Showing posts with label Mary Baldwin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mary Baldwin. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Poster
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Thesis Festival
This past week we the MLitt/MFA program held our thesis festival, a marathon of scholarship where every MLitt student and every MFA dramaturgy emphasis presents his or her thesis in a combination of scholarship and stagecraft. Though I will be posting some more about many of the ideas in this thesis, I thought I would share Cass Morris' excellent summaries of all of the presentations so that you can read about my most presentation as well as the other exciting work going on in this program.
http://americanshakespearecentereducation.blogspot.com/2012/02/2012-mlittmfa-thesis-festival-session-2.html
Picture by Ralph Alan Cohen, for more pictures of the festival go to the program Flickr account:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mbc_sap/
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Some Academics
When beginning this blog I mentioned that my work for this blog is related to my work as a MFA candidate at Mary Baldwin College. So far this blog has been mostly curiosities, items to think about or look at. This past week The American Shakespeare Center hosted the Blackfriars Conference in Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature, (for more information about this conference see the ASC's description or for more information about the specific contents of the different paper sessions you can read all about them as they were liveblogged by the education department). With so many kindled ideas in one space, the sparks fly and everyone catches the academic fire. In response to the work of many of the scholars at this conference I put together a plan for the directed inquiry Linden and I will work on this spring, and thought I would share it here. The work planned out will clearly morph with the needs of the semester, but here is a plan of what you might expect to see on this blog over the upcoming months.
Objective for this Directed Inquiry:
To research and construct all elements of design for our production of All’s Well that Ends Well, paying particular attention to the construction of the set, costumes and props as signifiers creating meaning along with the words and bodies of the actors.
Things we need to accomplish in this DI:
Design and make the set
--Research the images/sketch out what we want to make
--Research how to make it
----Research the construction of popups
----Research the construction of large pop-ups
Design and make the costumes
--Find out what we have to work with
--Decide what else we need to do
----Alter the clothing/sew costumes
----Design and construct all paper pieces of the costumes
Design and make the props
--Figure out what they are
--Design and make all the props
Design the poster
Design the programs
Other things:
Reading the play-searching for images/props
Word searches: paper, letter, book
Researching Folklore
Researching folklore and Shakespeare
Researching fairytale imagery
Possible schedule:
Week one:
Re-read the play for images and props. Do word searches in the play. Go to the public library read fairytales, look at pop-up books-- draw pictures of ideas and things we like best. Write blog post.
Week two:
Research folklore and Shakespeare. Write blog post.
Week three:
Research pop-up construction. Design and construct a possibility of set design. Write blog post.
Week four:
Make sure we have all the cast’s measurements. Brainstorm about costumes, determine what have already with wits and with old laundry, etc. Sketch some ideas. Write blog post.
Week five:
Hit up all the thrift stores, procure patterns for any costumes we plan on building from scratch and go to Valley fabrics to get some materials. Write blog post.
Week six:
Make a plan for how the costumes are going to be constructed, who is helping, which tasks to tackle first, etc. Fill in the next three weeks with very specific details of task delegation. Write blog post.
Week seven:
Work costumes. Write blog post.
Week eight:
Work costumes. Write blog post.
Week nine:
Work costumes. Write blog post.
Week ten:
Research all the props and determine what they are and will need to be. Make a plan for all the props, and get started on them. Write blog post.
Week eleven:
Complete the rest of the props. Write blog post.
Week twelve:
Design the poster and program. Research the construction of extra large pop-ups. Write blog post.
Week thirteen:
Construct the pop-up set. Write blog post.
Week fourteen:
Construct the pop-up set. Write blog post.
Objective for this Directed Inquiry:
To research and construct all elements of design for our production of All’s Well that Ends Well, paying particular attention to the construction of the set, costumes and props as signifiers creating meaning along with the words and bodies of the actors.
Things we need to accomplish in this DI:
Design and make the set
--Research the images/sketch out what we want to make
--Research how to make it
----Research the construction of popups
----Research the construction of large pop-ups
Design and make the costumes
--Find out what we have to work with
--Decide what else we need to do
----Alter the clothing/sew costumes
----Design and construct all paper pieces of the costumes
Design and make the props
--Figure out what they are
--Design and make all the props
Design the poster
Design the programs
Other things:
Reading the play-searching for images/props
Word searches: paper, letter, book
Researching Folklore
Researching folklore and Shakespeare
Researching fairytale imagery
Possible schedule:
Week one:
Re-read the play for images and props. Do word searches in the play. Go to the public library read fairytales, look at pop-up books-- draw pictures of ideas and things we like best. Write blog post.
Week two:
Research folklore and Shakespeare. Write blog post.
Week three:
Research pop-up construction. Design and construct a possibility of set design. Write blog post.
Week four:
Make sure we have all the cast’s measurements. Brainstorm about costumes, determine what have already with wits and with old laundry, etc. Sketch some ideas. Write blog post.
Week five:
Hit up all the thrift stores, procure patterns for any costumes we plan on building from scratch and go to Valley fabrics to get some materials. Write blog post.
