Raised blocks were used for two reasons; to show a difference in location and to show a characters distance from a situation. A block raised slightly from the ground was positioned DSL and was used during the reading of a news report. Behind the reporter is the mime of a soldier stealing from a dead body. The physical distance of the reporter on the block from the disturbing scene behind shows her lack of care and understanding, an ironic juxtaposition as she talks of the ‘human face of suffering’.
With very few pieces of practical set dressing (table, chairs etc.) there was a lot of room to add visual elements which could not have been possible in a more complicated set. I had always wanted to show a war-ravaged area, but more precisely, an urban area which had once been inhabited by living, breathing people. The effect that I wanted to create was to mirror images which the audience would have recently seeing in the news of war-torn Iraq with the destroyed homes of the people living within the city. This visual effect was created by using a large amount of rubble and other debris which were spread around the stage, everything was covered in building dust and rough Hessian material was used to cover raised blocks. The end result was a set which very realistically showed an urban environment destroyed by war.
Although this set dressing may have seemed at first to be a random assortment of broken bricks and wood, it was arranged very carefully and played a very important role during the scenes. Throughout the set there were a number of different areas, or focal points created by arrangement of the rubble. Although characters did not interact with this rubble, they respected its presence and so the arrangements acted as boundaries which contained the action of a scene. Before we started to use these visual barriers we were using an open floor and found that scenes often lacked intensity. Reducing the size of the acting area meant that the actors were forced to work closer together, so increasing the much-needed energy of each scene.
In a corner created by our raised blocks we decided to erect a small memorial shrine which consisted of a photo, flowers and a lantern which lighted the area, keeping it in view throughout the play. This detail strongly contrasted the harsh, man-made image created by other parts of the set.
The photo showed the only ‘human’ element in the ruined city and strongly reinforced our themes of a ‘human war’. In order to draw the audiences attention to the area the shrine was set up in mime whilst they entered. This, we felt was very important as it was the first point at which they could relate to a theme in the play, everyday seeing many memorials such as the one we used made it’s personal meaning especially poignant.
One decision that the group made at the beginning of writing the play was that it had to powerful, although this doesn’t sound particularly decisive, it gave us a benchmark to compare all aspects to. In order to add power to certain scenes I felt that music should play a very important role throughout the play. The right music can have a great affect upon an audience, either deepening their mood, or making the themes of a scene much clearer. The most memorable use of music was during the scene dubbed ‘War Spectacular’. The scene begins with the reading of an almost poetic news article, and in order to compliment the nature of the reading we played the melodic classical piece “Saturn”, composed by Holst. The beauty of this scene was used to take the audience into a ‘false sense of security’. As the scene progresses we see a couple preying in their house and then the sudden intrusion of a soldier who hits the woman and then shoots the husband. This action was performed in time with the music, when the volume of the strings begins to build the gunman is standing over the husband with the gun to his head. The eye contact between the two along with the building music produced such an emotional intensity that when the kill shot is made upon the dramatic crescendo some members of the audience were moved to tears. This affect would have been very difficult to produce without the accompaniment of the moving music.
The majority of the lighting used helped to show the type of scene that the audience were seeing. A ‘straw’ was used during the more naturalistic scenes, such as the bar scene in order to show daylight. The abstract scenes used a blue light and at shocking points such as the conclusion of the suicide bomber’s monologue and the murder of the man in his home a ‘red fill’ illuminated the stage. All these worked very well and fitted the mood of both the scenes and pay as a whole. However, the most impressive use of lighting was the three ‘floor lights’ which were place at the front of the stage. These gave off a bright, white light and were angled to illuminate the actor’s faces. This illumination meant that the faces had no shadow; giving a very clinical whitewash effect, which was perfect for the scenes they were being used in, especially the suicide bomber. The bomber’s monologue was very cold and had little feeling, when solely illuminated by one light the speech was given an all new, even more sinister tone.
During scenes, pictures were projected on to a large sheet which filled the back of the stage. These images, for the most part, were used to highlight the main themes of the scenes, for example, during the ‘child soldier’ scene we were projecting a large, colourful image of children of a similar age playing freely. These juxtapositions gave scenes a kind of sinister irony, such as is often found in media coverage of war situations. It was this media coverage that were we referencing to by using the images throughout the play, specifically, we wanted to show pictures that may have appeared throughout the media if the events of the play had occurred in the ‘real world’. The many ironies that the images created were supposed to be reminiscent of a trait in news coverage, which sees reporters trying to find innocence and beauty within a horrific situation, the many pictures of children certainly worked to this end. The idea of using projections in this way had been conceived very early on in the devising process, but it took a great deal of effort to actually have them working successfully. Like our use of music, set design and the play’s overall artistic elements, the projections worked to heighten the emotion of the scene, while giving the audience an idea of the ‘bigger picture’ of our play, and hopefully helped them to have a much greater insight into what we were actually trying to communicate with our work.
