late-nite designin'

[jazzfish]

Man, I hate design lab.

We're supposed to put together a gallery of our best work to show off. Fine and dandy. Except that well over half of the gallery exhibits are new work, assigned specifically for design gallery. This strikes me as counter to the idea of showing off our best work.

I'm entirely done with Costume, except for the part which isn't going to get done at all. I'm just about done with Lighting: one small sketch that wants shadows and one that wants existence. Scenic is really kicking my ass. Redo the study model, redo the color sketch [or not; I may skimp on that part], redo the floor plan [done], and write up a no-more-than-one-page justification of my existence my designs. [I am so tempted to print, in big bold letters, "I don't feel that I need to explain my art to you, Warren." Probably a result of too little sleep.]

It's the gallery display that's really going to kill me, though. The grading handout for Scenic says "If it looks like a 5th grade bulletin board it will be graded as such." This does not bode well for arriving at 9:15 and setting my crap up quickly.

I think I've had five cups of tea this evening. The first one was Lady Grey; the rest have been from a company called Tazo [slogan: "The reincarnation of tea"], a brand called "Awake."

Whee. I hate design lab. I'll hate it again next semester, too.

Comments

[jazzfish]

The short answer is "no."

Lisa the costume design prof does things independently of the other two. (Makes sense; there was no lighting prof last year, so it was more that she and Randy did totally different things.) So, for costume we did designs for a commedia dell'arte version of "Androcles and the Lion."

For lighting we did some interpretations of bits from the Tao te Ching, and then finished up with two projects based on The Poem.

The Poem is a thing that Randy, the scenic design prog, wrote 10-12 years ago, based on an existing script. We had to make up a set design for the play the poem was based on without reading the play: Randy gave us vague guidelines like "it's very episodic" and "there's a scene on a bridge, and there's a scene on a loft." As time went on he added in more of these vague guidelines, making for a very frustrating design experience. It was as if he expected us to be designing to the script despite not having read it.

Next semester we get to choose from ten or so plays. I'll probably wind up with either Brecht's _Good Woman of Szechuan_ or David Henry Hwang's _M. Butterfly_. Costuming will still be its own thing, though; these are just for lighting and scenic.

[laughin.livejournal.com]

I was curious because some friends of mine took the class *gasp* 10 years ago. They had to design lighting for "Hair."