Macbeth--Scene Design

Lady Macbeth, hands dripping with Duncan's blood

Macbeth, by William Shakespeare was produced Winter Semester, 2010 in the Snow Black Box Theatre at Brigham Young University-Idaho.

Synopsis
The story of Macbeth is well known.  Macbeth and Banquo, heroes of the Scottish king Duncan happen upon the three weird sisters, witches who tell them that he, Macbeth will become Thane of Cawdor and thereafter king of Scotland.  They tell Banquo he will sire a line of kings but will not attain kingship himself.

Shortly after, a messenger arrives and hails Macbeth as Thane of Cawdor because the previous thane had taken up arms against the king and was sentenced to death.  Macbeth instantly begins to believe the witches and tells his wife about their prophecies.  Lady Macbeth has no reservations about her own ambitions and commands Macbeth to slay Duncan while he is a guest in their castle.

Thus begins Macbeth's descent into murder and madness.  He finds he has to commit many murders to cover up the first.  He is haunted by the ghost of his friend, Banquo whom he also had put to death.  Lady Macbeth does not escape the fate of madness either as she sleepwalks and attempts to rid herself of the blood on her hands.  Lady Macbeth committs suicide rather than live with the guilt.

Macbeth lives with the confidence of the witches prophecy that he will rule until Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane and that no man born of woman can slay him.  When he realizes that the English army, led by Macduff is advancing on Dunsinane, concealing themselves with hewn boughs from the trees of Birnam Wood he panics.  He still does not believe he can be killed until his final battle with Macduff where it is revealed that Macduff was from his "mother's womb untimely ripped."

Macbeth is beheaded and Malcolm, Duncan's son is placed upon the throne.

Concept
Roger Merrill, the director wanted our production of Macbeth to be both simple and complex.  He wanted the overall design to be austere with little scenery and just a few furniture pieces and changes in light to indicate change of scene.  He also wanted to have trap doors and elevators concealed within the stage to provide entrances and exits for the witches.  He had an idea that the witches would come up on the battlefield through the stage and drag the fallen soldiers through the trapdoors to hell.

We also decided we could tell the story better with a thrust stage.

I suggested that we paint a map of Scotland, on parchment, on the floor with the important placenames indicated.  That way the stage could be wherever we wished it to be.  Somewhere in the discussion the idea of having strips of fabric hanging at the back of the stage as a projection surface was mentioned.  I don't remember who suggested it, either Roger or Richard Clifford, the lighting designer.

There were between twenty and thirty images we wished to project on the fabric strips.  We originally wanted to project charcoal drawn images of each of the castles indicated in the script as well as animations of the spectres and ghosts Macbeth was seeing.  We ran a few animation tests to see if this was a feasable idea and unfortunately it proved too costly and would have required five projectors as well as the purchase of a computer program to integrate and intercut them.  We also did not have the time available to make this a reality even if we'd had the money.  Sadly, we ultimately had to abandon that aspect of the concept.  Richard did make use of the fabric strips as a cyclorama though.

Execution
I made a couple of quick sketches in conté of my impressions of the set from my discussions with the director.  The first sketch was just of the set.  In the second set, I added a witch and a cauldron and tried to be a little more expressive.

First sketch of Macbeth

Second Sketch of Macbeth

The height of the stage became the primary consideration because of the traps and elevators.  I wanted the stage to be as low as possible and still accomodate actors and stage machinery.  Ray Versluys, the technical director said he needed at least four feet from the floor of the Black Box to the top of the deck for the elevators.  The compromise we had to make because of this was to eliminate the row of chairs on the stage floor because of sightline issues. 

Roger wanted the battles to erupt on stage so I added three sets of stairs at the rear of the stage and one set of stairs on the front.  This allowed a great number of people to enter the stage in a very short time.

Ray modified a design for a fast/slow trap which required stage weights, an arbor and a technician underneath the platform to operate it.  The biggest challenge was to reweight the arbors each time the traps were used.  The more weight, the slower the trap.  The witches would walk over their trap and literally disappear into the floor.  At other times they would pop up out of the floor.  That was the fast part of the elevator.  Sometimes they would shrink into the floor.  That was the slow part of the apparatus.  In addition, the elevators needed to be locked when not in use so actors on stage wouldn't inadvertantly fall through the floor.

