Scenery for "King Richard the Second"

I have chosen to design the opening scenery for King Richard the Second by William Shakespeare. This play was the first of a four play saga by Shakespeare. In this play he shows the beginning of the Wars of the Roses, which is a battle of power between two great families of their time. The main problem with Shakespeare's plays today is the fact that we do not know the history behind everything he wrote. Shakespeare wrote his plays with the assumption that his audience already knew what was going on and the history behind most of the characters. Today this is not always true. Today there are many people that go to watch a play and know nothing about the background or what it is about before entering the theater. In King Richard the Second we start off with conflict, and for an audience that does not know what has happened this can be very confusing. In order to help the audience understand what is happening we must give the subtle hints through scenery, lighting, costumes and much more. Another problem with some of these plays is the fact that common people might say the plays all look the same due to the fact many of them are set in castles. One way of dealing with this is to put the royal family's crest or coat of arms up somewhere to show where the play is taking place, or at least who is in power, so the audience may know something about the government of the time. For the opening scene I have decided to make it traditional with some subtle hints into who the king really is. I am keeping the set traditional by leaving a lot of room down stage to act in. Many of Shakespeare's plays are like this due to the large number of actors or, in some cases, the kings court. At the same time I am giving it the feel of a castle by using columns going from the outer front corners of the stage to the back wall. This will help with some of the sight lines that maybe present. Any other sight lines that may appear can easily be fixed with a black leg or some other more decorative form of a curtain. In this play we can add as much decoration as needed during the beginning while King Richard is in charge. It has been said that he was very well kept and some would even say he was a little feminine. Keeping this in mind I think the opening scene should show a well organized and thought out hall for the king. This is why I have decided to keep it very clean and open. Also, King Richard was a very proud king so to show this I am putting his coat of arms up on the back wall. This also gives room for change later in the play. Since the play is set in a castle there is not many ways a designer can change the scenery without confusing the audience as to where they are. By hanging banners with the kings coat of arms on them, they can later be replaced with Bolingbroke's, or just taken down all together. In my opinion this is how the opening scene for King Richard the Second should look because it will give the play room to grow and actually tell the story not only through the acting but through the scenery as well.

Commedia dell'arte Mask

Commedia dell'arte based off may stock characters that are using recognized by the mask that they are wearing. For this project I decided to create a mask for the stock character Capitano which was one of the very first stock characters. This character is a strong character that is all talk and no show he has a large presence on stage and everyone notices him. Most of the time he is depicted as very brave in words but runs away when it comes to a physical confrontation.Props for this character are very simple he usually has a long sword which he never actually uses during a fight.The mask for the Capitano is usually show with a long nose that is the main feature. Where as most masks from commadia were very colorful the mask of Capitano was usually flesh color or close there to.To create this mask was a bit of a challenge due to the fact that we have different materials we can use today to create a mask. When I started my mask I was trying to stay as true to the character as possible so I chose to make a mold with baking clay. This was simple due to the fact I have already taken my advanced stage makeup class and still have my face mold.The first thing I did was mold a mask on to my face and get it as close to the characteristics of the capitano as possible. In doing this I gave him a long pointy nose and angry looking eye brows to show that he likes to fight even though he does not like physical confrontation. Once I had the basic out line of the mask I baked it in order to make it very hard and rigged. this did not work out as planed it was still very brittle and broke very easily. so I had to find a way to reinforce the mask that would allow me to keep the shape and detail I had already put into the mask.When I ran into this problem I decided to go back to paper mache. So instead of doing a normal paper mache where you would remove the mold that you used to get your shape I left the baking clay in the mache. This gave me the detail that I had from the beginning and made it much harder so that I could create a mask.Once I had my mask in order to get to the color I had to paint it in a way that gave it the looks of leather which is the closest they would have been able to get to a normal skin color but during the time of commadia. So I used three different colors to blend together so to give the effect of skin or in most cases leather. Giving the mask a colorful and texture that makes it look closer to authentic commadia masks.In my opinion my mask is very close to an authentic commadia mask except for the construction of the mask itself.

Classical Tragedy Greek Devices

1. Ekkyklema

The ekkyklema was a wagon for the dead. Back in the Greek theatre they did not believe in see dead bodies or violence on stage so they would be put on this wagon to be taken off stage and out of sight or the audience. They could also use this to move other scenes in and out of sight. This was they’re way of letting the audience know what was happening with out showing it.

http://www.didaskalia.net/images/gstage11.gif

2. Periaktoi

Periaktoi were used to show change in scenes. They where made with three side usually out of wood with something different depicted on each side in order to move the story along. This helps to show a change such as movement from one place to another or change the mood of the play altogether. It was an easy and efficient way of creating scenery all they had to do was turn them.

http://www.hstech.org/howto/carpentr/flats/periaktoi%20014.jpg

3. Theologeion

Theologeion was a raised platform or what we would now call a balcony that was used for the gods to come forth and speak to the audience or directly to the character. This was to help show the power the gods had over everything and everyone.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidVuKKeN8fsJ8OKpSD9e4X8h7-Hkpwm5QpcoZk8AHM9a0R7ko3xc06oIFSB0DdZPIBL8T3TqxlYiiE302QosktkDEhvT6CRDSPIlXcDx5bqBxKicOjI3IcTvcYv27JVG7Oq5BZLjD3NuZJ/s1600-h/scaffold_fig.gif

4. Pinakes

pinakes where panels placed in openings of the Greek theatre with scenes shown on them to add scenery to the over all stage and give a visual effect to the play that may not have already been conveyed. This is like what we now call flats that cover the back stage area.

http://www.whitman.edu/theatre/theatretour/glossary/glossary%20images/pinakes.jpg

5. Skene

Skene was building built dirctly behine the stage. It was usally decorated to surve the need os the play for example if the play was set in a palace its was decorated to represent the palace. This is the way the actors entered and exited the stage.

http://academic.reed.edu/humanities/110tech/graphics/theaterdiagram.jpg

6. Orchestra

Orchestra this was a circle in front of the stage that separated the audience from the stage. This is where the chorus played they’re parts a lot went on in this space since they had more chorus member then actors during the Greek theatre.

http://www.whitman.edu/theatre/theatretour/glossary/glossary%20images/orchestra.jpg

7. Parodoi

Parodoi is usually just a opening in the early theatres that lead to the orchestra. They used this opening for people like messengers and such from abroad . this was an easy way to show that the character was from some other place.

http://www.whitman.edu/theatre/theatretour/sicyon/images/large%20images/sicyon.parodoi.jpg

8. Mechane

Mechane was a device used during the run of a show to lower gods in from above showing their power and authority. It worked a lot like a pulley system does today.

http://www.ual.es/personal/fjgarcia/images/Mechane_Socrates.jpg

9. Logeion

Back in the Greek theatre they had platforms just like we do today so that the actors would have more of a stage to separate the scenes from one another. They had one platform called the Logeion that was built right in front of the skene.

http://anarchon.tripod.com/subdirectory-theatre/epidauros.gif

10. Thymele

Thymele was a platform in the middle of the orchestra that the lead in the chorus would stand on to speak. This was also the alter that they used during performances when they were in need of a sacrifice to the gods.

http://www.sheffieldtheatres.co.uk/creativedevelopmentprogramme/productions/minotaur/images/Diagram%20of%20Theatre.jpg