As I write this I am very excited. I have recently made a fantastic discovery. Her name is Ren. She’s a young designer who came out of the blue and is making my Robin Hood directorial dreams a reality. The aesthetic concept for the show is garbage bag chic (thank you to The City for the term!). I wanted it to look as if it had been built out of garbage and random materials that had been found and brought together to tell the story. The original concept for the script was that the story was being told by the transients and homeless individuals in a tent city. We strayed from this narrative concept but the aesthetic stuck.
It is potentially an incredibly engaging and fascinating aesthetic but also a very challenging one. How do you make it clear that this is an aesthetic concept and not a show that was just throw together with materials you had lying around? We’ve discovered that this can be done through exaggeration, humour and attention to detail.
Anyway, back to Ren. Ren has the challenge of building 3 character masks, 2 giant puppets (Bread and Puppet theatre style), 4 ‘potatoe head masks’ (photos to come!) and 2 sportscaster puppets. Lots for one person to conceive and build!
The original idea with the sportscaster puppets was for them to be muppets but Ren expanded that idea and made them in to garbage muppets. As you can see the resulting puppets are awesome!
