We were given two plays to choose from. I choose the Pillowman by Martin McDonagh which is an incredibly dark story of two brothers being accused of killing children in the most gruesome of ways.
My design was centred on a circular platform sunk into the stage which would revolve to reveal two different sets. The two different sets would represent the two different worlds explored in the play; the real brutal prison/interrogation room environment and then the world of the gruesomely imaginative stories written by the brothers.
This project push my design skills in several ways, it gave me a chance to explore my creativity in how I went about bringing the play to life as well as facing me with similar problems to those I would face when designing in a real life scenario. As well as 2D hand drawn designs I created a scale model of my set which I found invaluable in refining my model making skills to a more professional level.
I took the overall theme of storytelling and story writing and translated it very literally into my design, I used book pages as the central theme. The design for the story set is quite literally covered with book pages, any props and set pieces used would all be entirely encased in pages as is the set itself, it is a very physical all consuming manifestation of the stories which are so crucial to the play.
The two images below show the prison setting. The prison setting represents an authoritarian regime which rules on fear, control and discipline, however even in a very harsh, stark setting I incorporated the book pages slowly starting to creep through. They curl around the bars in the windows, creep through the cracks in the tiles and overflow from the draws of the filing cabinet. More and more pages would be added to this part of the set as the play unfolds representing how the fictional stories entwine themselves more and more with reality.
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