Week six:
Make a plan for how the costumes are going to be constructed, who is helping, which tasks to tackle first, etc. Fill in the next three weeks with very specific details of task delegation. Write blog post.
Week seven:
Work costumes. Write blog post.
Week eight:
Work costumes. Write blog post.
Week nine:
Work costumes. Write blog post.
Week ten:
Research all the props and determine what they are and will need to be. Make a plan for all the props, and get started on them. Write blog post.
Week eleven:
Complete the rest of the props. Write blog post.
Week twelve:
Design the poster and program. Research the construction of extra large pop-ups. Write blog post.
Week thirteen:
Construct the pop-up set. Write blog post.
Week fourteen:
Construct the pop-up set. Write blog post.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Playing Paper
This is an essay I wrote for a class in Textual Culture here at Mary Baldwin which explains a great deal about the ideas and intentions behind this project.
My understanding of fairytales comes from storybooks. Hardcover, full-color beautifully designed books that send their messages through pages with decorated capitals and a font chosen to suggest manuscript. Books that evoke a tradition, a past, a notion that even if Paul O. Zelinsky’s Rapunzel was published in 2002, tells its story as though it belongs in a time beyond regular dates, far away and long ago. That message of the fairytale is one which seems to belong in paper, but also in performance, where the symbols which soak each page of a fairytale are easily recognizable onstage. We know the young girl, starry eyed and full of wonder, chasing after her dreams. We know the young prince seeking to find his place in the world, and we see the forces around them, be they magical or political or comical bringing them together or tearing them apart. They are characters which resist electronic transfer. What would the text of Harry Potter be without the the font designed for J. K. Rowling, morphed out of design or layout into the convenience of an ebook? It would still be the same words, but the aura of fantasy would be altered, and not merely altered but reduced.
When performing a play cast with fairytale characters, it seems most natural to return to books and to paper as the operating medium for the symbols those characters so richly possess. For All's Well that Ends Well, the cinderella story with the prince-not-so-charming, Linden Kueck is working ideas of fairytale to comment on ways in which stories are passed down from generation to generation, and how human beings, but particularly women color their actions to conform to the cultural stories they believe they should be a part of. To facilitate this goal, I will be working as her designer to build a set, props, and even some costume pieces out of paper. All the paper will be white, and at least in this point in the process we are imagining the paper clean and unwritten on, the blankness of a common metaphor for women, as the object on which men inscribe. The white paper also serves as a symbol which will work to emphasize the texture of the paper, and with no color to distract, except for any symbols of power (the crown, the ring) set off in a startling red.
You might wonder, if the set is to be a book made of blank paper, where is the artistry of design so looked for in a fairytale? Since first coming in contact with electronic books, I have been exploring the ways in which the tactile properties of paper affects the understanding of a story. This often true in picture books where much of the drama of the story lies in the turn of the page as a codex, something which would be lost if viewed on a screen unless the program simulated the turn of the page in some sort of graphic medium. I have already mentioned books published in a specific font which would loose some of their charm if morphed into the regular typeface of an ebook. But of all kinds of books, the type most resistant to digital translation is the pop-up book. I find it vastly amusing to see the “Tell the Publisher! I’d like to read this book on Kindle” link on Amazon for Robert Sabuda’s Movable Mother Goose, because pop-up books or movable books in general glory in the paperness of paper, and explore all of its creative potential. White Noise, a popup book by David A. Carter explores the different sounds that paper makes through a series of abstract pop-up spreads united through a poem. Others use cut shapes to show the figures they portray without any printing onto the shapes. Still others revisit often told tales and make them live by giving them a third dimension. Pop-up books seem especially pertinent at the particular point in history, as we, like the Early Modern culture are in a time of textual transition. Culture in England was moving from manuscript to print, and culture today is moving from print to digital, our times are mirrored in a way, and that mirroring deserves some comment, comment made by books which revel in their paperness.
But what can all this fascination with paper and stories lend to a rehearsal room? Would it merely give us a heightened awareness of the lines pertaining to paper and print? To the paper props? The letters? (Are they blank? If not, what’s written on them?) How does an historical awareness affect a production? Will the pop-up book set feature castles --slightly postmodern in their architecture? What if the posters were cut paper? Pop-up programs? What would that say about the production? Simply that paper is important? That it should be noticed and valued for the story it tells in itself, not only what is imprinted on it?
In this way, the paper itself can be a metaphor revisited. If early modern writers objectified women by using images of books and paper which are meaningless without a male hand composing their significance, playing with paper dismantles that binary. Paper can convey meaning through its own folds, a meaning without words but expressively augmenting the actions and words of the actors on the stage, presenting their stories with a backdrop of tradition and fantasy. Whose tradition and whose fantasy is up to the audience to unfold.
