An Oakland Performing Arts Collective
First I will give some background on the art piece, Running Fence by Christo and Jean Claude, and then I will get into how we acquired a piece this fabric and how we are using it in Ship of Fools Act II: The Terrible Beast. First, what the running fence is…. Christo and Jeanne-Claude Running [...]
A new character is introduced in Act II Ship of Fools! A condemned clown, Auguste. I won’t give away too much about this character and how he fits in to the scheme of things with the other comedia del arte characters, Harlequin, Pierrot and Columbine, but let’s just say that this new character is in [...]
So, we’re coming into that fun part of a show where all the final technical elements come together. My focus this week has been to develop a lighting system appropriate for our foolish show. We have a bunch of conventional stage lights (spotlights, PAR cans), some lights that one might find in a garage (those [...]
Initial sketch: (click to enlarge) Important elements for the poster: in the style of an old nautical map, different perspectives of flat map and images on the sea stylized border and banner with title the ship which is the trunk of the paradise tree compass rose; could have dates on it? islands reference other things [...]
Act II of Ship of Fools focuses on the fools encountering a terrible beast, but what does it look like? There are many precedents for sea monsters from all over the world; the leviathan, the kraken, the loch ness monster…. Lets take a look at a few for some inspiration. Maybe our terrible beast will [...]
The three main characters of The Ship of Fools comment, critique and at times disrupt the story as it moves along. They also manipulate the Fools, be they in mask or puppet form. These roles are modeled after 3 archetypal characters from Commedia dell’arte, an Italian theatrical style that began in the 1500s and, “was [...]
I find it most efficient to recycle old materials and use up stuff laying around the house when constructing something new. This cuts down on things sitting in storage and gives new life to something I may have been reluctant to get rid of but would never use the same way again. I often find [...]
“(The Ship of Fools) had a genuine existence, for they really did exist, these boats that drifted from one town to another with their senseless cargo. An itinerant existence was often the lot of the mad…They were often entrusted to the care of river boatmen” -from Michel Foucault’s History of Madness “Renaissance men developed a [...]
“The vain spectacle, the frivolous sounds and the maelstrom of noise and colour that make up the world is only ever the world of madness, and that must be accepted. This artificiality of the world must be welcomed, and the knowledge that shallowness belongs not only to the spectacle but to the spectator as well, [...]