The Contribution of Set and Lighting to The Smallest Person by Timothy Knapman
Trestle Theatre's "The Smallest Person" by Timothy Knapman, is a story
that leads the audience to questions medical ethics. It is set in both
1824 in Georgian England and modern day England, where it tells the
story of Charlie, an ill boy who is missing. His sister Laura knows
where he is; but she will only tell the authorities where he is
through the story of Caroline. Measuring only 191/2" tall 8 year old
Caroline Crachami was a celebrity of her time, paraded around the
fashionable salons of London by a travelling showman, she became the
darling of Georgian England. However when she died an unseemly
scramble ensued for her body, her parents wanted her buried, the
scientists wanted her studied.
I watched this piece at Cambridge University's Mumford Theatre on the
13th of October 2004 with my theatre studies class. I chose this piece
for my essay because it was a Trestle theatre production, which
focuses on mask theatre. The uses of masks generally have a lack of
facial expressions in mask theatre, causing the set and lighting to be
heightened, ideal for this essay.
In this essay I shall assess the play in regards to the contribution
of set and lighting.
The stage featured a proscenium stage and the set was designed by Tim
Meacock and resembles this diagram,
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The set featured a neutral contemporary theme to it, using light wood
for the frame and white boards, almost modern
Perspex sheets with cloth sandwiched between them
[IMAGE]
The set had a very contemporary style; this was because of the use of
light wood and white boards that the set was made of, hardly
traditional materials for the design of a set.
The set itself contributed greatly to assist the atmosphere of the
play, not creating it. This was because the play jumped from different
time periods, and the set was never altered. This was made possible
because the design was very neutral, which made it possible to be used
The set for this show was very simple, but it helped to put the audience in 1940s. On the stage,
I attended the performance of “The Diary of Anne Frank,” the new adaption by Wendy Kesselman, at the Stage Door Inc Theater in Pasadena at their Friday evening showing. This production is one that I could relate to because I read the novel in high school and while watching this live I remembered details from the novel that was incorporated into this production. The theater was an intimate proscenium stage. There were around 7 straight rows of seating that all faced the stage. The seats were raked so there was no problem seeing. The stage was small but the props and setting was beautifully made.
Epiphany in Astronomer’s Wife, When I consider how my light is spent and Everything That Rises Must Converge
According to Rudolf Reder, one of only two Jews to survive the camp at Belzec, Poland, he describes the circumstance during his time at the prison camp, “The brute Schmidt was our guard; he beat and kicked us if he thought we were not working fast enough. He ordered his victim to lie down and gave them 25 lashes with a whip, ordering them to count out loud. If the victim made a mistake, he was given 50 lashes….Thirty or 40 of us were shot every day….” This quotation shows the SS guards treat the Jews inhumanly. As these Jews acclimate to the situation, their primitive survival instincts become stronger over time. They put their lives as their first priority and will do anything to survive. However, in the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, Eliezer Shlomo the protagonist adversely demonstrates more commitment to family than to himself in the concentration camps. Before World War II, Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party gain popularity by promising to make Germany a rich and powerful nation again after their defeat in World War I. The Nazis publicly blame the Jews for Germany’s loss of World War I and the Great Depression, resulting in promoting the anti-Semitism. Although he admits to the power of the instinct for self-preservation, because of his commitment to his father throughout the prison camp experience, and because of his reactions to others sons who do abandon or turn on their fathers, Wiesel apparently favors commitment to family over commitment to self-preservation. Eliezer never attempts to show commitment to family until the deportation to Birkenau.
Susan Sontag said photographs sends across the harmlessness and helplessness of the human life steering into their own ruin. Furthermore the bond connecting photography with departure from life tortures the human race. (Sontag 1977:64)
In All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doer, a German boy with the love for technology named Werner lies about his age and gets drafted into the Nazi army. He is sent to a place called Sculpforta for him to train to be in combat in the army. There he meets a nice boy with the name of Frederick. Fredrick is the son of wealthy parents, with a lean body and bad eyesight, he barely makes it to Sculpforta. There he meets our main character, the German boy, Werner. Frederick plays a big role in the book when it comes to character development. Not only modes he grow as a person with his experiences, but he also makes Werner grow as a person.
