Theatre Tech

AN-TECH-O-NE

We thought this might be a good opportunity to reveal some of the secrets to the theatrical design and tech processes. There are many complex and stressful phases to this, starting with, “How are we going to…”, passing through, “Oh, I dunno...” and, “here’s a dodgy idea, but…” to get to a fi nal design.

This year’s senior show started with a discussion about how it’s so exciting to be back doing live theatre in front of real live audiences that we should do something fun, uplifting, positive and life-affi rming. We settled, of course, on Antigone - a Greek tragedy full of death and misery.

The design brief started with adjectives such as ‘imposing’, ‘modern’ and ‘corporate’ which eventually led to our impressive set. We decided to work with monochrome so key moments would really stand out with colourful lighting. We wanted Creon to hold the most powerful positions on stage so we put his offi ce upstairs with a view over the whole space. We had planned a set of double doors early on and Dasha had the idea of using frosted perspex for depth and silhouette which eventually morphed into our slick moving doors. We were asked many times how much the electric sliding doors cost us… spoiler alert… it was two hidden sixth formers manually sliding them in time with each other! I must acknowledge the brilliant work of Matt and Jason at Technical Hire Collective for turning the design into reality once again.

We enjoyed adding details to make this more than the average school show. Miss Tamblyn’s excellent logo transformed into huge banners, stealing black and white pieces from the Art department, beautiful costumes including designs from Elsa France and Tilly Bankes, a noticeboard complete with an advert for staff netball, atmospheric sound effects operated by Leyla Aysan and a veritable catalogue of IKEA offi ce furniture. Then it was time for Tom to add his stunning graphics on the screens and Dasha to work her magic on lights…

When thinking about lighting design for this show, I wanted to create something that looked very realistic at the start - complementing the simple monochrome office setting, to then evolve into a darker, more mysterious world of Greek tragedy.

Since the very start we were very keen on using a gauze - which is a piece of special fabric we placed in front of the stage, to create a BIG aesthetic opening for Antigone and Ismene’s first entrance. Working with a gauze required a lot of careful thinking and positioning of lighting fixtures, to achieve first a very transparent look, when the audience are able to see right through the gauze and then a solid “wall” hiding the office space behind it, to create a secluded place for the two sisters to meet.

One of my favourite moments to design for was Tiresias’ entrance. By this point the lighting was no longer as simple as it was at the start, which helped communicate across the change to a more “totalitarian” and “oppressed” State under Creon’s rule. This scene, in my opinion, was the most memorable and to achieve the effect I had in mind and show Tiresias’ power and influence, I spent a couple of hours going “I want that light to do this”, shortly followed by, “that doesn’t quite work, it needs to be bigger”. In the end we were able to produce exactly what I wanted - the room would go into “emergency lighting” after what would look like a power surge, creating a beautiful, punchy and abstract environment which worked incredibly well with other aspects of Tiresias’ appearance, including detailed costume and make up.

Of course lighting was very important for this show, but equally as important and impressive was the graphics design and the way all of these design aspects come together to create the final product.

Dasha Gorbunova

(Year 12)

My AV idea that I had throughout the process of design was that I wanted to include some of my unique skills that have never been used in Kingswood Theatre - 3D motion graphics. The key here though is simplicity and thought - not distracting our audience from the rest of the action on stage… this was my biggest challenge. I also had a couple of moments where I was able to help get some slight laughs from an otherwise dismal storyline with the ‘live video feed’ doorbell.

Otherwise, for the majority of the show, I knew that I wanted to have a few key states, with very slight motion, because that’s harder to make, so must be ‘better’, right?! I wanted to make sure that I was very happy with these states because I knew I would be relying on them for large chunks of the show.

Tom Button

(Year 13)

This year’s senior show started with a discussion about how it’s so exciting to be back doing live theatre... that we should do something fun, uplifting, positive and life-affirming. We settled...on Antigone - a Greek tragedy full of death and misery.