Theater Design has been progressed to build a space or place for a performance based on a backdrop using perspective. Since 19thcentury, many studies have been reported on the three -dimensional space of stage, started from Adolphe Appia. These studie...
Theater Design has been progressed to build a space or place for a performance based on a backdrop using perspective. Since 19thcentury, many studies have been reported on the three -dimensional space of stage, started from Adolphe Appia. These studies widely covered simple reproducing the places in the script and, by extension, reinterpreting the places found deep inside a performance and expressing conflicts between characters. Theater designers were able to effectively express the flow of psychology, employing architectural concept and philosophy visually reinterpreted through a wide range of stage languages such as space, text and characters.
Psychological flow of characters and their actions are not against the stage space, but alive in it. Thus, the stage visualization process via internal psychology of characters in the performance is essential for stage.
This study is performed to investigate the relationship between characters and space in a performance while designing the stage for “Time in Slaughterhouse” played in Seoul International Play Art Festival 2009. It analyzes the script, psychology of the main character, ‘Cheonpyeon’ who acts according to the script, and his social position from his job, and reorganized this past to establish the central concept of the performance space. According to the main concept of theater design, ‘remembering point’ of Cheonpyeon is the place where the form of the strata of memories are considered as a grave of the disappeared memory. It turned into the performance space via architectural language.
The deep hole is made in the stage floor to present a grave. Over the hole, two stories built narrowly and the theater floor in between them are effective to imagine the space outside of the stage that is not seen within the performance space. Also, the first stratum of Cheonpyeon’s memory protruding toward the front represents his characteristic wickedly changed since it is disappeared by human oblivion. On the highest stratum, his purist memories are placed where the ‘performance’ is shown. This is the place where his inner side and the characters with purity play a role.
As a result, the theater space which is formed with images from the grave of Cheonpyeon’s past memories utilized the theater place, Jayu Theater that was already there. Also, performance space is combined and rearranged based on the inner side of the main character, Cheonpyeon. Thus, the gap is created in the ambiguous space where theater is interlinked with the stage to present symbolic space existing but invisible in the performance. Also, architectural layer is used for audience to visually understand the inner condition of Cheonpyeon. The layer cuts off light coming inside the space, practically used to make light expressed with psychology of Cheonpyeon.
This study analyzes the relationship between the main character and the place where the character acts among stage languages, used when a stage designer infers design factors from performance script, thereby visualizing the stage.