Scenografi till Batboy - the musical

Abstract

This is the project of making a stage design for Batboy – the musical, a cooporation with a network of musical artists. The aim of the project was to create a space on stage that strengthens and expands the experience of the story told, and find design solutions that give an extra dimension to the story. The prerequisites for my work were partly defined from the produc¬tion, as were my limitations. In the cast of ten artists some were to play more than one role, often one of the opposite sex. This required a flexible costume, and affected the concept of how to present the story. Together with the group I decided to work with a simple, androgynous base allowing me to add details. This could work both in the costume and in how the artists and the stage interacted. Working conceptually with materials and moods I searched for simple solutions that fitted the whole concept. As the different scenes were described in the manuscript, I needed to work with a slaughter house, a living room, a city hall, a hospital room, a tent, a forest and a mine or a cave. The solution was to divide the stage into two, making the left side the industrial, cold, un-human part (cave, slaugh¬ter house, hospital) and the right side the civilized cosy home. I worked with a simple module of steel gratings that could work as seatings, mine floor or hospital beds on the left side, and a simple black furniture surroun¬ded by plastic flowers on the surrealisticly cosy right side. In the second act the whole stage turned into a forest using a big analogue projector and a picture of a forest.