Lyla
Venue :TNUA T305 Experimental Theater
Date: 2013/2/22
Director:Wei-Zhen Sun
Scenic Design: Ming-Huei Huang
Lighting Design: Tz -Shian Wu
Costume Design: Yung-Yin Yan
Technical Director: Jin-Yi Lin
Scenic Artist: Ming-Huei Huang
Prop Master: Ming-Huei Huang
Photographer:Ming-Huei Huang
Venue :TNUA T305 Experimental Theater
Date: 2013/2/22
Director:Wei-Zhen Sun
Scenic Design: Ming-Huei Huang
Lighting Design: Tz -Shian Wu
Costume Design: Yung-Yin Yan
Technical Director: Jin-Yi Lin
Scenic Artist: Ming-Huei Huang
Prop Master: Ming-Huei Huang
Photographer:Ming-Huei Huang
About The Play
Lyla is a story about a playwright who can’t escape from the miserable memories of his childhood. One day, he is drunk and sees a vision. In it, characters play the roles from a drama he has previously written—a roman à clef of his parents’ quarreling, his mother’s suicide, etc. The events appear one after another with a biting ferocity. As the story comes to a close, he realizes that he must move past these events to have a new and better life.
Designer's Statement
Lyla is a tragic story; after I finished the script, I was overwhelmed with melancholy. The play is set inside of a house, using a living room, a kitchen, the space around a dining table, and behind room doors. Important things happen around the house; every place is essential. The stage, however, is not wide enough to properly set the rooms of the house. To create a workable space for this play, the living room, kitchen, doors and dining table would have to be set without traditional rules. Since the writer’s horrible memories are very chaotic and inescapable, the stage could be set in a similarly complex way.
Lyla is a tragic story; after I finished the script, I was overwhelmed with melancholy. The play is set inside of a house, using a living room, a kitchen, the space around a dining table, and behind room doors. Important things happen around the house; every place is essential. The stage, however, is not wide enough to properly set the rooms of the house. To create a workable space for this play, the living room, kitchen, doors and dining table would have to be set without traditional rules. Since the writer’s horrible memories are very chaotic and inescapable, the stage could be set in a similarly complex way.
Design Process
Research
image
Research
image
Memories come to pieces Writer's deep sadness and pressure Surrealism of reality and play.
New memories and childhood-memories are mixed up. Can't tell which is real which is not .
decoration
The mother in the play is a very diligent woman with a well-decorated and perpetually clean house; this space should be clean and full with a warm atmosphere. I wanted to add the element of a flower as a symbol of the woman’s femininity: sometimes fragile, always beautiful, even though it will wither and blossom every season.
Sketching
I want to put lots of walls on set, to make layers .
I think there will have a lot of stuffs in kitchen.
An image: the writer is on a couch, the light is dim. To express a contrast, only a small area is bright.
The color of the kitchen
The image of the walls
Draft Model
This is the first version of my design. The play is rhythmically slow rhythm and would suffer from set-changing, so I planned to make a set that could incorporate all relevant parts of the house. The walls up-stage look distorted in accordance with the disordered memories in the writer's brain–layered and strange. Every part is very important; all elements are clear and not covered by each other.
The second version of my design changed a little. The first, every part of the set has to be in the same style and concept. Since the walls and parts of the house are created like fragments, the floor should be the same. Revised, the floor looks like floating ice: each piece floor cracked without regulation, using gaps to distinguish several parts of the house. In order to increase the visual complexity, I added two more walls up-stage, behind the set.
Finished Model
working process
wall patten
wall patten
Try many times to find a perfect flower pattern.
The original hand-drawing. Using photoshop to modify colors and simulate how it look on wall.
Wallpaper is very important in this space, as the audience sees the large walls immediately. Because of this, the color, style, and pattern of the wallpaper have a big influence to the atmosphere. To create an appropriate visual effect, I found the best way to most closely match my idea was by creating the pattern myself. My design looks warm and antique, which fits both the set and the story.
wall patten manufacture
I decide to make the wallpaper myself, using silk screen as this is the best and fastest way that I have found so far. There are four colors in the flower pattern, which means four printings per flower. As a result, the finished wallpaper is so much more alive than one mass-manufactured by machine.
Video and Pictures