Big Love

Director Andrew YimCostume designer Eileen Paek

Set designer Jungmi JungLight designer Mouhammad Naboulsi

Director

The ScriptIn the play, Big Love, it will

be centered around the proposed marriage

between two families and the struggles that come with it. Throughout that play the audience should

witness/experience different emotions such as

love, hate, and tension.

Casting• The Main Cast

For the main cast there needs to be three younger women to play Lydia, Olympia, and Thyona. The one playing Thyona must be strong and stubborn. (below)

Three younger men to play Nikos, Constantine, and Oed; with the one playing Constantine to be being controlling and intimidating. (above)

Finally one older man to

play Piero. (left)

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• The Supporting CastThere should also be two women to play Bella and Eleanor. The actor that plays Bella need to be older in age and have a mother presence. (below)

There needs to be two men to play Leo and Giuliano. The actor to play Giuliano needs to be young, handsome, weak and useless. (above)

The “Spine” of the Play

This is also referred as the main action and can be determined the primary objective of each scene throughout the play. In this particular

play the “spine” can be stated as “to be equal”.

In the scenes many times actors will allude to equality and the power struggle between men and

women, which becomes the theme of Big Love. Actors will express the struggles of being a man or being a woman and the beliefs against each gender to help portray the

theme.

Style

In order to correctly portray the play the production of the play is in a realistic style, more specifically similar naturalism. The

style used will be similar to naturalism in that the props used will be an exact copy of items used in our daily lives.

The set will be extravagant, luxurious to portray the power and upper-classness of the characters. The actors will also look sophisticated, wealthy to further exemplify their

power and wealth.

Directorial Concept The play will be performed on one stage with each scene in a different portion of the stage. The lights, costume, and set should all work together to

convey the theme and spine to the audience. During the climax of the play should be the murders of the grooms

and the and only one couple finding love. In the scene the

audience should find the couple that overcame the

conflict in the play.

Set Designby Jungmi Jung

General Settings

The black box is used to make costumes, set, and

lighting stand out and to put the mood of darkness, the

play’s theme, as a background to guide the audience to

explore their creativity as the play goes along.

As a theatre space, the thrust space is used within the

black box. By having three sides for the audience,

emotions and movements of the performers would deliver

to the audience immediately and strongly.

Ground Plan

Back Stage

Audience

A

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e

A

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Table

for

cake

Table

Table for

wedding gifts

Pendant light

on the ceiling

Enough space for

actors to express

their movements

for dance and fight

scenes

Back stage is

considered as a

waiting area for the

actors to make their

turns and for

changing

doorFlag

Location

The main role of set designing is to let the

audience know the location where the play

will be set. Having the flag of Italy on up-right

of the stage will help the audience to indicate

that the location of the play is Italy.

Visuals

Crystal pendant lights with red

decorations is set on the center of

the ceiling to give the audience the

visual of darkness. The color red has

meanings of aggressive, fearful, and

rebellious.

Bathtub is located on up-left of

the stage, as located on the ground

plan, because it appears only in the

beginning of the play. However, it is

important because it comes out in

the opening scene when Lydia sees

Giuliano for the first time.

The color of a table and chair

in Bella’s scenes is dark brown and

the shape is dull to give the audience

feeling of intense. The color solid

dark brown will deliver the dark

mood of the play to the audience.

On the left side of the stage, as seen

from the audience’s position, the door is

located for the performers to enter and exit

as they appear in each scenes.

The color of the door is black to fade in

with the background as the black box.

In the scene where the sisters’ cousins

arrive via helicopter, there should be a sound

effect of helicopter from speakers to give the

audience more realistic imaginary.

In opposite to other objects in the play

such as bathtub and Bella’s table and chair,

wedding gifts and the table for the gifts are

clear and shiny to indicate how marriage is

commonly known in society, as pure and

beautiful. A wedding is suppose to be

blessing, but the set that is dark as whole

makes the wedding gloomy and dull.

As wedding flower decoration, fifty black

roses are used to symbolize unhappy brides who

are forced to get married. The color black may

also illustrate the tragic ending for the grooms

who end up being murdered. There is one red

rose, which symbolizes Lydia who is the only

bride who does not kill her husband chooses love.

Special Effects

One of the special effects that is used to make the

fight and murder scenes more intense is fog. Fog

creates horrific mood and helps the audience to realize

that this scene is the climax.

Additionally, as a set design, the light will be also

set on the floor of the stage and light on the

performers. This technique designs horrifying effect by

creating shadow under the eyes of the performers.

By lighting the bathtub from below in

the beginning of the play, the audience may

foreshadow the tragic ending for the grooms

and the unforgettable actions that the brides

take to save themselves. With this light

special effect in the beginning of the play, the

brides who go in or sit down on the bathtub

can be spotlighted from the audience.

This special effect makes the theme

stronger and the mood darker.

Lighting Design

BY MOUHAMMAD NABOULSI

Shape and form

In order to provide depth and realism

to the play and enhance the visual

elements of the play, there will be

lights coming from the side, top and

behind the stage. This is quite the

standard in stage lighting as simple

lighting just from the front washes out

the figures and makes them look flat

and not interesting.

