a sand y dessert of stage
-Tyspin designed a net that hangs above the stage to represent the land of the dead. He called in a German engineering firm to help design the net to hold up to 40 bodies as well as appear light and airy.
2)The Electrification of the Soviet Union
-set inside of a train car that was flexible
-his work on this set exemplifies his collaborative nature where he and director Peter Sellers formed the idea of the malleable train car.
3)The Cabinet of Dr. Ramirez
-this was the first film that Tyspin worked on, it was a remake.
-the original had been black and white and tyspin wanted to carry that feeling by having intense colors. “to really go to essentials in color where every color becomes a state of mind”
-Played with the loneliness of new york “whatever is not onstage is just as important as what is”

4)The Ring of the Nibelungs - Wagner
- In this design Tyspin wanted to design with all the elements, and create a space where “the audience and the stage were intertwined”
-“the first note of the opera sounds in the darkness, and then there was an explosion of glass and metal. The platforms begin moving and action immediately becomes spatial”
-The design for this set took over the Netherlands Opera, with set changes waiting in the lobby and coming out into the street.

Sculptures:
-Tyspin has held gallery shows for his sculptures
-They are created after the show has been designed and act as monuments to the shows.
-They are not quite stage models, but more conceptual of how Tyspin would have designed in an ideal world with no limitations of floor space for actors.
-These monuments set Tyspin apart from almost all other American designers who keep almost no record of their work and just design shows back to back. Tyspin remain the artist instead of making a career out of designing.

The Danger:
-in later years, Tyspin did very little work in the United States as his designs were too dangerous.
-His design for War and Peace had been performed in many other cities without fault, it wasn’t until New York did a mishap occur. But Tyspin felt the sage itself was safe but that “there was something getting into people’s subconscious. There was a perceived danger in the design.”
-Tyspin is dismayed at all the new safety regulations on what he can and can not do in the theater space.

BUGS!!!

Today I added my bug to the unfortunate clan out in the web. Here are some pictures of the making of, and installing of my little lady bug. It is made out of tracing paper and paper mache and water colors.



Here it is as just some wet paper mache and a balloon, and me desperately trying to get it to dry at 1AM.
Here is it all painted up and ready to be assembled
At first I hung it to the web, but then realized that the lady bug didn't want to fly.
so I tied it onto the tree, it looks much happier there.Here's a nice shot I got of the whole web, it's really becoming something amazing!

New twist to the enviroment desgin?

So I was thinking about the bugs I was going to make for the web (lady bugs, btw) and I though it would be really cool to stick some lights inside of them and then come photograph it at night. This would also give it a light/dark transition which alan seems fond of (given the requirements for the other two designs) does this sound appealing to anyone else?

Some Doodles

Hey all,

So Alan was talking about how drawing is good to see where your mind is, so I thought I'd post some recent doodles from my moleskin. I didn't intend to make these look like anything in particular, but I think one has kind of turned into a bird.

Stage Design

I have TONS of songs that I think would be cool to design, in particular, I think doing a Decemberist song would be cool because they mostly all tell stories. Here is one I think could be fun.

The Mariner's Revenge Song

We are two mariners
Our ships' sole survivors
In this belly of a whale

Its ribs our ceiling beams
Its guts our carpeting
I guess we have some time to kill

You may not remember me
I was a child of three
And you, a lad of eighteen

But I remember you
And I will relate to you
How our histories enweave

At the time you were
A rake and a roustabout
Spending all your money
On the whores and hounds
Oh Ohhhhh

You had a charming air
All cheap and debonair
My widowed mother found so sweet

And so she took you in
Her sheets still warm with him
Now filled with filth and foul disease

As time wore on you proved
A debt-ridden drunken mess
Leaving my mother
A poor consumptive wretch
Oh Ohhhhh

And then you disappeared
Your gambling arrears
The only thing you left behind

And then the magistrate
Reclaimed our small estate
And my poor mother lost her mind

Then one day in spring
My dear sweet mother died
But before she did
I took her hand as she, dying, cried:
Oh Ohhhhh