The witches emerge from the traps

The next major element was the backdrop which I divided into five strips of fabric.  I offset them so three were in the rear and two were in front.  I staggered them in that way to make them easier for actors to enter and exit the stage.  I designed the fabric strips to be abstracted military banners, but with no color or identifying markings.  I also shredded the bottoms of each of them to give more texture to the set.

We painted the banners with washes of raw sienna paint to give them the aged feeling.  Richard lit the banners in different colors depending on the feel of the scene and then added texture with gobos.

Malcolm and army at Dunsinane Wood, texture on the banners

Lady Macbeth and Nurse, different texture on banners

Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, change of color on banners

I researched medieval maps of Scotland for this production of Macbeth and used them for inspiration for designing the floor treatment.  First the scenic artists base coated the floor with an earthy yellow, then spattered and sponged in lighter and darker tones of the yellow to create a parchment effect.  They then created a scale grid on the drawing and laid out a full size grid on the stage and transferred points from one to another and created the outline of the country.  Then they painted the outline with straight burnt umber paint and feathered the insides in so the outside edge would be sharp but the interior of the map would be blended.  Each of the important place names were lettered in with a Celtic script, and lastly, the compass was added along with medieval ship icons and at least one renaissance style sea serpent.

Duncan and vassals on the map of Scotland.  Full stage view

Banquo and Macbeth, map on stage floor

For many of the scenes, we opted to use only lighting to indicate change of location and time.  For others we brought in furniture or props.  We chose which scenes needed more rendering and which ones did not based primarily on length of scene.  The longer scenes required more packaging and by default, the shorter scenes needed no scenery to convey the images and ideas we were striving for.  For some of the scenes, Richard used window gobos to indicate location.  With this convention, in my opinion, the audience was never lost when location was changed.  The biggest benefit to the Spartan use of scenery was that we didn't have to stop the show to render a scene.

Lady Macbeth, "Out damned spot":  Window gobos

Macbeth's meltdown after seeing the ghost of Banquo:  Use of furniture to change location

When we were going to use projections, the idea was to project images of the eight kings from Banquo on the fabric banners and not use a cauldron.  When we discovered that it would be way too cost prohibitive and time consuming to do the animations, Roger decided we should build a cauldron that would fit over one of the traps and would be large enough for the eight kings, Banquo, Macduff and the little boy to come out of.  We pumped fog up through the opening to give it an eerie look.

Banquo exiting the cauldron

I am glad to be in a theatre department that has a committment to producing the classics.  This was a very good production of Macbeth and it was a joy to work on.  I truly have the best job in the world.

Production Details
Directed by Roger Merrill
Fight Choreography by Amelia Bahr
Scene Design by Gary Benson
Costume Design by Susan Whitfield
Lighting Design by Richard Clifford
Sound Design by Antonia Clifford
Technical Director:  Ray Versluys
Costume Shop Director: Patty Randall

Phèdre--Costume and Lighting Design

Phèdre cast

Phèdre, by Jean Racine was produced Winter Semester, 2012 in the Snow Black Box Theatre at BYU-Idaho.  Euripedes first treated this material in his play, Hippolytus which was performed in 428 bc.  In 1677 ad, Racine wrote a neo-classical format version of the story and called it Phèdre.  His version introduced a love triangle.  In 2009 a Ted Hughes, free verse translation was produced at the Royal National Theatre in England.  This was the script we used.

Synopsis
Theseus, the king of Athens is missing and presumed dead.  His son, Hippolytus has been living in Troezen as a "jailer" to the Princess Aricia who is the last remaining heir of the royal house Theseus defeated to come to power.  Theseus will not allow her to marry because he believes she will bear a child with a claim on the throne, but he also does not wish to kill her.

Hippolytus confides to his manservant and best friend, Theramenes that he is in love with Aricia and wants to leave because it is in direct conflict with his father's order.  With his father's apparent death, though Hippolytus becomes king of Troezen and resolves to free Aricia of the barbaric law his father set.

Phèdre, enters with her bodyservant, Oenone.  She is very ill and reveals she has been slowly poisoning herself because of some sin she has committed.  Through the scene we learn the sin she is guilty of is being in love with her stepson, Hippolytus.  Oenone convinces her that now Theseus is dead, her love of his son is no longer wrong and she should confess to him.