Focus and composition

Whenever the scene needs to be focused on a few

individuals like one of the brides and one of the

husbands then a spotlight will be focused on the two of

them. Also spotlighting a certain object such as a black

rose or something that represents death, a

foreshadowing of the following events will be made.

(Brides killing their husbands).

Whenever a big scene such as the killings of the

husbands take place the entire stage will be illuminated

instead of a focusing spotlight.

Mood and Style

In terms of mood, the color of the lighting play a big role in the mood of the

play at first the play is sad and hopeless, whenever the brides are being

forced to get married, therefore a blue moon light will be emitted.

When the play turns dark, or when the brides plot to kill their husbands

there will be a crystal pendant light in the center of the ceiling

accompanied with a dark glowing red light filling the stage to ensue a

mood of aggression, fear and rebellion, parts of the stage will also be in

total darkness.

Time and Place

Since the play takes place in the evening time in the mid-summer, this

suggests that there will little or no light, and since is in a villa indoors the

lighting will be dark throughout most of the play.

The only other times there will be “sunlight” within the play are the scenes

where the brides flee on the cruise ship to Piero’s villa and whenever the

men track them down. Otherwise all major scenes should be fairly dark.

Rhythm and Central image

Since the mood of the play and the central theme of the play changes as

the scenes progresses the lights should as well.

To provide this transition there will be a slow fade out of the previous

scene while the next scene can be prepared before the lights reveal it. The

scenes should get progressively darker and aggressive.

As for movement there will be a lot of actors on stage performing at the

same time so a lot will be going on, consequently the lights will be moving

and flashing in the most intense scenes like the murders. All of this should

reflect the central image of rebellion and defiance.

Intensity and colorFor intensity, light dimmers will be used to ensure that a scene that takes place at night is dark enough and believable to have taken place at night, the same goes for lighter scenes and the transitions between scenes.

The use of colored lights can transform the stage to just about any mood and setting, so scrollers will be used so that it is easy to transition between different colored scenes to evoke different moods.

Distribution and movement

Distribution and movement ties into the focus aspect of the play, for

example if one scene is taking place on one side of the stage because the

props on the other side are for another scene then only that part of the

stage will be lit up, and whenever the scene for the other half of the stage

approaches it will be revealed for the audience to see.

The lighting will be from overhead in front of the stage and from the side, a

45 degree angle from the lights to the stage provides an ideal amount of

light for the actor and audience.

The transitions that the lights invoke should be extremely subtle, the

audience members should not know that the lights are making them look a

certain direction, therefore light transitions should be as smooth and

seamless as possible

Type of lights used

For the focused spotlights we will use a ellipsoidal reflector spotlight and this will be used when there are only a few characters on stage to provide focus on them and not the entire stage. This type of light creates a bright hard edged spotlight.

Soft edged spotlights will

be used for backlighting of

the play and this is how

we will get in depth detail

and define the shape and

form of props and actors.

For scenes such as the

murders of the husbands

where the entire stage is to

be lit with a red color light we

will use floodlights, so that it

is not focused on one person

or one area, the entire stage

should be lit in one smooth

wash of light.

Costume Design“What a costume designer does is a cross between magic and camouflage. We create the illusion of changing the actors into what they are not. We ask the public to believe that every time they see a performer on the screen, he’s become a different person.”

-Edith Head

Lydia In the first scene,

Lydia enters is a dirty

wedding dress, having

just come off of a

yacht, running away

from her wedding.

OlympiaA very fashion forward girl. She is the type of girl who

wears short skirts, paints her nails, and dyes her hair.

She’s . Oblivious to the situation she’s in and follows the

authority of her sisters.

ThyonaFierce;

Strong minded;

Stubborn;

Wears sharp colors to reflect her sinister

personality.

Pierro

Giuliano

First impressions

Giuliano, the young

Italian man, who meets

Lydia unexpectedly while

she is bathing. He is

handsome, agreeable,

weak and useless.

Pierro is Giuliano’s uncle. They are very well off,

so I gave him a nice and retro blazer, not too

formal, but enough to make him noticeably rich.

Bella

Bella carries around with her a basket

of tomatoes and wears a babushka in

her first scene.

Bella is a very mother-like figure to all

the characters in the play.

First KissNikos and Lydia’s first kiss reflects the

first step in how the two are giving

each other a chance to be in love.

This scene screams out INNOCENCE.

Lydia is wearing a short, flowing white

dress with a headband to expose her

youth.

Wedding day

OlympiaUsing her soft curls and small twists to

express elegance, Olympia is dressed in

her (“not so fashionable”) Alvina Valenta

A-line gown.

ThyonaWith a strong greek goddess influenced sheath

gown,

Thyona is implying authority and power with her

laurel wreath.

Wedding day—Murder day

Blood stained wedding dresses, kitchen

knives, and hatred easily sums up the

murder scene

Lydia’s Wedding day

Lydia wears a simple white strapless dress

and her pastel bouquet of daisies reflect

innocence.

The complex garter inside of the simple

dress portrays her character with the friendly

daisy to complete her wedding look.