Arthur Rackham

I have chosen to look at the play Ashputtel by Carol Ann Duffy (adapted form the Grimm tales). I am focusing on scene eight, the third and final feast, where Ashputtel loses her slipper.







I started my research with Rackham (1829-1939) as he did illustrations for the Grimm tales. My production designs would fall into the fantasy genre. The theme I explored was fairgrounds. The idea for the stage was for it to be bright with lots of lights, and for the back drop to be in black and white. This idea came from 'The Wizard of Oz', where the two tone
world represents normal boring everyday life and the colourful world represents something exciting.












































































Thursday, 2 December 2010

Sketch Model Continued
















These images are my 1:25 sketch model with 1:25 scale people, roughly 5ft 5'' and 5ft 11''. They contain a kind of band stand where Ashputtel and the Prince dance, some have the helter skelter in. I think the helter skelter would have to be a flat. I have removed the two front stalls from my original sketch, as there isn't a lot of room.











I think this design looked good on paper, but it doesn't work well on the model. I think the weakest aspect is the backdrop, as most of it is hidden, and there is a huge gap at the top. Also I dont like the trees, they don't look very strong, so I am going to refer back to Arthur Rackham's work to improve the backdrop.

Sketch Model




This is the backdrop roughly to scale, from two different angles.