The setup of the stage was very simple. It was the living room of a home in the early 1980’s. It looked like a normal household, and it had small things such as crumpled up pieces of paper lying around the wastebasket. It also had a couch, circular class table and a recliner in the living room. The dining room was to the left side of the stage and only had the dining table and surrounding chairs. There was a door in the back of the set where characters entered and exited through. Beside the door was a table and stool where Willum presumably worked on his blueprints for the hotel. The lighting design was great; it put you into the atmosphere of the
The stage was in proscenium form so it allowed most audience members to have the same amount of viewing as others throughout the theater. Due to the theatre space being so small and intimate, it created the relevant atmosphere of everything on stage happening to be small.
Humans in general, take many things for granted: life, money, security, but what about color? Usually nobody ever stops to think, “what if there was no color?” Color is seen by almost everyone so no one necessarily has to wonder what it would be like if color wasn’t there. However, philosophy professor James Landesman has provided a theory in which people learn color may really not exist. Although this seems like a shocking and even ludicrous proposal, his essay Why Nothing Has Color: Color Skepticism brings up many points that can lead anyone to doubt the existence of something so trivial.
In the world of science there are many discoveries. “A discovery is like falling in love and reaching the top of a mountain after a hard climb all in one, an ecstasy not induced by drugs but by the revelation of a face of nature … and that often turns out to be more subtle and wonderful than anyone had imagined.” (Ferdinand Puretz). Most people in the world we live in lack to notice and or appreciate the gift of sight in life. By not cherishing the gift of sight and using it properly, many discoveries are left unfound. In the writing piece, Seeing, Annie Dillard speaks of nature and the small things that we all are unconsciously blind to and not appreciative of. Seeing explores the idea of what it means to truly see things in this world. Annie Dillard’s main point is that we should view the world with less of a meddling eye, so that we are able to capture things that would otherwise go unnoticed. There’s a science to how we view things in nature. Dillard attempts to persuade her reader to adopt to her way of seeing, which is more artificial rather than natural.
Evolution Within a People in A Doll's House and An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen
The spectacle of this play is limited which is why there is such weight put on the actors themselves. Their scene and ensembles never show signs of change yet they develop and grow. There is a huge stress on the statue, which whom the Learned Ladies bow
In the play, A Doll’s House portrays the fixation to keep up with appearances through the main characters’ actions and words. A Doll’s House creates a statement about the gender roles and social norms in the nineteenth century. Ibsen argues that individual tend to get sidetracked due to appearances, especially in an effort to please society. Individuals tend to focus on the opinions of others, therefore they believe that keeping up with appearance is important. Appearances can be used to masks or deflect various hardships and issues of reality. A Doll’s House depicts that not everything is how it appears. Appearance are not necessary, if fact they only hold people back from doing what is important and distorts reality.
Henrik Ibsen catches the world off guard with his play A Doll House. The world is in what is known as the Victorian era and women and men have specific roles. The way the story unravels takes the reader by surprise. Ibsen wanted to write a play that would challenge the social norms and that would show the world that no matter how hard they press, they would not always win. Ibsen uses society’s customs, deception, and symbolism to keep the reader on their feet and bring them a play that they would never forget.
At the beginning of the 19th century, one may not have said it was to be a century full of creation and good fortune. From China to Spain, empires were collapsing left and right (McKenzie 144). However, many other empires were making a grand rise to power (McKenzie 144). This change in power set the overall mood for the rest of the 19th century. Change, innovation, and risk were occurring worldwide. People began to think more broadly, more “out-of-the-box.” As people began to disperse and expand more and more, cultures collided and the desire to discover greatened (McKenzie 145). Risk-takers all over the world stepped up to create a revolution of discovery and innovation. Brave miners voyaged to California from all over the world in hopes to find an abundance of wealth (McKenzie 204). Engineers were constantly trying to create more efficient means of transportation (McKenzie 205). Theatres evolved and changed to suit a more relatable style. One play that began this movement was A Doll’s House, written by Henrik Ibsen. Ibsen’s unrestrained views on cultural issues were apparent in this controversial play. This emergence of independence, creation, and realism, all seen in A Doll’s House, made it safe to say the 19th century was unlike any before.