Photoshop Project

Theatre is an art form on transformation and imagination. Together actors, directors and designers create a world that an audience can observe, interact with and believe. They take a world that exists in their minds and the mind of a playwright and put it on stage. The goal of a piece of theatre is to bring a world to life, familiar or strange, realistic or fantasy, grand or intimate, for as long as the show is on stage, but is ultimately temporary. In this series of postcards i wanted to explore the transformation of a rehearsal space, namely room 1721 in The Haas Performing Arts Center, in the process of my rehearsals of the GVSU production of The Tempest by William Shakespeare. I have included lines from the play on the backs of the postcards that relate to their subjects and served as inspiration for the postcards themselves. 

My So Potent Art

In the first postcard, I wanted to show a rehearsal space in the process of being transformed into a new space, but not completely a new world. In this space, a waterfall bursts through a familiar theatre scene of curtains and empty audience seats, mirroring the shape of the curtains, but transforming them into something that doesn't belong there. In the accompanied text with this piece Prospero, a great magician and main character of the show, describes his power to create and control the elements. In a way, an actor's power is similar; we create a world for the audience to observe and explore, imagination becomes our "so potent art"

 This isle is full of noises
In the Second postcard, I wanted to show a space in almost full transformation. The walls of the space are still there, but there is a feeling that they are the falsehood, and that there is a grand world beyond them, rather than being confined to a space. Creating a full, rich world is a goal in theatre. The audience must believe that there is a world beyond what they see on stage, that the characters have lives outside of what the audience observes, and that they have thoughts and feeling other than what they express in the play. This piece is accompanied by an excerpt spoken by Caliban, a half fish half man creature who has lived on an island his whole life, describing where he lives and how he feels about it in rich detail.

 Our Revels now are Ended
This postcard focuses on what happens once a production is over. Theatre is ephemeral; a temporary art form that is almost impossible to recreate exactly. Each performance is different, and exists only for the approximately 2 hours it is played on the stage. Once it is over the world we created is gone, all that is left is in our minds and the minds of our audience. This piece shows part of what it is like when a show is over. The memories of the world you created are still there, but it is now a brand new blank space to create a new world for the next show. It is mostly back to its neutral state, but the more you look at it, hints of the past two postcards are visible, reminding you both of what was and what could be. The excerpt accompanying this piece is spoken by Prospero after a fantastical masque he orchestrated, performed by fairies and sprites, ends.