BA Hons Creative Arts for Theatre and Film - UCA Rochester

'These false persepctives, these facades, these arbors, have another side that is cloth and nails and wood.... These few square feet of light and illusion are surrounded by machinery and flanked by wings, the hidden labyrinths of which do not interfere one bit with the pleasure of the spectator who is playing the game of theater.' Andre Bazin

Sunday, 13 November 2011

Sets, Scenes and Environments: Gary McCann's designs for Grimm Tales

Here is British theatre designer Gary McCann's set for 'Grimm Tales', Carol-Ann Duffy's version of the classic tales adapted by Rachel O'Riordan in Manchester, 2009.

There is a wonderful magic realism about the set - inside and outside are seamlessly blended. Notice the relative sizes of the chairs - the chair at the back appears to fill much more of the space than the chair at the front - telling us that the one-point perspective is highly exaggerated. For an account of how this distorted space worked with the actors, there's review from the Independent newspaper here.