Just a list of thoughts to keep the discussion going over break.
1. The wood paneled room seems to be currently suffering from a confused identity. If we could better articulate the specific things we want the audience to take away from the scene in that room, it would help me to design the space around those ideas. The two biggest ideas that, to me, it seems we are working with in that room are: 1. hell is a soul sewage plant where our attempts at self improvement and communication only result in further alienation, 2. this hell is a place that faust's clean office world could turn into if he decides to sign this pact with mephistopheles.
are these correct? are there other ideas that i am missing?
2. What is the meaning we are attempting to glean from doing the scene twice (once in meph's world and once in faust's)? We need to figure out what being in the two separate rooms gives us that being in just one can't. For instance: Why aren't we just in faust's world and are able to see meph and his soul sewage plant through video? Why do we actually need to go into hell? Perhaps we experience more of a shift between the two worlds then what we currently have.
3. What I'd like to explore is really giving both worlds specific identities that inform but are separate from one another.
Faust's world:
Right now the part of this world that I love is this feeling of a cheap, tacky day spa in florida in the late 70's. I want to keep working with this and see how empty but somehow grossly unsterile we can make this place.
Can Mephistopheles change appearance when we see him in Faust's world? I'd love to see him as some type of infomercial or used car salesman. I just seems like Mephistopheles should be somehow out of his own world (uncomfortably or obviously-costumed) when he is dealing with Faust.
Maybe Mephistopheles' little corner in which he sits is constructed in a way that we understand he is in a "studio" designed specifically to mesh with Faust's world (i'm thinking white seamless paper and a fake plant), whereas the rest of "hell" around him (including his little devil servants) is this absolute destruction/chaos/obsolete/useless/pink-foamed world.
Okay. I have more thoughts but I think this enough to get us started. Go team!
1. The wood paneled room seems to be currently suffering from a confused identity. If we could better articulate the specific things we want the audience to take away from the scene in that room, it would help me to design the space around those ideas. The two biggest ideas that, to me, it seems we are working with in that room are: 1. hell is a soul sewage plant where our attempts at self improvement and communication only result in further alienation, 2. this hell is a place that faust's clean office world could turn into if he decides to sign this pact with mephistopheles.
are these correct? are there other ideas that i am missing?
2. What is the meaning we are attempting to glean from doing the scene twice (once in meph's world and once in faust's)? We need to figure out what being in the two separate rooms gives us that being in just one can't. For instance: Why aren't we just in faust's world and are able to see meph and his soul sewage plant through video? Why do we actually need to go into hell? Perhaps we experience more of a shift between the two worlds then what we currently have.
3. What I'd like to explore is really giving both worlds specific identities that inform but are separate from one another.
Faust's world:
Right now the part of this world that I love is this feeling of a cheap, tacky day spa in florida in the late 70's. I want to keep working with this and see how empty but somehow grossly unsterile we can make this place.
Can Mephistopheles change appearance when we see him in Faust's world? I'd love to see him as some type of infomercial or used car salesman. I just seems like Mephistopheles should be somehow out of his own world (uncomfortably or obviously-costumed) when he is dealing with Faust.
Maybe Mephistopheles' little corner in which he sits is constructed in a way that we understand he is in a "studio" designed specifically to mesh with Faust's world (i'm thinking white seamless paper and a fake plant), whereas the rest of "hell" around him (including his little devil servants) is this absolute destruction/chaos/obsolete/useless/pink-foamed world.
Okay. I have more thoughts but I think this enough to get us started. Go team!
Posted by Brian Grego, 7:08PM 3/8/2010