Sunday in the park with George

The idea to make the design more contemporary came from the production of ‘Sunday in the park with George’, a musical inspired by the painting, ‘A Sunday Afternoon on the island of La Grande Jatte’.  The production was unique at the time it was conceived as it involved theatrical set design techniques that were yet to be fully explored. When Georges Seurat made the painting more than a hundred years ago, it was a novel experience for his audiences as he took the experience of the art of painting to a new perspective and gave birth to pointillism which eventually led to the concept of pixels in photographs. The musical was first conceived by Stephan Sondheim and James Lapine in 1984 also brought similar challenges to theatre design.

The entire production was designed with the painting projected as the backdrop but without the characters. The characters of the painting were transformed and moved out of the canvas and depicted as real people on stage. The actors would remain still as if they are frozen in a painted scene and move in accordance to the script to act out the story. The design when viewed from an audience point of view gave the impression of a painting being acted out. It was a visual spectacle that used projection and light to carry on a story. The projection panels were perfectly in sync, interacting with the actors making the production literally glide across the stage. There have been many productions of the musical since the first and they have all taken the design a step ahead but the idea remains the same.

To me, it was an amazing example of production design as it combined elements of live performance with set design to create an illusion of a painting on stage; almost like a happening or an event. The fact that the actors on stage stood in strategic positions on stage so that perspective could be used to give a three dimensional feel to an otherwise two dimensional piece of work was fascinating. My attempt at using a television screen as a backdrop was an effort to emulate the same technique on a smaller scale. The contents of my model, if made on a large scale could have a similar effect if the scene playing on the television screen is projected onto a wall with the layered panels (acting as stage props or actors) in front to create a single frame for an actual production or live event. The entire design when viewed through the proscenium would give the illusion of a single image with the sea and rocks on the beach. 

Reference:
broadwayworld.com. 2011. 5th Avenue's Sunday in the Park with George [online]. Available at:http://seattle.broadwayworld.com/printcolumn.php?id=51094. [Accessed: 10 June 2011] 
Sunday in the Park with George Highlights. 2009. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raQgy2dDCYw&feature=related