GHOST SONATA
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by August Strindberg
Directed by Dr. Tim Baxter-Ferguson Limestone College March 2019 |
SET, COSTUME and LIGHT DESIGN
“When a young boy disappears on a winter’s day in the heart of Appalachia, his best friend sets out to bring him home. So begins a journey through snow and ice, leaving the everyday world behind, as a magical winter time path leads deeper into a frozen kingdom. Inspired by the classic Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, this world premiere adventure for audiences of all ages transports the story to the highest peaks of the Blue Ridge. Snow Queen weaves music, magic and make believe to celebrate the courage of a brave young girl.”- Triad Stage Originally written and produced at Triad Stage in Greensboro, NC, this magical piece is an Appalachian riff of the classic Hans Christian Anderson Tale. Most audience members are more familiar with the Disney adaption Frozen but this version brings in folk and Blue grass music directly from the hills of the Carolinas. Original music by Laura Lynn Dossett and play by Preston Lane, both natives of Boone, NC, are known for weaving their Appalachian heritage into great theatre. CONCEPT:For my costume design I wanted to use traditional Appalachian textures and colors found in folk art as a basis for the palette and patterns. I also wanted to link characters together using these specific colors and textures to show their connection to each other and to the region. Some costumes were from the original production and were rented from Triad Stage. |
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by August Strindberg
Directed by Dr. Tim Baxter-Ferguson Limestone Center Theatre March 2019 When we decided to produce Ghost Sonata this season, I asked if I could design the set, lighting, and costumes for our production. This is one of my favorite plays: I have always wanted to design it. The opportunity to do the scenography for this production is a dream come true. In the end, Ghosts Sonata is a ghost story. It is a dream play (which is a title of another on of Strindberg’s famous works) that brings me to the artistic inspiration for my design: Expressionism. Expressionism is defined as “a style of painting, music, or drama in which the artist or writer seeks to express emotional experience rather than impressions of the external world”. Though Ghost Sonata has been placed in many theatrical genres—Surrealism, Symbolism, Modernism—I believe Expressionism works best, simply because of Strindberg’s desire to illustrate an external world while simultaneously immersing us in an internal and ethereal one. For my set design, I took much of my inspiration from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, a famous 1920 German Expressionist horror film. The exaggerated and nightmarish abstraction in the world of the film fit perfectly into this dream world we wanted to create for the play. As you will see, my lighting design is crucial to the scenery because of the shadows and color transmitted through the walls of the set. I gained inspiration for this from the woodblock prints of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner as well as the shadow techniques used in Dr. Caligari. For costumes, much like the furniture in the show, we decided to have them be real and period accurate. Again, this was to accentuate that juxtaposition between dream and reality. My colors, textures, and emotional influence for all my design elements were inspired by works of Edward Munch, Jack Vettriano, Oscar Kokoschka, and Eric Heknal. There is one piece of artwork I have not yet mentioned, but is incredibly important to the piece: Arnold Bocklin’s Isle of the Dead. Strindberg specifically references this piece at the end of the play when innocence is finally rewarded with heaven. It is an eerie and beautiful piece that I believe was chosen by Strindberg for its soft, ghost-like texture and solitary white figure sailing towards a mysterious and idyllic island. I believe this is what Strindberg was looking forward to in his own redemption as he struggled with the dark earthly matters that seemed to weigh upon him as he wrote this play. | ||||||||||
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And The World Goes 'Round
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