BLACKOUT
How to Design Theatre - Creating a Model Box for a Play
Blackout by Davey Anderson is a play about a boy called James who goes off the rails when his grandfather dies. James is bullied and confused about his identity, struggling to grasp any control over his life in Glasgow. He turns to violence as an outlet and as he gets more and more lost the more and more dangerous he becomes.
-“When People upset me I draw pictures of them on buses going to Hell Disaster or OHIO” (Warren, 2006).
-“This drawing means love. Mum and Tim. I’m there. Dad and Harriet over there in their house. When I draw I get to make things up. Sometimes though I wish it were real, like that my mum and dad and Harriet and me were all still together in our old house” (Elliot).
Without writing the play up I'll simplify it down to its units here:
Wake Up
Confused
Broken family Life
Happy Days with Grand-dad
Observing the outside world from your bubble
Lonely
Creating your Identity
Punished for not knowing who you are
Delaying with loneliness by horror
All free will taken away
Taking control the Painful way
A new Identity
Your Own Rules
Not Scared Anymore
Feeling Pain to feel alive
Belonging
Raining the storm has arrived
Stakes Rising
Time Running Out
Dead Inside. Thirst for Control
Adult View of yourself
Escape to a Fantasy World
The fantasy world turns scary
Hollow
Rules save him
Mummy
What now?
The World of the Play:
Looking in detail at the script I found the world of the play...
I wanted to create two worlds – one that was James’s mind and one that was the reality around him.
I chose to show his mind through a video game and his reality by what is on stage around him.
By looking closely at the text I wrote down all the things that existed in the world of the play and sectioned them according to the two different ones I wanted to create:
Things that belong in the Room (Reality) Things that belong on Screen (His Mind)
“White Walls, Bright Lights, metal door, small room” Under the Surface - lost
Conform to society ‘Famous Doctor’. School No School
Jigsaws, cards, tea Alcohol and Drugs
Black Combats and long Hair Skinhead
Death Jekyll and Hyde
Belts and Laces No rules or constraints
Time runs out Serial Killing
Words Screaming
Law No Laws
Storm and Rain Storm and Rain
Looking at the list you can see that the two different worlds start to merge together and become the same place. From the above table the ‘world on stage’ looks most like a mental institution and the ‘world on screen’ looks like a lost world (mutants in a remote place).
After reading the script there were several things I considered before creating my design, including the theatre venue.
Looking at the Theatre Space - The Arches in Glasgow:
(The Arches is an old venue underneath Glasgow Train Station -http://www.thearches.co.uk/about-us)Trains – Travelling and Control
History
Thunder of the trains running over-head
Things that lies beneath
How do we connect with the character?
Through family: The protagonist, James, is sitting on his Grandfather's knee at the beginning of the play. His Grandfather is telling the protagonist a story whilst they both play a Play Station game. As his Grandads story gets more and more sinister so does the game. The game itself starts to come ‘alive’ and begins to control itself without the aid of a human being. As the play goes on James’s hair falls out in reference to when he shaves his head in the play.The TV:
The video game being played resembles the set up of an older version of Super Mario, where Super Mario can only go forwards or backwards and going forwards is the only way to finish the game.
Instead of Super Mario, James is controlling an avator of himself. As he progresses through the game he and his avator start to get distracted. This leads to his avator dying at the mercy of another avator which looks a lot like his father.
He starts again and his avator starts to lose its hair. It starts to rain and the avator gets lost in the game, no longer going the one way allowed in a normal video game - the space on screen become four dimensional.
Land of the Game:
I wanted the world of the game to feel like a horror movie so I started looking at the game Silent Hill, the movie The Hills Have Eyes and Play Station’s ‘Horror Special’ magazine for images. I also bought some graphic novels to see what I could do with contrasting real life depictions of human beings with cartoon ones.
“I make up fantasy stories because my real life SUCKS...And now my fantasy life is starting to suck too” (Warren,2006).
Thinking about what things are scary:
Learning that what you were told isn’t true.
The Set:
On stage are two dead trees each with an old television abandoned in the branches. At centre stage there is James sat playing the video game. There are four TV's hanging from the rigging above the audience and four more which are on stage. The only lighting in the whole play is the light that comes from the television screens which are positioned on stage. The floor design is a canvas of the outline of the box TV's.
THE RESULT
He is playing a Play Station horror game where in the game he is the main character. The image he is watching is reciprocated around the theatre on the other televisions.On the screens we see his journey through the game which is interjected with flashing images of his hair falling out, and trees growing and dying.
As James gets closer to all his hair being gone he gives up on the clippers and pulls out his hair with his hands. He starts to bleed.
The game he is in control of turns on him and an enemy in the form of a masked man makes it ‘game over’James begins to make up his own rules which excites him.
It starts to rain on all the TV screens and his character gets lost and no longer follows the linear route allowed in a game.He gets frustrated and throws the controls at the screen breaking the connection between the box and the controller.
On screen he is given a life line.He feels his bald scalp
His mother comes in and massages his scalp
A flower grows on one of the dead trees.
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