Design of a Mobile Shadow Theater for the Performance The Maiden Tsar
Визуализация констуркции
The Maiden Tsar is a shadow puppet show based on the eponymous fairy tale-poem by M. Tsvetaeva. Using painted figures and light, the audience is shown a story of love in its various, and sometimes absurd, manifestations. At the center of the performance is a belligerent woman, the Maiden Tsar, who lives in a world of high ideals. The painful reality and the world the audience is immersed in deprive her of the strength to fight for herself and her dreams.
The design of a mobile shadow theater was developed and created especially for the performance The Maiden Tsar.
During the work on the performance a concept of dual space was born, which the characters of the fairy tale-poem inhabit. The Maiden Tsar lives in the «air», in the world of high ideals and impossible love. The other characters in the play exist in the «aquarium,» where the quiet life of ordinary people often takes perverse forms, and possible love turns out to be a deception.
The metaphor of a dual space is the key to the design of the mobile theater of shadows. At the bottom there are three screens, representing the walls of the «aquarium», at the top there is a large screen — the embodiment of the space of air.
The structure combines opposing worlds in a single theatrical action. The upper screen visually connects with the three lower screens from the auditorium: when the actress dips her long arms into the «water,» in the «aquarium» the actors continue her movements with cut-out moving figures.
