Thursday, July 05, 2007
Water Onstage
New York Times: "The actors who perform in Shakespeare in the Park are used to the vagaries of outdoor theater: the inclement weather, the planes buzzing overhead, the bugs, the yowling of mating raccoons (really). But this year’s production of “Romeo and Juliet” added a new difficulty: water. Lots of it, the centerpiece of this Verona is a 70-foot, 4,000-gallon pool."
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2 comments:
A theater in Denver did a production of Metamorphosis, which included an enormous pool constructed underneath the stage, with a retractable floor. A friend of mine who worked on the crew had a few horror stories, water and electrics don't play well together.
Pools seem to be a fun interesting object to put on stage. We were thinking of putting one in "The Tempest" at school but found some problems. One problem was that water is hard to maintain in a school environment and you have to keep the water at a reasonable temperature that is not to cold and not to hot so actors can move about and get/in out of the water comfortably. Also its not good to to have people in a swimming and getting out of the water and going outside (which is backstage) at night time during the winter. This risk the changes of getting sick. I am not sure why my director/teacher was thinking of bring such a complicated element into a theater not meant for a pool and in the winter.
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