Have you seen the recently staged "Ordinary World" friends? Have you been blown away by the visuals on stage?
Stage plays, because of the limitations of the venue, it seems difficult to have a lot of creative space in terms of visual design like movies, but it is precisely because of the "shackles" that it stimulates the brains of designers, and the history of stage design for hundreds of years is also quite wonderful.
A minimalist history of stage design
Compared with the ancient Greeks, ancient Rome, the dark Middle Ages, and the Elizabethan audience, today we are quite happy, because, at that time, the stage, generally a bare wall, when the dark medieval moral drama was prevalent, a lot of "stage design" was written into the actor's lines, the shape was not enough, the lines came together, so when I saw an actor said: I have now come to the beautiful Streets of Florence, the left is a fish seller, the right is a shoe seller... Please don't be too embarrassed, by the Elizabethan period, this became a theatrical tradition.
Finally, hundreds of years later, the beautiful Renaissance period has arrived, which is a good era for all kinds of literature and art to fly themselves, and stage design is no exception, especially the perspective method was discovered by painters in this period, bringing about a revolution in stage design, and people finally understood how to create an infinitely extended space illusion on a two-dimensional plane.
The concept of the "fourth wall" that we are familiar with was formally formed in the nineteenth century, this stage is like a room, the background, there is a real wall on the left and right, and the side facing the audience actually has "one wall", but it is invisible, and this evolution is equivalent to bringing the space on the stage closer to "realism".
To put it simply, the main theme of nineteenth century stage design is "realism", the historical drama set should be as accurate as possible, the stage is like the space of the house, the real door should be used, the furniture close to life, and so on.
The progress of visual arts is always linked to technological progress, such as the leap of film special effects, brought about by the information technology revolution, and the technological revolution of the nineteenth century inevitably affected stage art, which made it possible to lift the stage, move the panoramic stage background, and more abundant lighting.
The most important visual innovation of the theatrical stage was basically completed in the nineteenth century, paving the stage for the designers of the twentieth century, and then they could splurge on their creativity. Let's follow ten concrete examples and look at the evolution of colorful stage design since the twentieth century.
Ten brain-opening design innovations
Hamlet
Hamlet（1912）
As a pioneer of modern theater design, Edward Gordon Craig is more inclined to use lighting and the harmonious beauty of various elements on the stage to stimulate the power of the audience's imagination, on the contrary, he pursues minimalism in the set props on the stage, and this quiet, hidden concept has become his unique "hermit vision" style.
This style had a deep influence on the British director Peter Brooke. In 1912, Stanislavsky, who had written The Self-Cultivation of the Actor, wanted to rearrange Hamlet, and he approached Director Brooke, who designed Claudius and Gertrude to wear mop cloaks that would cover the entire stage. Those who are inflamed and attached have to walk on this costume, their gilded capes will reflect a little light on the gilded walls, and the sliding set changes the scene. In this way, Brooke creates an exciting, but suggestive, atmosphere of uneasiness.
Photograph by Corbis
A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night’s Dream （1970）
Another Shakespeare work by Peter Brooke (this time as a producer) is also a landmark in the history of stage design. Praised by another famous colleague, Sir Jonathan Miller, for opening up a new world of stage visuals for us. It gives us a glimpse of the freedom of visual effects on the theatrical stage.
Designer Sally Jacobs designed a circus made of ordinary white boxes illuminated by intense white light. Fairies fly through the air on swings and walk on stilts. Parker's aphrodisiac is a turntable placed on a thin pole. Hugo uses silk threads to weave a net to lure his lover into the forest, where the scene is like a wonderful world in your brain.
Photo by Reg Wilson/RCS
House of Sin
An Inspector Calls（1992）
This is a typical case of stage design giving the whole play a new meaning. When Steven Dalry brought Sin House back to the stage in 1992, he borrowed a lot of expressionist and film noir visual styles. The original was created near the end of World War II, but set in 1912, this adaptation is visually close to the appearance of World War II. The house of this dark tide of the family, placed on the footpost, is full of precarious feelings. The streets where the children play are full of craters... Such a stage effect also gives the whole play a strong political metaphor.
