collage blog

Using the theme you and your group chose to highlight in your collage, write a paragraph or two describing how you would transfer the images incorporated with that theme into a set design. You can describe the overall set design or focus on an important item that would be on stage. (For example, if your theme involved chaos vs. order, and you put a picture of a prison on your collage, how would you represent that prison on stage?) How do these set elements reflect your theme?

I don't really think that our group chose a single, central theme in our collage...but what we really focused on was Antigone as the center of the play and her conflicts with the other characters and her relationships with the other characters. We made Antigone the center of the collage - the first thing that someone would see when they looked at it, and then we put all the other characters in areas that would be in relation to where she was and what her relationship with them was.For example, we had Antigone standing on top of Creon to show her dominating over him and ultimately winning the power struggle (although now having reread the play I don't know how I feel about this...I believe that Antigone is childish and doesn't truly win the struggle because she does not truly understand it...she is simpleminded and sees only her side of what is going on...that Creon is truly the one that sees the greater meaning and reality of the situation...although in the end it is Antigone who gets her way over Creon despite her inability to see what the reality of the situation is, she does what she wants and I guess she thus is truly the victor in the power struggle...) Anyways, the set I would make would be pretty simple...I see the major themes in the play the conflicts between characters and the internal conflicts within characters...and thus to get these major themes across to the audience, a grandiose and extensive scenery would detract from the conflicts and they would lose their importance in the entirety of the show. I would have some sort of platform on one side of the stage which would be the place that Creon would most often be...this would be to show his power as King and his separation from the rest of his kingdom since he is forced to think about his actions as a whole and their effect on the people rather than his own personal beliefs. When he and Antigone argue he would come down off the platform to show that he gets to her level and tries to reason with her in a way that the two of them can relate...he no longer acts as a separate and distant king but acts as an uncle and a father. We put Ismene on a seesaw in our collage to show her internal struggle in deciding whether she wanted to assist with the burial of her brother and be killed or whether she did not. Maybe in the set I would have a part of the stage in a gloomier lighting, less bright, and the other part of the stage in a more cheerful and brighter lighting. Then, depending on what Ismene is thinking and feeling she could switch from side to side and weigh her decision, somewhat like the seesaw. The cave at the end of the play is a very significant part of the show, but I don't think that it needs to be literally a part of the scene...the dialogue and the sounds used can be enough to tell what happens with the cave and inside the cave...actually I change my mind. I would like in the back of the stage for there to be a very dark, ominous area. Maybe it can look like a literal cave, maybe it just looks like a black dark hole in the back...but I like the idea of this impending doom upon the story, the idea that the story is a tragedy and there is no way to escape from the darkness and the sadness that is imminently upon the characters. The darkness back there will be always present, always reminding the audience that the story is tragic and that something bad is bound to happen.