The show I chose was A Midsummer’s Night Dream by the one and only William Shakespeare. The main concept that I wanted to keep for the show was the whole fantasy dream feel to it. Though I don’t want it to go to the extreme, but I imagine the show moving like a kaleidoscope. In kaleidoscopes the pictures and colors are constantly changing. In the show the scenes and colors will be constantly changing, coming in and out keeping a new surprise for ever moment. For the color palette I wanted dark colors with a contrast to bright colorful plants and costumes.
One place that I thought about most for the inspiration of how the set looked was almost like Wonderland. No matter what version you see of Alice in Wonderland it is always a blue scale with accent colors such as greens, pinks, yellows and purples to contrast against it and make those specific colors pop out to the audience’s eye. Another aspect of the set that I wanted was multiple levels to the set. There is a picture in my morgue of research that had ladders going to different platforms at different heights. I like having these levels to give focus to different parts of the forest. Another option to the levels was to make some of the levels part of a tree trunk. This can give the actors more space to enter and exit from and give it more of a fantasy feel of having the fairies come in and out of their homes built in the trees. I would like for the tree trunks to be reach all the way to the top but have random strands of leafy branches coming down.
While in my research I came upon a rendering of fairies resembling different flowers and that made me want to incorporate that into this show. Along with the flowers though I wanted to also give the fairies more on a Mother Nature feel and have them also be different plants, water, sky, and maybe some as bugs. One thing that I also think about for inspiration for the fairies costuming is the fairy scene from Fantasia when they are all going around and bringing the seasons to Mother Nature and her animals. For the color palette I imagine brighter colors with accents of neutral colors to tone them down.
For the lighting of the show I want soft edges and warm colors. I don’t want the stage to brightly lit so it gives it a dream feel to the scenes. If there will be trees involved in the set then, if possible, would like hash light coming in at different angels. This will to be give the feel of light coming in through the branches. A thing that I would like if necessary is lanterns for some of the characters. If possible having the candles lit will be best, but we can always resort to light bulbs if we can’t get a compromise with the fire.