Photography: PR
The Tempest
The Tempest（2000）
Paul Brown brought real-world sensory sensations to the stage. He planted real grass and sunflowers on stage. In 2000, he went even further, building a lake on stage and dotting it "by the lake" with rubble.
It seems that I can't swim in the future, and I don't dare to be an actor casually.
Photo by Tristram Kenton
The Story of George Seurant
Sunday in the Park with George（2005）
This is the first time that the physical set of the stage and the projector projection background are seamlessly connected. Just like the green screen in the movie, except that on this stage, the position of the green screen is replaced by a white curtain, and at the same time, combined with the hand-painted landscape, many mini screens project various images of the puppies of Joy.
This kind of treatment makes the performance effect of the whole stage appear particularly flexible.
"Peter with Messy Hair"
Shockheaded Peter（1998）
One of the most imaginative performances of the last 20 years has been given amazing glory for its creators for blending the roles of director and designer. In 1998, Julian Croce and Felim McDermmont brought the cautionary story of Hendrig Hoffman into a scene full of dolls featuring curtains painted with colored flannel, cut-out cardboard furniture and doors that required adults to bend over. Exaggerated puppets tower over the actors; A bulging, messy Peter's head stared at the stage arch; The girl who played with matches and was burned to death, her skirt, covered with a layer of "flames".
Such a bizarre stage world, directly displayed in front of you, is probably even more terrifying than a horror movie on the big screen.
Faust
Faust (2006)
This was the moment the Immersive Theatre opened in 2006. In a 1,500-square-foot warehouse in Wapping, a place name for London, Punchdrunk creates an alternative world where viewers wander freely. Inspired by Goethe's Faust and edward Hopper's interior decorations, the play is set in an elaborate series of installations that envelop the American town of the 50s in witchcraft: the fragrant forest of the Christmas tree; A motel has unsatisfactory mattress sheets on the bed and fire alarm instructions under cracked glass; A laboratory is piled high with dark red blood vessels and strange rhizomes; A small restaurant, a cinema, a general store, a story full of pitfalls, is waiting for your immersive experience.
The White Guard
The White Guard （2010）
Bonnie Christie's design is bold. She specialises in stunning breakout sets, layering the Lyttelton stage into Glasgow property units and sculpting the West Yorkshire Theatre in half to reinforce the sense of division. Last year, while working on Howard Davis's play The White Guard, she interpreted the october 1917 revolutionary current through a device that sustained movement. When a drunken figure fell from the piano to the pillar, the audience also experienced his drunkenness, because the whole stage actually became blurred.
"Red"
Red （2009）
John Logan adapted this play by Mark Rothko in 2009, and Christopher Oran accurately captured the painter's state of mind when designing it. Behind the Domar stage hangs an oil painting: under the light of Neil Austin, large blocks of red and black glow and fade. When the paintings are taken away, a white rectangular frame is revealed, which surrounds the stage on three sides, as if dripping scarlet blood: it looks like a bloody arch. Through the complicated plot of the script, the core of it is directly presented on the stage with a visual effect, which is also the trend preferred by many modern drama stage designs.
Photo by Johan Persson/PR
"Unguarded Strike"
Sucker Punch（2010）
While working on Roy Williams' 2010 boxing play, Miriam Buether turned the theater into a real boxing ring. Huge propaganda banners hung from the ceiling; Sponsor's ads cover the walls; The light of the fluorescent lights burns on the bodies of the boxing fighters, the stage is surrounded by mirrors, and every attack and defense of the actors and boxers on the stage is reflected by these mirrors at various angles, both like the lens editing in the movie, montage, and like some kind of digital special effects, the scene is bloody and gorgeous.