Scenic Design
Faculty: Lake Simons
Music Project: Rite Of Spring by Igor Stravinsky
This project is in three stages.
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First, the student listens to the piece of music with sketch book and drawing implement in hand. As they listen, they allow the music to influence how and what they draw. It could be one sketch or multiple sketches.
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Second, they think about what performance medium they envision- theatre, dance, puppetry, installation, or multi-media. They also think about where the piece would be shared and are encouraged to think outside of the lines of a typical theater building. And they share ideas of images and potential storyline.
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Third, they create a collage from found scraps- newspapers, magazines, printed images, postcards, fabric, and 3D materials.
Chanel Blanchett
When doing my sketches for Rite of Spring , I tried to reflect the ever-shifting dynamics of the music by alternating between quick brushstrokes and stream-of-consciousness influenced longer lines. From these sketches, my concept for a staged version of Rite of Spring is a movement piece that has both children and adults as performers; the music to me seemed to tell a story of dark adventure. When I made my collage, these two elements of the concept were what I focused on. I used darker colors and textures to represent the adult influence of the piece and the colorful splashes to show a child’s imagination and whimsy. View Process PDF
Rebecca Leider
When listening to this piece, I focused on the title, which directed me towards a theme of nature. I started drawing very specific images and gradually added some more abstract shapes and lines. Because parts of the music were so intense, I went into a calm and content space when expressing my thoughts on paper, making my work almost opposite of the piece, while still adding elements that better reflected the music. Being inspired by elements of nature, I drew images of flowers, moon phases, earth’s elements, etc. While adding more abstract images, I started to draw rectangles and lines, and created an image that reminded me of stained glass, which I feel can also resemble shattering glass as the energy within the music gets more intense. In my collage, I continued to express earth and nature elements by layering land and water, along with images that were reflected in my original sketch. My idea was for this to be a dance piece in a field outdoors or very open space, where I can add a lot of calming nature elements but still keep extremities that are within the piece. View Process PDF
Karen Loewy Movilla
The sketches started trying to imitate the sounds with lines and dots, then I had the mental image of flowers and different plants as instruments. The intensity of Rite of Spring has the ability to conjure images of battle and adventure, so I started creating this storyline of a flower princess whose kingdom was overtaken by this nature monster, like a dragon covered in lush trees, with a heroine who has to go through an adventure to save this princess. And the heroine has a pet crow. I imagined it as an adult movement piece, with people dress as various plants. The set would be proscenium style and with shadow puppets in the back to change the set style, inspired by botanical drawings and the start of the show would have snow falling. My collage was more focused on colors and texture and moving from a colorful spring world to a darker, but still rich world. View Process PDF