Bodies Moving Through a 3D Space

August 22nd, 2009Blog2 comments

The First Day of Year Zero Rehearsal: We’re going from lines in a script to people actually moving through a three dimensional space, laughing, yelling at each other, trying not to knock anything over.

That’s one of the big differences between theater and other storytelling mediums: There are live people acting onstage in front of you, and it imparts a special kind of energy to the audience.

It’s like the difference between listening to music on an iPod and seeing your favorite group play live. The difference between watching a comedian on TV and seeing him/her in person — there’s this massive energy that you feel from seeing a live performance. You’re witnessing intensely private moments. Peoples’ lives are changing before your eyes. It’s a powerful thing — almost like a physical sensation. And you’re sharing it with the people onstage, the other people in the audience — you can feel their energy too.

But to make this happen, we’ve first got to figure out how we’re going to move these human beings around on stage — how we’re going to dress them, light them, set up the space in which they’re going to play.

Costumes, Sets, Lighting, Audio: First day of rehearsal usually includes a design presentation where we get to see lots of cool things:

Costumes — It’s always amazing how lines in a script can inspire a talented costume designer to sketch out looks for fictional characters. One special line in the play about Banana Republic informed a whole bunch of design choices about a certain character. Pretty cool!

Sets — This is one of my favorite things: When a set designer brings in a tiny model of the set. Tiny chairs, tiny tables. Ours has amazing elements that evoke the imagery of places as distant to each other as Choeung Ek and Long Beach’s Cambodian community, and brings them together.

Lighting — Great lighting can create moods and effects; transitions, show the passage of time. I’ve been told this play is a particularly “cinematic” one — it moves quickly and deals with a lot of imagery. Light and darkness play a big part in this, so great lighting is essential.

Audio — Holy crap, the music. Hip hop, Southern Californian culture, and the Khmer language converge incredibly in the music selections. They’ve also engineered audio/sound effects that come from their natural sources (i.e. a car radio’s music comes from the car radio itself), and have environmental sounds too.

And there you have it. Lines on a page are coming to life in 3D space. The key word is “life” — as in life lived before your eyes. A live performance, transmitting energy by live wires.

Plus someone gets beat up over a cheeseburger.