Director

Rehearsal Diary

Set design

Costume design

‘We’ve done brutalist and now we’re doing sensual.’

Christopher Oram Set & Costume Designer for A Midsummer Night's Dream presents his model box and ideas to the Production Team at Sheffield Theatres, on 12 June 2003.

"For those of you that don’t know the play, it starts in a court, goes into the forest and then comes back to the court again. So we need an environment that goes from a court to a forest but not in an irretrievable way so that we can come back to the court."

COURT

"So this is the court set, which is a classic Shakespearian planked floor, with a raised area at the back with 2 steps up and a solid timber proscenium within the frame of the actual proscenium. Within this there is a solid timber wall in two halves, in two separate sections, with a pair of double doors centre which are practical which will open both downstage for this scene but also upstage for the next time we use them later on. It’s all planked and will need lots of texture on it so that it can be side lit, so it will be sandblasted then black glazed. The floor will be real wood but some of the back planks can be cheated out of plywood – it’ll be lighter for the flats that need to fly.

1:25 scale model of court

And then there are 4 lanterns hanging low into the space. They do two things. One is that they are decorative within this environment that is heavy and timbered and quite low and oppressive, and the second is that they’ll need to fly out when we go into the forest, to release the 'ceiling' height and make the forest feel 'airier'.

The final scene returns to the court, so whatever has been flown or taken out will need to be able to brought back in. When we go back to the court (after love has conquered all!), the mechanicals come on and perform their play. So we’ll get them to rig up a crudely painted but charming silk backcloth by hand as part of the action, strung up off the bottom of the beam above the double doors. (I hope – depending on who Michael Grandage, the Director casts – that the cloth can be rigged by an actor hoisted on another actor’s shoulders.) They also set a row of footlights at the front of the stage area, as part of their business – so we create a stage for them to do their show. The cloth is in bright fluorescent colours again to liven up the all-black court. The cloth is split in the middle, so the doors will need to open upstage (as well as downstage for the opening scene) so they can enter through the centre of the cloth and do their Morecambe and Wise routines! There are likely to be lots of props for the mechanicals play too, but I need to discuss them in more detail with Michael, to decide whether they go down a more crude 'home-made' route or choose to make fabulous Terry Gilliam style props – it depends very much on who Michael casts and how they perform 'the play'."

1:25 scale model of forest

COURT TO FOREST TRANSITION

"The first scene in the forest is an introductory scene where Puck and the first fairy turn up to explain this transition from court to forest. So in this split transitional scene what we’d like to do is fly in one of our four lanterns with Puck hanging off it. In the darkness, the light inside the lantern will be on and shining out and as he comes on it’s spinning round and the light is lowered right down to the ground – as if he arrives on a moonbeam. In order to mirror Puck’s first entrance on the lantern we’re talking about putting a little trap door in the floor so that as he comes down the first fairy can pop out from the floor.

The second part of the transition from the court to the forest is the removal of the two halves of the black back wall of the court – they should both fly up above the proscenium – revealing our forest. This is a series of planked portals in perspective going back with raised levels behind each one with spiky foliage jutting out. They’re ramped off either side so that you can run down each side into the ‘dell’ at the bottom of each circle. And it’s very much a scary, spooky forest as opposed to a pretty floral forest – it’s somewhere that’s a bit anarchic. I also want to put star cloth effect through the cracks in the planking and the black serge around the moon to make the all-black effect more sparkly, twinkly and magical – to lift the blackness."

A PROBLEM TO SOLVE 1

"For the first entrance of Titania and Oberon, Michael and I have talked about Oberon starting at the back, in front of the moon, and Titania making her entrance through the centre of the auditorium. What we’d like to do is have some secret steps hidden in the front of each of the different levels and the foliage directly in front of Oberon being on wires of some sort so they can part magically for him, so that he can make his entrance incredibly gracefully. They’ll have to be cheated in some way so they can just be pulled back as he walks through them, and then as if by magic they just fill in behind him again, and the steps retreat so that the next time someone comes down through the forest they have to tumble and scramble through." (September - this idea is cut.)

1:2 scale model of forest

A PROBLEM TO SOLVE 2

"The foliage is going to be quite a tricky thing to solve: people are going to have to be able to clamber through the foliage, so it’ll have to be soft enough and ‘give’ enough to allow people through without slicing them to shreds! But on the other hand the foliage is going to need to stay covered in paint so if they’re made out of nylon all the paint is going to chip off and look ghastly. But certainly where the foliage is up out of the way they could made out of bamboo or cane or something like that. They’re also quite large – some of them are about 1.5 m long. It’s all very stylised so it can be a mixture of organic and spiky foliage, but nothing realistic like leaves. Twigs might work – something like brush or hazel or something that bends but also is a bit knotty and knobbly – but we’re not trying to create something realistic or flowery. It’s got to be more the stuff of nightmares.

The idea would be that it’s never really lit, there’s just sidelight through it and you just catch the foliage and it twinkles. All the foliage is glazed so that it can look pretty and magical in a very spiky way – we might do a bit of glitter work on them so that they twinkle. The little ‘Love-in-Idleness’ – the bright purple flower that Puck carries and drops the magic in the eyes of the mortals - we will try to make so that each time he pulls it out it glows brighter. Perhaps with a battery pack in the stem that will help to make it glow."

A PROBLEM TO SOLVE 3

"The other problem to solve is Titania’s bower, which is where she goes to sleep and later seduces Bottom. We’ve got a very specific reference for the thing we want to use – a gondola shaped daybed - and the idea would be that we would fly it down just behind the core wall. It would come right down to deck, they would then climb onboard and then it will be flown out and hangs at about 8’ off the floor. Visually it mirrors the shape of the moon and the forest too. I am aware that the actors will need to lie in the gondola comfortably for a considerable length of time. I want it to be full of cushions and feathers and gauze."

This is the big prop make on the show and one that the designer needs the expertise of the production team to solve in order to make sure that it is strong and light enough to fly, and also stable and safe enough to be flown with two bodies in it. It needs to be constructed out of a strong and light material, but be heavy enough not to tip over. In the production meeting, the team discussed steel frames, fibreglass and carving the shape. For stability it might have to be flown on 4 strings rather than 2, or they may decide not to fly it at all. But if it is flown, it needs to be close enough to the front of the proscenium arch that the actors will be still able to be seen by everyone in the audience. This, in turn, is strongly affected by the size of the actors Michael Grandage will cast as Bottom and Titania. The shape of the daybed needs to be shallow enough for the actors to be seen, but deep enough for them to be safe in it. (September - this problem was solved by the bower being re-sited under the stage.)

THE MOON

"The moon at the back is a back projection – a light box of some description. It’s relatively far forward so sightlines won’t be too bad and it’ll be possible to get some light behind it. It’s got an artwork on it but it’s not specifically moon craters because although it’ll be grey and moon for most of it at one point we want to use it to create a blood red sunrise up through it. Grey will give a better brightness than white."

LIGHTING

The set design has not yet been discussed with the lighting designer, Hartley Kemp and may well change a little with his input. Christopher is keen for the forest to be side lit, which would mean Hartley rigging lights on the sides of the area where the scenery will be flown. As there is limited space in this area, it will need to be carefully divided between the design & lighting teams.

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