Set Review

These are a few of the problems encountered after the set was set up in the theatre space. Firstly, where the wallpaper paste was drying beneath the thicker paper (which had still not fully dried after being in studio3) had shrunk so there was a gap and the paper was peeling of the collaged section. Will, on visiting the site, said the peeling idea was quite nice which it was. However, as none of the other pieces were peeling it looked very out of place so it is for this reason that I stuck it back up with tape. Sadly the join could still be seen but it was partly covered by the sign post which made it less obvious.
Another problem was with the height of the fascia's for the Pros stage  as they were slightly to tall to go beneath the mdf cladding for the top they were proud of it and being white underneath it meant that the paint kept very obviously chipping off. I made sure this was touched up before each performance which wasn't too big a job and it dried quickly under the lights.
The curtains posed a few problems as for a while they would not fully close even after trimming which looked awful. After further trimming and adding weights to the corners and removing the curtains and repositioning them so there was a greater overlap in the middle this problem was overcome.

The visibility of the band rostra was something I was concerned about however, they were all in view and well spaced and the touched up/aged chairs looked really good - toning in with the set perfectly. The lighting brought out the textures and caught the light of their instruments again linking it in with the rest of the set and definitely giving a WWI feel.

The blocks worked well and were operated by John, this really added to the story as it was as if he was creating the necessary scene for the next part of the tale to tell. In the end I am glad the boxes weren'y painted as I think it would have made them more restricted than maleable and if positioned wrong could have been confusing. They worked really well as they were and blended in with the pallets. John sitting on the blocks in different areas of the set for different view points yet wasn't in the way of the action. They also were great for creating different levels along with the stage and pallets. I loved how Doug used the Pallets as the road as I intended and made full use of its format - connecting the blocks into it's negative spaces.

The curtain system , once perfected, worked well although there were minor changes at first and again I feel it really added to the story telling feel and maintained Stravinsky's original idea of how the play should operate. It allowed for effective and smooth scene alterations.

I am extremely pleased with how my set looks and more importantly works, it is not far removed from my set box design so I feel my original design must have been good for this to be so.