My understanding of fairytales comes from storybooks. Hardcover, full-color beautifully designed books that send their messages through pages with decorated capitals and a font chosen to suggest manuscript. Books that evoke a tradition, a past, a notion that even if Paul O. Zelinsky’s Rapunzel was published in 2002, tells its story as though it belongs in a time beyond regular dates, far away and long ago. That message of the fairytale is one which seems to belong in paper, but also in performance, where the symbols which soak each page of a fairytale are easily recognizable onstage. We know the young girl, starry eyed and full of wonder, chasing after her dreams. We know the young prince seeking to find his place in the world, and we see the forces around them, be they magical or political or comical bringing them together or tearing them apart. They are characters which resist electronic transfer. What would the text of Harry Potter be without the the font designed for J. K. Rowling, morphed out of design or layout into the convenience of an ebook? It would still be the same words, but the aura of fantasy would be altered, and not merely altered but reduced.
When performing a play cast with fairytale characters, it seems most natural to return to books and to paper as the operating medium for the symbols those characters so richly possess. For All's Well that Ends Well, the cinderella story with the prince-not-so-charming, Linden Kueck is working ideas of fairytale to comment on ways in which stories are passed down from generation to generation, and how human beings, but particularly women color their actions to conform to the cultural stories they believe they should be a part of. To facilitate this goal, I will be working as her designer to build a set, props, and even some costume pieces out of paper. All the paper will be white, and at least in this point in the process we are imagining the paper clean and unwritten on, the blankness of a common metaphor for women, as the object on which men inscribe. The white paper also serves as a symbol which will work to emphasize the texture of the paper, and with no color to distract, except for any symbols of power (the crown, the ring) set off in a startling red.
You might wonder, if the set is to be a book made of blank paper, where is the artistry of design so looked for in a fairytale? Since first coming in contact with electronic books, I have been exploring the ways in which the tactile properties of paper affects the understanding of a story. This often true in picture books where much of the drama of the story lies in the turn of the page as a codex, something which would be lost if viewed on a screen unless the program simulated the turn of the page in some sort of graphic medium. I have already mentioned books published in a specific font which would loose some of their charm if morphed into the regular typeface of an ebook. But of all kinds of books, the type most resistant to digital translation is the pop-up book. I find it vastly amusing to see the “Tell the Publisher! I’d like to read this book on Kindle” link on Amazon for Robert Sabuda’s Movable Mother Goose, because pop-up books or movable books in general glory in the paperness of paper, and explore all of its creative potential. White Noise, a popup book by David A. Carter explores the different sounds that paper makes through a series of abstract pop-up spreads united through a poem. Others use cut shapes to show the figures they portray without any printing onto the shapes. Still others revisit often told tales and make them live by giving them a third dimension. Pop-up books seem especially pertinent at the particular point in history, as we, like the Early Modern culture are in a time of textual transition. Culture in England was moving from manuscript to print, and culture today is moving from print to digital, our times are mirrored in a way, and that mirroring deserves some comment, comment made by books which revel in their paperness.
But what can all this fascination with paper and stories lend to a rehearsal room? Would it merely give us a heightened awareness of the lines pertaining to paper and print? To the paper props? The letters? (Are they blank? If not, what’s written on them?) How does an historical awareness affect a production? Will the pop-up book set feature castles --slightly postmodern in their architecture? What if the posters were cut paper? Pop-up programs? What would that say about the production? Simply that paper is important? That it should be noticed and valued for the story it tells in itself, not only what is imprinted on it?
In this way, the paper itself can be a metaphor revisited. If early modern writers objectified women by using images of books and paper which are meaningless without a male hand composing their significance, playing with paper dismantles that binary. Paper can convey meaning through its own folds, a meaning without words but expressively augmenting the actions and words of the actors on the stage, presenting their stories with a backdrop of tradition and fantasy. Whose tradition and whose fantasy is up to the audience to unfold.
Intro post
So who am I and what am I doing this project for?
My name is Clara Giebel and I am designing for a production of William Shakespeare's All's Well that Ends Well as directed by Linden Kueck. This project is in partial fulfillment of our Master of Fine Arts degree in Shakespeare and Performance. Looking particularly at what in this play is like a fairy tale I am working to give this production a distinctly tactile, papery visual aura, one which draws the audience's attention to the characters and also to our place in the history of books and paper industries.
Why All's Well?
All's Well that Ends Well provokes questions with its very title. As a story of a woman in love with a man who cares nothing for her, and ultimately coerces him into joining her an accepting marriage, the audience is often left wondering if all has ended well. The two young people are together at the end, but is that good for either of them? In a "talkback" with the actors after a recent production at the American Shakespeare Center, the actors playing this couple were asked point-blank if they thought it would work out, and the actors didn't have a straight answer. Helena's all in, but is that enough? These aren't questions that have clear answers, which opens up many doors to a variety and richness of interpretation.
Why this blog?
Linden and I will be using this blog to post information we are thinking about, images and media which play into our explorations of this play and the concepts we are playing with. There will be some scholarly writing, lots of pictures, photographs of the set, props and costumes in progress, and a lot of opportunity for discussion.
Image from Jackie Huang.
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