Petra Stokar – Master Thesis | 3.2.3 Start of the Process

3.2.3 Start of the Process

How do you explain what a set design is if your students have no concept of this?

First we asked them to create drawings, then to make a frontal view of a set design of at least one element of there dreams, this assignment brought us a big surprise. The students had no concept of what a set design was which was strange as they are on a set 50% of their life. I also didn't know that they have only seen pieces by danza mobila there own company and only the well off students would be able to see pieces outside of that.

«Seven bride and groom dancing.» If you look closer at the picture you see three woman, they look like brides. Two of the three are red and one is not coloured, they are standng in the middle of the picture. In front of them is a bird flying, his body and wings are open, he is drawn using a pencil. Behind the couples a group of four friends are dancing. They are brown in colour and walk on green grass. Then we have a row of six other people on the right side of the paper from top to bottom. They are stick men. All the figures in this painting have no face. The stage has two blue curtains on each side.

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Some people however made a Set design. An example of this is the drawing of Luis who has made a set design about 7 bride and grooms dancing:

The drawing is called, «Give me a Second» and is drawn on white paper. «Give me a Second» is also the title of the piece that this set design is part of. It is made by one of the students of Danza Mobile. It almost looks like wallpaper where the heads of blue flowers are visible. It is a powerfull light blue. The flowers are drawn as they would naturally grow in the wild.

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Jose drew a flower pattern, which symbolized the piece that was created using his own poetry and it was presented in bern at the comunity festival:

The title of this drawing is «Mal oficio» which means bad profession. I see a stage drawn on white paper. Six lights are orange coloured, they are bigger than in the preview pictures and they are not drawn in one line. They are shining in diffrent directions and the orange colour is not fully inside, it is shining out of it. In the middle of the drawing is largely written, «MAL OFICIO», and under it is a line that goes from one side of the page to the other. The Drawing has three mandalas and one circle, one on the top left hand corner and two on each bottom corner. On the right hand side in the middle of the page is a circle that is visible. On the bottom of the page are four people dancing, three with green heads and 1 head has no colour. They are standing in one line beneath each other, the people are drawn with a grey pencil in single lines, like stick figures.

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Other Drawings just show elements that are visible in a set design. For example lights the wings of the stage, and some objects on stage. For example a couch:

The title of the drawing is «King». It is drawn on A4 white paper, as are all the other paintings. It is a very abstract drawing and has a lot of play in it with curves and moving lines using different colours. One continuous line is moving through the whole picture, each part of it has a different colour, purple, orange, red and blue. It feels a bit like a gymnastic dancer is playing with a coloured ribbon. There are eleven small blue circles over the whole picture. They are not touching, in the middle there is a small distance in between them. In the bottom of the right hand corner, there is an abstract face visible. It is drawn in lines and the eyes are made out of half circles. On his head is a triangle hat. At the top left hand corner, there is a head with out a face and only a neck . I think the head is looking between two hills which are purple in colour. At the edge of the corner is a zig zag line from the bottom to the middle of the page.

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Other drawings are abstract, not understandble but artistic:

The title of this drawing is, «Stage Design of the Mirror of the Sky». It is a drawing where, two hearts are visible and is drawn in perspective. It is a dancing heart with a turquoise ribbon on it, behind it is a violet heart. The red heart is touching the violet heart on the bottom. The red heart is large in size. It looks a bit like an abstract person moving his upper body and kneeling on the floor. It looke like the heart is wearing a light blue trouser. There is a turquoise ribbon around his waste. The right hand side of it, is looking a bit like a wing made from red and yellow. I find it a very powerfull expression of love and joy.

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Looks like a writing exercise, the use of joined up writing can be seen here. Written with black pencil on a white background.

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Also looks like a writing exercise but the letter O is not joined up. There are three O´s visible written in help lines. Further more we see eight squares that fill up the rest of the page, all drawn in pencil.

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The title of the drawing is «Dance Spectacle» : It´s a pencil drawing on a white Paper background. On the very top of the page there is a blue line with a lot of dots, one after another which depict spotlights up on a dancefloor. Eight people with long body»s and long arms are dancing just as a child of seven years would draw them. They look a little bit like bananas but it gives them character. The two people on the left side are coloured with a red pencil, one has a blue head and one has a red head. They are not drawn on the ground, they are drawn in an empty white space where anythng can be possible. All faces are laughing. The hands are drawn with brown small circles. Two of them are red and six of them are brown. The body of the brown people are open and are not coloured in. They dance in close proximity of each other.

