Second meeting with Director

I met with Doug for the second time today and took with the work I have currently done. As he has had more time to negotiate the script since our last meeting ideas were becoming a lot more clear. He agreed with most of the suggestions on my moodboards, for the Princess he very much liked the idea of a floating garment to allow for a lot of movement when dancing as well as giving a feel of bed clothes. As for the Soldier he liked the overall moodboard but felt that the soldier is most likely to be a private and more research should be carried out into this. As his costume changes throughout it would be a good idea to have a base costume to tweek as thew story goes on to show his change in circumstance. Having watched a production of AST with the Devil as a woman Doug was also keen on this idea which I also am very interested to have an experiment with. Unintentionally the images on my moodboard are quite feminine or involve women which relates very well with this idea. We decided that the Devil should appear as a normal person in his various guises as the play goes along but is then revealled as a Devil at the end with possibly a mask and/or an extended costume or worn puppet to create a real stage presence. Initial ideas I had had for the Narrator were that he looked as if he had originated from the landscape. His costume may be of the perios in cut but fabric textures, manipulation, adornment and colours would relate to the set design. The reason for this is the impression given throughout the story that the Narrator knows the Devil and the outcome of the story as the Devil always wins; he has been around for a long time and understands the nature of the world and humans all too well.

As for the set, I mentioned I have contacted the orchestra but that I had not yet had a fully informative reply about the space needed etc. We thoroughly discussed how we could format the performance if a false proscenium arch was used similar to that of a puppet theatre. I love this idea and feel it relates very well to the fairytale like feeling of the story.

Evaluation: This discussion has really helped to give my work some direction and I feel I can now start to commence on some inital designs. The proscenium arch idea is one I want to have a real play with and will consult the technical drawings and start a white card model to see whether this idea is physically possible when including the orchestra. I intend to have some rough design sketches of the main costumes and white card model photographs for our next meeting which should be sometime next week.