Wednesday, July 28, 2004
London circa 1838; the Different World of "A Little Princess"
"A Little Princess" takes place in London, England and Timbuktu, circa 1838.
Every aspect of a theatre production is impacted by knowing where and when a play takes place. Clearly the costume designers must research an era and locale to determine how the particular characters in a play would dress. The scenic designers do the same, trying to approximate the how the interiors of the day would look.
One could say: well, most people in the audience won't know the difference..why go to the trouble? But it's about more than pleasing the few in the audience who might be experts in a particular historical era. It's also about providing the actors more tools with which to build their characterizations and assist the director and cast in creating another world up on stage.
London 1838 was a very different social setting that our own casual Silicon Valley culture in 2004. Frankly it's even quite different from the London of today, starting with the fact that a major setting is a school for young women. This kind of school was actually a rarity - typically women were only educated so that they could become good wives. Much was said about how women should be conversant only insofar as they could please their husbands with conversation and appreciate exactly how knowledgeable their husbands were.
London society was built on rules. Everything from appropriate dress to how many times a lady should stir her tea had a rule for it (twice if you want to know.) Those who ignored these rules were considered vulgar and lower class. In a cast where most of the young ladies wear jeans and tank tops - there will be a lot to learn...and get used to!
For example, coming back to costumes, from the outside it might not be easy to tell if a woman is actually wearing a corset underneath her period-looking dress. So why bother? It's certainly not the most comfortable thing for an actor to wear through a two-hour show. But that's partly the point. When you wear a corset, it changes your posture, it makes you more aware of your breathing (and certainly makes it clear why women of the era fainted a lot and needed smelling salts!)
The city of Timbuktu is a large part of this production (I won’t tell you how for fear of spoilers) and something to remember is the word "globalization" was not around in 1838. Timbuktu was a crossroads of many trades in Africa but barely known to Europeans and had a mystique to it. Many French and Englishmen had ventured out to see if the rumors of gold were true but almost no one had succeeded.
This look at a society and world no longer familiar to us should be fun to see, and the design staff do their homework to make sure you're seeing a fair representation of it (even if most of us wouldn't know the difference!)
Every aspect of a theatre production is impacted by knowing where and when a play takes place. Clearly the costume designers must research an era and locale to determine how the particular characters in a play would dress. The scenic designers do the same, trying to approximate the how the interiors of the day would look.
One could say: well, most people in the audience won't know the difference..why go to the trouble? But it's about more than pleasing the few in the audience who might be experts in a particular historical era. It's also about providing the actors more tools with which to build their characterizations and assist the director and cast in creating another world up on stage.
London 1838 was a very different social setting that our own casual Silicon Valley culture in 2004. Frankly it's even quite different from the London of today, starting with the fact that a major setting is a school for young women. This kind of school was actually a rarity - typically women were only educated so that they could become good wives. Much was said about how women should be conversant only insofar as they could please their husbands with conversation and appreciate exactly how knowledgeable their husbands were.
London society was built on rules. Everything from appropriate dress to how many times a lady should stir her tea had a rule for it (twice if you want to know.) Those who ignored these rules were considered vulgar and lower class. In a cast where most of the young ladies wear jeans and tank tops - there will be a lot to learn...and get used to!
For example, coming back to costumes, from the outside it might not be easy to tell if a woman is actually wearing a corset underneath her period-looking dress. So why bother? It's certainly not the most comfortable thing for an actor to wear through a two-hour show. But that's partly the point. When you wear a corset, it changes your posture, it makes you more aware of your breathing (and certainly makes it clear why women of the era fainted a lot and needed smelling salts!)
The city of Timbuktu is a large part of this production (I won’t tell you how for fear of spoilers) and something to remember is the word "globalization" was not around in 1838. Timbuktu was a crossroads of many trades in Africa but barely known to Europeans and had a mystique to it. Many French and Englishmen had ventured out to see if the rumors of gold were true but almost no one had succeeded.
This look at a society and world no longer familiar to us should be fun to see, and the design staff do their homework to make sure you're seeing a fair representation of it (even if most of us wouldn't know the difference!)
