Explain how production elements revealed the director's intentions in one production you have seen.

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Explain how production elements revealed the director’s intentions in one production you have seen.

I went to see ‘The woman in black’ at the Fortune Theatre in Covent Garden in September 2004. At the start the director’s intention is to put the audience in immediate unease, even before the play has started. This is achieved by the set, as the auditorium is black, with black curtains at the sides and black gauze at the back. Even the black floor of the stage seems to have been deliberate. There is a Proscenium arch stage so the audience are all facing forward in rows, this is so all the audience can see the same and receive the same effect. The seats are quite close together and the theatre is small making it feel claustrophobic, haunting and eerie and when sitting in the dark, waiting for the woman in black to appear it provides comfort for the audience. As soon as the audience enter the auditorium the curtain is raised on the bare stage and the fact that it is raised and it is empty gives the audience a strange feeling.

During the play we find out that the wall at the back of the stage is in fact gauze and hides the part of the stage behind it until it is lit up. This was intentionally done so that scene changes can happen without anybody seeing and this is even more frightening for the audience as they cannot see who or when the scene is changed, so they may think it is the Woman in black. At one point, the actor enters the room behind the gauze and sees that there is a cupboard with clothes and toys staked neatly, a bed made neatly and a rocking chair, but when he returns moments later the room has been ransacked, the rocking chair on its side, the bed sheets torn off and the clothes and toys scattered around the room. There is a second gauze behind this which hides a staircase. These gauzes mean that the curtain is not lowered throughout the performance and there are no interrupting blackouts where the scenery must be changed. As the set is minimal at the front it does not need to be changed at all so the tense atmosphere is not broken for a second. There is a concealed smoke machine that creates a fine mist during the end of the first half which increase considerably before the second half making the tension increase and the temperature drop. Again this supports the director’s intention to make the audience feel uneasily.

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The other main intention of the director’s is to scare and frighten the audience. This is achieved through various production elements. The lighting is dark and atmospheric and is used effectively throughout. For instance when the actor is in Eel Marsh house during the play a combination of amber and blue creates an odd kind of light. The amber implies warmth but the blue creates a feeling of cold, so the overall effect for the audience is that something wrong. Fro the moors and the graveyard steely blue lights are used, creating a very cold and eerie atmosphere. Gobos ...

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