008 Midsummers Night

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008 Midsummers Night

Type: Opera Stage Set
Location: Citta del Pieve, Italy.
Year: Performance September 2007

 
Working with the Fiber Arts students and the costume designer, Rachel Miller, at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, we designed and fabricated a light weight, collapsible, stage set that was transported to Italy for an opera performance.

The opera was based upon William Shakespeare’s Comedy “ A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and called for the creation of a ‘forest’ while leaving room for the cast to move energetically through the space.

The set, was designed as a series of hung scrim panels, appliquéd with white branch-like patterns in opaque white cloth. The assemblage of suspended panels oriented at different angles and layered in the depth of the stage evoked the density of an ethereal forest. The forms camouflaged the performers as they moved from background to foreground to deliver their vocal performances and allowed for multiple time frames to be accommodated within the singular space of the stage. The game of masked identities and illusion central to the plot, unfolded in the structure of the layered set.