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Inside/Outside: Scenic Design and the Actor-Audience Relationship

Abstract

Designers communicate time, place and mood with our work in any medium, but the unique element of scenic design for theatre is the relationship between live spectators and live bodies onstage. In Hookman, I placed the audience on one side of the theatre to reinforce a filmic relationship with the action; scenery served to hide and reveal actors to build suspense. In both Elizabeth I and Tonight We Improvise I interspersed the audience and the actors in a non-traditional way, allowing for interaction with a meta-theatrical style. In A Willow Grows Aslant, the audience was literally inside of the play, moving through the set, participating in the action. For A Doll House, on the other hand, I put the audience outside of the home of the characters, peering in at them in a voyeuristic fashion through a barrier of snow and ice.

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