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The next picture is again a page with a black line, with brown dots under it, depicting the lights. In the brown dots there is a little bit of green visible. On stage there are two couples dancing, they are so small you can not even see if they are happy or sad. They are brown in colour and have green eyes. The couples are dancing far away from each other on the left and on the right side of the page. Again the figures are dancing in emptiness which makes you wonder how they will ever come together.

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This drawing is made on a white background. In general it has three colours green red and turquoise blue. It depicts a stage where the lighting is shown by a long line and dots. The lights are green and an airplane is flying on stage from the left to the right side. It is brown in colour and is drawn in abstract. Somebody is hanging on a rope almost landing in a bucket of water. Another man is there to receive him. On the left hand side there is a blue swimming pool where two stick people which are not coloured are swimming inside. In front of the swimming pool is a lifeguard sitting on a red chair, he is red in colour and in front of him is a red towel. The floor where he is sitting on, is green, but only on the left hand side of the paper, then in the middle of the page the floor stops and no colour can be seen anymore. Two people are sitting on a table that looks like a cake that is cut into pieces on the right hand side of the page. One person is red and one of them is transparent. On the right hand side of the page, the floor is red but the people are not touching it. In the middle of the page, there is a green man with brown hair. He is standing there in mid air.

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This picture is again a stage drawn on white paper, this time it is very realistically drawn. You can see that the person that drew this picture had a lot of technical knowledge. Spotlights are shining on stage in groups of two´s. The whole drawing is made with pencil and has no colour. Five people are dancing in the middle of the stage, they face the audience, three are dancing in the back of the stage and two are dancing in front. This picture is drawn in perspective and also has a lot of movement in it. The people that dance have different postures, some have the arms and legs stretched out, others have the arms in front of the body, some have their legs bent, some are standing straight. In the left front corner of the drawing somebody is laying on his side on the floor, facing the audience with one leg touching the stereo boxes. On both sides of the room are stereo boxes. The dancer in the left bottom corner is standing right under the spotlight, he is taking the lead in the dance and curtains are visible on both sides of the stage. For me this drawing has a lot of pleasure inside it, all though it has no colour it is magnificent.

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This is a drawing made on A4 white paper. When we look at the picture we see three circles and three long sausages that are intended to be clouds. They are spread over the top of the paper. The drawing is made using a blue pen. The sun has five rays, it is based on the left side, almost in the middle of the paper about 5cm under the clouds. Also on the left side of the paper we see a well with a bucket inside and a little man with jumper and trousers on, the man has no face. When we look at the centre we find a house drawn with a half circle, which looks like a window, with a little road leaving the house facing left. The road has a round curve to the right and is almost finishing at the end of the paper. It could even be a church because next to it, there are five squares drawn that give me the feeling of tombstones. There is also one pine tree to the right hand side of the church at the bottom of the page. What I find special about this picture is that it is the start of a perspective drawing. Most of the objects in the picture are not drawn in perspective yet. It has clearly a horizontal line where all the elements are based on, but it is not the edge of the paper as we can see the road carries on past the line. The proportions of the objects in the drawings are not realistically drawn because the sun is bigger than the little man.

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Again the drawing is done on A4 white paper. The title of this piece is «Pot with Flowers». The drawing is looking like cubicle with a flower drawn in the middle of it. The flower has a red stem which does not reach the bottom of the cubicle but ends in the centre in mid air. This is a very abstract drawing from a birds eye view. Four black beams are beaming out of the cubicle, they are attached to different abstract forms. Two beams on the top of the page, are attached to a circle and a thin square. Two beams at the bottom of the square, are attached to a circle. It is possible they are intended to be stage slides. At the bottom of the page there are three squares visible. One square has a circle in it, the other is a square within a square, there is also a very long square with something inside it, it almosts looks like a smiley face. In the middle of the right side of the page there is a very abstract object, which looks like a horses head that you would get on a chess board, but without ears. On the right hand side on the bottom corner, we find five little flowers. On the left hand side a black dot is drawn in the corner of the cubicle.

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