March 26, 2013
Set Design - Middle School Performance Exploratory

Performance of Small Actors, March 22, 2013

Preparing emotions for the backdrop.

For this year's Middle School Play, Set Design was challenged to create a single backdrop that could embody a range of stage performances and convey a conceptual interpretation of the content in this year's play Small Actors. After reading the entire play as a group, set design brainstormed and discussed the complex feelings of identity, family, love and loss explored in the play. 

 Ideas for the backdrop revolved around quotes and the play excerpt below and led students and I to develop a conceptual backdrop meant to convey/represent that internal "audience" we all carry around inside our minds. 

“There are no small parts, only small actors” -Konstantin Stanislavisky  

"All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players:They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts," - William Shakespeare's As You Like It

Small Actors by Stephen Gregg:

MR. PHELPS. There are no small parts, Emily.

EMILY. It's not even that it's small. It's just so...It's ex-actly the kind of part you'd expect a person like me to play.

MR. PHELPS. I'm sorry?

EMIL Y . You know. You look at  her, (Referring to WENDY.) and you think, "Oh, Juliet." Of course. Of course she's the lead. She's never in her life going to have a part that consists of four one-syllable words.

WENDY. How do you know?

EMILY. I just know. And then you look at me, you look at my life, and you think, ''Oh, crappy little walk-on." And, I mean, if you were me, wouldn't it worry you that that's going to be it, your whole life? Like your whole life is going to be the equivalent of this four-word role?

MR. PHELPS. People play all sorts of roles.

EMILY. I don't think that's true. I think if you play the second servant in Romeo and Juliet, you end up playing it your whole life. (ALL stare at herfor a moment.)

Students contemplated the emotions they felt reading the play, and those they feel daily and created a color coded system that would link the color of each face on the backdrop to the emotion it is meant to represent. The ultimate design consisted of a thought bubble containing a cropped section of stadium seating in a theater, showing a multitude of faces and emotions extending off into the distance.

Students utilized drawing sheets, themselves and each other as inspiration for the eyes, mouth, etc. drawn to convey each emotion; Pink = shy, embarrassed, Yellow - Happy, funny Orange = strange, weird Green = Envy, Sickness, Purple = suspicious, guilty, Blue = Sad, Sleepy. 

Great Job Glee, Band, and Drama on your performances and thanks for giving our back-drop context.