Today I went into Studio X and spent some time playing with stage layout and audience layout. This was just for a big space.
I really like the idea of the audience being sat in the round, it looks quite daunting for me as a performer and I know from experience that when performing in the round there is no where for an actor to hide, they must always be present on the stage both in body and mind. I also think it works with something I wrote a few years ago about depression, saying “It’s like a broken circle.” This would work nice as an opening line or something to draw the audience in, as they are sat in a circle. I think the circle would need to be broken too, by a missing chair. Then, in the middle of the circle there could either be a spotlight on a book from which I will be reading the script from or just on me. OR, within the circle there could be a projection on the ground of a brain, the circle therefore being the skull that protects the brain and the missing chair, the gape within the circle being that missing link of the protection. However, this may be being too ambiguous and complex. The performance is about words not tech.
Another layout idea I experimented with was of having the different areas on the stage. I used chairs and books to symbolise where each spotlight or platform would be. For the process of playing, I only marked out 5 spaces as the space itself isn’t that big.
