Antigone

In my history of design class our final was to do a project in the style of any designer.  This could be a costume rendering, a lighting storyboard, an aural collage, etc.  I decided to do a sound design in the style of Dan Moses Scherier.  This is the description of his first professional sound design: scraps of movie music, pounding heartbeats, rhythmic chants, loud breathing, deafening electronic blasts.  Reading this, I immediately thought of the version of Antigone I light designed sophomore year.  I took piece's from Becca's script and using as few words as possible I told the story using music and sound effects to fill in the rest.  I have my own flair in there of course, but I think Dan Moses would like the style and the effect.  

I've been wanting to post this for a while, but Blogger doesn't really support audio.  Finally my sister suggested that I make a video and hide the screen.  However, I also have a lot of good pictures from my light design that I can claim as my work, so I made a slideshow to go with the story.  Enjoy! (One thing, it starts off very quietly so don't adjust the volume until you're about 15 seconds in)

Furthermore, our final project for scene design was to completely design and do a half-scale model of any play.  I chose Antigone for this as well, thinking that a Greek play would lend itself well to any style I wanted.  Also, Becca's scene did not have a set so I knew I would not be influenced by my light design experience.  However, the more I got into it and the more I looked at other people's work I realized that the best Greek plays, especially Antigone, don't have sets.  Realistic sets, Greek or modern, look ridiculous and totally overwhelm the actors and undermine the play.  Therefore, my design is quite simple, but I am pleased with it.

I chose to have an altar center stage that has three rings around it.  The rings are all elevators so that there can be many variations to the altar's position.  There can be steps up or down or it could be level with the stage.  In the end, I wanted Antigone to ride down on it and have the altar become her tomb.  The background is a dual image of the palace and the desert; the richness unable to cover up the desolation that Creon has created.  To me, it is the image of the "whitewashed tomb" from the Bible.  It's simple, but I like it (if only the steamer had been working).

So this all is a very, very small slice of my classwork: the things that keep me up all night ;)