rise and fall of little voice

[gilesblue]

has anyone worked on designing a set for this play....interested in ideas of how to best get the feeling of a s 2 storey house with all the required elements...and the fire scene

[Genus]

Hi there, and welcome to the blue-room.

 

In order to get a well thought out response, which I would love to give you, you need to give a lot more information.

 

If we're considering an amdram show with a budget of £200 then our ideas will be very different than if you were working for a company with a £20,000 budget.

 

You haven't told us about your venue, is it a church hall or a pros theatre?

 

You haven't told us about what facilities you have available to you in terms of set builders, workshop/storage space. Does the set need to be portable?

 

Have you spoken to the director to see what S/HE wants from the set?

 

For those that haven't read the play if you were more specific about what you were hoping to achieve we might be able to give you ideas on that, further expanding the people who are able to advise.

 

If you gave us more info, we'd be able to give far better advice.

 

Sorry not to be any more help, but the more you help us the more we can help you. We do (generally) want to help people, but with such limited info, it's almost impossible.

[Grahame]

I can do this - I toured the play last year. Could be a bit hard to describe, though.

You need to think about a cutaway set where audience can see into all the rooms. So, main area is the living room with 'front door' at one side and open-plan kitchen on the other side, main staircase up one side to the upper floor and Little Voice's bedroom (we had it placed over the kitchen). Depending on sight lines, have the bedroom placed at an angle so that you can also get her bedroom window in view with an outside area/ kitchen door for the 'Romeo & Juliet' scene. You will probably also need some concealed access treads to get to the bedroom without going through the 'house'.

Have some full blacks or a frontcloth downstage of all this for the singing scenes if possible.

For the fire scene, think about some small concealed floods or birdies around the set in red and amber that you can run a chase effect on, combined with some flame effects or gobo rotators if you can afford it; a couple of smoke machines in the set and maybe some suitable pyros if you're able. A quick swap of the furniture for some burnt-out versions and lots of scrappy black gauze draped over the rest of the set will provide that burnt-out look.