Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: Marcia Milgrom Dodge believes in traveling light. "We're making a lot out of a little," says Dodge, who is director for the Pittsburgh Public Theater production of "Around the World in 80 Days" that begins performances Saturday at the O'Reilly Theater, Downtown. "We don't want to get bogged down with scenery." Mark Brown's ensemble-style comedy travels across Europe, Asia and North America with a cast of only five performers who play its 31 characters.
Friday, April 13, 2012
'Around the World' goes far with a minimal set
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: Marcia Milgrom Dodge believes in traveling light. "We're making a lot out of a little," says Dodge, who is director for the Pittsburgh Public Theater production of "Around the World in 80 Days" that begins performances Saturday at the O'Reilly Theater, Downtown. "We don't want to get bogged down with scenery." Mark Brown's ensemble-style comedy travels across Europe, Asia and North America with a cast of only five performers who play its 31 characters.
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4 comments:
I love the original book. Looking back, so much of the fun of reading it came from imagine all the fantastic things that happen to Phileas Fogg and Passepartout. It would be impossible for a theatrical production to realistically create all those things, and there's so much room for creative minimalist/representational interpretation. (The first thought that comes to my mind would be to use shadow-puppets to create the scenery.)
I'll definitely try to see this before it closes.
I can't imagine the beginning of this creative process. "So, we have to travel around the world in a little over 2 hours....GO." I would have no idea where to start. It only makes sense that in order to accomplish traveling to all of these places they must use minimal set pieces, although I usually am not thrilled with that choice. I haven't read the novel but I have seen the movie...I don't know what relevance that has. I would be very interested to see this piece, despite the minimal set.
I love when a director looks for more creative solutions than photo realism. The idea of less is more is something that the current fiscal climate is going to force to the forefront of many producing organizations decision processes. With all of the technology and resources at our disposal sometimes we miss the opportunity for a more creative solution to shows such as this. I am glad to see a show resting almost completely on the talent rather than the technology.
I agree that the "less is more" attitude can often times be an asset rather than a burden, though creating such a minimal set can actually be more daunting than simple. Sometimes the most difficult things to do in art is to scale back rather than push forward, it calls to question: what is the most important aspects of what I already have? It must require a lot of strength to totally eliminate the ideas a designer might be attached to, but know just won't work. For this, I am tremendously interested to find out what few pieces remain in the set, and how versatile those aspects actually end up being.
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