Hippolytus confesses his love to Aricia when he frees her and tells her he will not seek to press his claim to the throne of Athens but instead would support her claim over Phèdre's son's.  Aricia has been secretly in love with Hippolytus for some time and tells her friend and confidant Ismene.  All seems to be well.

As he tries to take leave of Phèdre, she confesses her love for him and he leaves, horrified.  In the process he leaves his sword behing.  At that moment, Panope, the messenger enters and says that the dead king is not dead and has returned and will be at the palace in a short time.  Phèdre, not wishing to face her shame gives Oenone permission to tell the king whatever she will.

Theseus helm

Theseus returns to a family in disarray.  No one seems at all glad to see him.  He is perplexed and wishes he were back in the dungeon from which he escaped.  Oenone lies and tells him Hippolytus made advances on Phèdre and had attempted to dishonor him.  Her evidence is the sword that Hippolytus left behind when he fled.  Theseus is enraged.

He confronts Hippolytus, who denies any wrongdoing except that he is in love with Aricia against his father's wishes.  Theseus thinks that is a ploy to divert his guilt and calls down a curse against him from Neptune, who incidentally owes him a favor.  Hippolytus leaves.

Phèdre, upon hearing of the curse, confronts Oenone and learns what she has done and casts her out.  Oenone does what any self respecting servant would do in this situation and casts herself off a cliff into the sea.

Hippolytus and Aricia arrange to meet at a shrine later and marry in secret.  They say their goodbyes, and he leaves, resolved to honor his father with his deeds.  Theseus enters and Aricia tells him that she and Hippolytus really do love one another and he was wrong.  Theseus doesn't believe her right away but she has sown the seed of doubt.  He decides to get to the bottom of things and calls for Oenone.  Panope shows up instead and tells him of Oenone's death.

Meanwhile, Theramenes shows up and tells the king in a three page monologue how Neptune struck down his son at his request.  Theramenes is slightly disrespectful to the king and the king takes it, does nothing.  Theramenes tells him his son's last request was for him to restore all things to Aricia.

Finally Phèdre shows up, sick from poison administered by her own hand, confesses everything and dies.  Theseus mourns very loudly and decrees, in accordance with his son's dying wish that all things are restored to Aricia and he adopts her.

Concept
When the director, Hyrum Conrad and I discussed the concept of this play, he said he would really like to do the play in a straightforward way, in Greek dress.  He wanted the world of the play to be more colorful than stereotypical Greek dress.  He was very interested in deep jewel tones.  I suggested we should look to the French neo-classical painters and their conception of Greek dress, since this was a French neo-classic play.

We had just done Oedipus the summer before and Hyrum suggested that he'd like to use costumes from that production to clothe the lesser characters which meant we would build all of Phèdre's costumes, all of Theseus', all of Hippolytus and all of Aricia's costumes.  The rest I would use stock and accessorize differently than they had been used before.

Research
The basic garment worn by the Greeks was called a Chiton which is essentially a rectangular piece of linen wrapped around the body once and fastened with Fibulae (ancient Greek version of a safety pin) over the shoulders and sometimes down the side.  Often the chiton was held in place by a cord or a belt tied at the waist or under the bust.

The chiton was covered in public with a garment called a Himation which was a long rectangular piece of linen that was wrapped in a multitude of ways around the body.  The status of a person was often shown by the size and wrapping of the himation, the greater the status, the more elaborate the garment.

Greeks used to wear a garment called a Chlamys for travel.  A chlamys is a smaller rectangle or square of fabric draped either over or under one arm and fastened over the other shoulder with a fibulae.  A chlamys is kind of like a cape in modern parlance.

When I first began working on this design I remembered several images of the Emperor Napoleon by Andrea Appiani, dressed in Greek or Roman garb and I used these as my starting place.  From there I began researching French Neoclassicist painters, especially the images of what they imagined Greek life to be.  Jacques-Louis David painted many Greek scenes and I found his work very helpful in creating my aesthetic for this show.  I did not limit my research to his work, however.

