#STAGE

[belovedbluv]

Andre Cymone, member of Prince’s band pre-Revolution and also his best friend. In the band he was a bassist, songwriter, and record producer. Also known as The Godfather of Minneapolis.

[snowonourskin]

💗

[riphertoshreds]

debbie harry performing in paris, 1978.

[birdbathcabal]

Badu

[389]

Berlin Atonal festival Sergey Skip

[ladybugpowermakeup]

Ooh ooh! I've thought about this extensively, excuse my ramblings.

First of all, we need to understand what our stage looks like and what it will need to create these illusions. So for starters, our stage will be separated into 3 levels. On the bottom level is the stage itself. This is where we see ships, most mortals, and a lot of the fight scenes. Then, there are two (okay technically three) more platforms that span the length of the stage, two that make the middle level and one that makes the top level. Connecting the two levels is a staircase in the center. Basically, it'll look like this.

The scale isn't great, but you get the idea. The second level (the two platforms) are for all kinds of things: The Trojan walls, the homes of a lot of demigods, Penelope's room, and Athena's quick thought location to name only a few. The third level is basically only for the gods or those who are holding themselves as important as the gods (and are about to get smacked down for it). This is a callback to actual ancient Greek theater where the gods would always be lowered onto the stage from above! One note, there is a small gap between the back of the platforms and the scrim - this'll be important for some practical effect things later.

The other thing we will need is a flying apparatus and a similar mechanism for moving small objects like ribbons or costumes in a way that looks magical. This will be used for Zeus so he can fly, for Poseidon so he can look larger during Get In The Water, and some of our bigger monsters like Scylla, as well as some smaller effects. I want to clarify that I actually have never worked with these, so it might not be feasible, but this is a base idea that can be more practically put into use by actual theater techs.

Okay. So the first big hurdle is how to do the cyclops. Honestly, it's pretty simple: You just have a costume that makes the actor in it look larger than they are - basically, the actor's head is in the chest of the costume and the head is a good two feet above the rest of the cast. Then you have another actor behind the scenes doing the voice and the actor onstage is moving the mouth, like a really elaborate puppet show.

Then we have Poseidon throwing all the ships around until Ody is left with just one. For this, we're going to have to suspend our disbelief for the sake of theater, but we will have a way to get the same kind of effect. Basically, the ship in on the main level of the stage and there are parts that are detachable, so as the men are singing "Captain, captain", the parts of the ship they're literally on are being dragged offstage (I'm not sure entirely how this would work from a technical angle, but I've seen theaters do this kind of thing before so I know it's possible.)

Then we have Circe turning the men into pigs. Again, we're going to do a little suspension of disbelief. Basically, Circe will appear on the middle left platform, which will be equipped with a semi-sheer curtain (which will be used a few other times in the show). She will come out from behind the curtain and hold it open for the men to enter. They disappear offstage, and at that point you could honestly just rely on narration and lyrics to imply that the men are pigs at all, you don't need to physically see it. Then at the end of Other Ways, the men all come onstage again to join Ody.

For Scylla, it's going to be a little more complicated. Since she's a monster with 6 heads but is also portrayed as complex and a parallel to Ody, we're going to have an actual actress playing "Scylla" and then 6 other "heads" that are independent of her in a sense. The scene starts with Scylla the actress on her own, no heads or anything, sitting on the top of the stairs, looking down/not at the audience. Just being creepy. The ship is on the main stage, of course, and it comes to center stage just in time for the dramatic tempo change.

When Scylla says "Hello", it's the first time the audience sees her face and she has creepy reflective eyes in some way. Then, six... basically creepy black wind socks, rise up from behind the platforms. These are the heads, and they will (if this is technically possible, which I think? it might be?) be on wires that are connected to actors. So when the heads move, they go straight to the actors with the torches and they can be "dragged" offstage and then released to go back to Scylla herself and then eventually back down below the platforms again.

In both songs Zeus is the big bad for, he's going to use our flying machine to raise him up while he shoots lighting at his victims. This is both Thunder Bringer and God Games. There's not a lot more technical stuff in those songs, so we'll move on.

And finally, for Poseidon in Get In The Water, we're basically going to be using two things. Our flying harness, and ribbons/cloak that represent his water form. A little bit like Elphaba in the stage version of Wicked, we're going to dim the lights and he will have a long cloak/cloth connected to his flying harness that represents his water form, and other ribbon type things on wires to be "flung" out across stage. So when we have his "No", the flying harness raises him and the wind begins to blow the cloak around to make him seem bigger, while on his "DIE", the ribbons will star flying around on the wires and several of them will envelop Ody, since we can't have Ody pushed into the water.

Then, when we have all our friends from the underworld singing, they will all come out onto the platforms/stage and their role will basically be to (metaphorically) pull him out of the water by pulling the ribbons. Anticlea, Polites, and Eury will all be untangling the ribbons around Ody, and the rest of the men will be pulling the other ribbons, and through 600 Strike, instead of an anime jetpack fight scene, Ody will basically "unravel" Poseidon's Kaiju form with the help of his friends and loved ones until Poseidon finally falls and loses his cloak. This would be tricky from a costume design standpoint, but my idea is that you could have it all be tearaway, so as the song goes on, he loses more and more of his "water" until he finally falls and he and Ody can confront each other in that scene we all know and love.

Anyway! That's my ideas - it's very long, I know, it took me about a week to fully put it all into words. But I hope if nothing else you got a kick out of it!

i love epic but like. how are they gonna put any of that on stage?? like scylla? charybdis? circe turning the pigs back into people? like how is that gonna get done??

[seungs]

SEUNGMIN – ‘Be Responsible’ special stage @ 2019 SBS Gayo Daejeon (191225)

[moontouring]

TY 이렇게 ✊🏻 귀엽긔 👊🏻 있긔 ✊🏻 없긔 👊🏻

[lycheesan]

Based on that twitter meme

[dzckling]

like or reblog if you save or use.

[illustratus]

An Audience in Athens during the Representation of Agamemnon by Aeschylus — by William Blake Richmond

[ncuts]

More Pics of Ncuti in the Importance of Being Ernest!

[thatsbelievable]

[windbreakerdaily]

[riphertoshreds]

Stevie Nicks photographed in 1983 during the Wild Hearts Tour.