"Find him, bind him
Tie him to a pole and break
His fingers to splinters
Drag him to a hole until he
Wakes up naked
Clawing at the ceiling
Of his grave
*sigh*"

It took me fifteen years
To swallow all my tears
Among the urchins in the street

Until a priory
Took pity and hired me
To keep their vestry nice and neat

But never once in the employ
Of these holy men
Did I ever once turn my mind
From the thought of revenge
Oh Ohhhhh

One night I overheard
The Prior exchanging words
With a penitent whaler from the sea

The captain of his ship
Who matched you toe to tip
Was known for wanton cruelty

The following day
I shipped to sea
With a privateer

And in the whistle
Of the wind
I could almost hear...
Oh Ohhhhh

"Find him, bind him
Tie him to a pole and break
His fingers to splinters
Drag him to a hole until he
Wakes up naked
Clawing at the ceiling
Of his grave

"There is one thing I must say to you
As you sail across the sea
Always, your mother will watch over you
As you avenge this wicked deed"

[haunting, sailor-esque musical interlude lead by mandolin, accordion and tuba]

And then that fateful night
We had you in our sight
After twenty months at sea

Your starboard flank abeam
I was getting my muskets clean
When came this rumbling from beneath

The ocean shook
The sky went black
And the captain quailed

And before us grew
The angry jaws
Of a giant whale

[instrumental noise]
Oh Ohhhhhhhhhh
[screaming]
Ohhhhh
[screaming]

Don't know how I survived
The crew all was chewed alive
I must have slipped between his teeth

But, O! What providence!
What divine intelligence!
That you should survive
As well as me

It gives my heart
Great joy
To see your eyes fill with fear

So lean in close
And I will whisper
The last words you'll hear
Ohh Ohhhhh

Hey guys, I can't make the meeting tomorrow, but I'll be around all weekend to help set up the environmental design. I also would love to take on a large role in the building aspect of the stage model. I have a lot of supplies to make models.

Interview Questions

1. When extra terrestrials are found, do you think they will be more intelligent than us?
2. What is the Electrical Banana?
3. If you could invent one thing to further the search for extra terrestrials what would it be?
4. What is one technology you could not live without today? One you wish you did?
5. How do you think the public would respond to confirmed existence of extra terrestrials?

-Allie S,

"The World on Stage"

Here are some notes on the "The World on Stage" reading.

-"All that is on stage is a sign"
-becomes a self contained illusion outside of social praxis
-creates a bridge between the stage and its fictional analogue of the world
-the power of this sign (image) is not exhausted either by its illusion or its referential character.
-signs and images are more than their iconic identity
-theater is really a language whose words consist an unusual degree of things that are what they are.
-signs may represent images, but they are still real images outside of the scene.
-persuit of the "essence" of things disregards their other functions in real life
-"the sensation that things as thy are perceived and not as they are known" - Shklovsky
- art makes objects unfamiliar
-the image is unique and unreproducible
-root difference between image and sign
-"the material of the sign is totally indifferent to the object it signifies... but the relationship between the material of the physical image and it's object is altogether different; the two resemble each other" -Sartre
-reading a scene present almost no phenomenal distraction
-more real than on stage, mind can create images
-the eye is window to the waiting consciousness
-vs the theater production which is a condensation into "real form"
-some things refuse to be signs or images
-the viewer gets worn down, no more initial amazement
-clocks will always be a disturbance onstage, we are perturbed that theater time is being measured by a real clock
-somethings are too interesting in real life to be used on stage (running water, fire, ect)
-"double vision" of the audience to overlook casting ( ex: child troupes)
-the medium becomes the message
- animals on stage give the effect of bisociation ( natural animal behavior and culturally programed human behavior)
-the actor putting objects on stage neutralizes the objects "Objectivity"
-same way animals in a zoo lose their objectivity, " this is the kind of animal you would see here"
-something on stage can rouse the awareness of something external
- art is a certain perspective on substance
-props(furniture) and their placement can force the actors to move and act differently
-the actor allows us to recognize the human "from the inside"
-are it nature.


--Allie S.

Collage Post

Here is my collage, sorry for the glare, cell phone pictures are what they are. Hope you enjoy!

-Allie S.