News | oudaily.com: OU University Theatre will open “The Birds” Friday, where actors will debut their performance and costume designers will showcase their creations.
The play is an Indigenous adaptation of a Greek comedy by Aristophanes by the same name. The play, written by Yvette Nolan, follows two characters who leave the modern world seeking freedom and find the utopian land of the birds.
3 comments:
This is so cool! I love the emphasis on different concentrations working together on one design. I know the importance of design experience is to be able to create a vision in your head, but the chance to get to work as either the costume designer of the puppeteer on this play would be the coolest thing ever. I absolutely love bouncing ideas off of other designers and this genuinely sounds like a dream. It is also important to note that designing together did not take away from either design area, but it enriched the visual language of the play. Creating together made the costumes and puppets cohesive in a way that would not be suited for two designers having designed them for their one separate visions. This approach is also very specific to the play they are putting on, which is important to consider whenever you are establishing design teams. No two plays are going to look the same, so why stick to these strict boxes?
I like seeing how many people are involved in the costume design for this production. Having different designers and a puppeteer all working on separate parts of the same visual world makes it feel like a real collaboration instead of one unified vision from a single person. It is interesting that the puppeteer shaped a lot of the bird designs first and the costume work followed that. It really shows how flexible the design process can be in theatre, where one role can lead and others will respond and adjust. I also find it interesting that Lane focused on the human characters while still responding to everything happening in the bird world, so the two sides of the show could feel distinct but still connected. Overall, it is just cool to see how different roles overlap and influence each other in practice, especially when everything has to come together into one production on stage in the end.
I really love the collaboration that they talk about in this article. costumes and puppetry often really go hand in hand, certainly depending on the exact form of puppetry it will look different but I think it's really valuable to understand that collaboration and interconnectedness between departments will really enhance storytelling when done right. Because we rely so much on Vision, generally, it is so important that costumes and other visual design aspects enhance the story and the characters of the audience can immediately pick up on what might be going on. especially when you have puppetry it wants to be clear where that is happening. I think it's really interesting that they are doing such strong opposition between the puppeted bird characters and the human characters in the show and I think that the combination of collaboration and individual work will really aid in the very distinct designs of the characters.
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