Among the images I was inspired by were:

• Anger of Achilles by Jacques-Louis David, 1825
• Gold painting on red and blue chlamys'
• The Farewell of Telemachus and Eucharis by Jacques-Louis David, 1818
• Headband with fringe
• Gold painting or embroidery on edge of chlamys
• Fibulae down side of her chiton
• jewels stitched to her chiton
• Hairstyles
• Mars Being Disarmed by Venus and the Three Graces by Jacques-Louis David, 1824.
• Tassel on headband
• Gold trim on himation
• Sandals with top panel
• Paris and Helen by Jacques-Louis David, 1788
• Headband
• Tassels on himation
• Trim on edges of fabric
• Hairstyles
• Oedipus at Colonus by Jean-Antoine Theodore Giroust, 1788
• Himation draped over woman's head
• Gold trim on edge of Chiton
• Sandals
• Chlamys
• Headbands
• Allegorie Relative by Jean-Jacques Lagrenée, 1783
• Headbands
• Hairstyles
• Small Chlamys
• Romulus' Victory over Acron by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1812
• Gold laurel wreath crown
• Red himation with gold trim
• Large chiton
• Armor

Execution
For some reason, I chose to work on Theseus first.  He seemed to be the character that I had the first strong impressions about.  He seemed strong but misguided.  A man prone to make snap decisions which usually works for him but in this case he errs.  I viewed him as larger than life and yet sympathetic.  This is a man who pals around with the gods.  I saw him as a man trying to emulate Heracles and Zeus.  His first entrance has Theseus returning from a 6 month adventure in which everyone thought he had perished.  I wanted to give him an almost feral look so I did a rough sketch of him with a large cat skin as a himation and showed it to Hyrum.  I didn't think he'd go for it but he did.

Quick sketch of Theseus first look

Ultimately we added leather armor, a prop helm and a laurel wreath crown for Theseus and he ended up looking like this.

Theseus first look

For his second scene Hyrum and I decided he would have shed his travelling clothes and gotten dressed in more courtly robes.  This scene is an impassioned one and I chose to make a big statement with a large red himation.  This was his Zeus look and I used the Ingres image as my primary inspiration for his costume.

Quck sketch of Theseus second look

The finished costume looked like this:

Theseus "Zeus" look

We added one more change for Theseus which was just an exchange of the red himation for a neutral one.  That was for Act V when he is in his garden away from courtly things.  I chose a neutral color because I thought it seemed more grounded, less bombastic than red.

Theseus last look

I drew a sketch of Theseus and ended up merging it with another one of Hippolytus to get Hippolytus' Act V costume.

Theseus sketch, adapted and merged with another drawing for Hippolytus

Hippolytus for Act V

The end product looked like this:

Hippolytus and Aricia, Act V

Other costumes in the show:

Hippolytus and Theramenes, Act I

Phèdre and Oenone, Act I

Aricia and Ismene, Act II

Oenone, Phèdre and Hippolytus, Act II

Oenone and Phèdre, Act III.  Phèdre's courtly himation

Panope and Theseus, Act V

Lighting Design
The lighting design for this play was fairly straightforward.  I divided the stage into five areas and four fill areas.  Each area was lit from eight directions with ETC source 4's.  For color shifts I used a combination of Seachangers and color scrollers.  I also used foliage gobos for the exterior scenes and window gobos for the interiors.  Nothing really innovative in the regular light hang.

I took a chance on the downlight, however with very satisfactory results.  We hung three ETC PARNel's above each area, each focused to the exact same spot, one gelled red, one green and one blue.  This allowed me to color mix on the stage rather than using color scrollers.  Scrollers are noisy and if your colors aren't adjacent on the scroll you have to run through colors to get to the one you really want.  That makes them unwieldy when trying to change color rapidly within a scene. 

From the three colors I was able to create white light, amber, cyan, magenta and various shades inbetween just like lighting color theory suggests.  It was a neat effect and I intend to incorporate it into future designs when appropriate.  The effect is visible to a degree in some of the photos above.

I enjoyed the design process and its results in this production.  We paid special attention to character development through costume, which I felt was successful.  I also enjoyed the grand experiment with down lighting. I will use it again.

Production Details
Directed by Hyrum Conrad
Scene Design by Hyrum Conrad
Costume Design by Gary Benson
Lighting Design by Gary Benson
Technical Director: Ray Versluys
Costume Shop Director: Patty Randall