The Servant of Two Masters
A play by Carlo Goldoni Directed by Giovanni Solinas Stage manager: Laurel Greenway ASM: Ben Dupre Artistic consultant: Dayane Mousib Technical director: Liam Gardner Scenic designer: Julie Guilbeau Costume designer: Suellen Coelho Makeup designer: Mary Grace Viator Prop designer: Julie Guilbeau Lighting designer: Ray Selle Scenic art charge: Julie Guilbeau Carlo Goldoni's "The Servant of Two Masters" is a commedia dell'arte show from the 1700s. It follows the mischievous antics of hungry servant Arlecchino and the marriage of Sir Pantalone's daughter, Clarice.
Final Shots
Official Production Shots by Paul Kieu
Final Shots (unofficial, including inventory pictures of the props I created/sourced)
My Process (Scenic)
Getting Started
The groundplan example the director asked me to reference in my design
Research
I began my research process by creating a list of research goals. I like to use casual websites like Pinterest and Reddit in my research process in addition to articles and images from across the web. Pinterest uses an algorithm that shows a feed related to recent searches and saves, so I am able to easily find inspiration that aligns with my personal style, as well as related images I may not have thought to specifically search for. I also like to use forum websites like Reddit to read about other designers' experiences with similar shows and styles of sets. Here is some of the information I gathered from several sources that helped me create my design: About Commedia: Commedia dell'arte is a style of theatre that was popularized during the Italian renaissance. It was intended to be viewed by the common man and was performed in the street on a simple wooden platform with some sort of curtain or tent to divide the platform into both a stage and a backstage. These shows are highly interactive due to the nature of theatre at the time. the audience is expected to talk back and interact with the characters. The sets are typically raised in order to allow a crowd to gather around in the street and be able to see what is happening. What makes Commedia so unique is its use of stock characters, which correspond to masks that the actors would wear. These characters could be found in all sorts of different plays, but they would always be the same character archetypes. Some examples of Commedia stock characters include Arlecchino or Truffaldino, the hungry servant, Sir Pantalone, the grumpy old man, Brighella, the butler/inkeeper, and Zanni, the jester-like servant. Commedia was most popular during a time when theatre design was not really practiced, so modern commedia designers, especially lighting and scenic designers, have to get creative with their work. About Servant: "The Servant of Two Masters" was written in the 1700s by Carlo Goldoni as an attempt to revive and repopularize the dying art of commedia dell'arte. The show includes a cast of half stock characters and half original characters, and features highly progressive themes for its time, such as criticism of the treatment of servants and women. By the time Servant was written, women were allowed to act onstage. The play features strong themes of female empowerment that still deliver a strong impact to this day. My direction: The first thing I noticed about traditional Commedia sets was that they reminded me of the stage in Esmerelda's dance scene in Disney's "Hunchback of Notre Dame." I ended up including stills from the movie in my reference images. I also noticed an opportunity to utilize my knowledge of painting wood grain. My school had not had a scenic painting class in several years, so most of my classmates had never had experience with it. I wanted to be able to share my painting knowledge through this process in hopes to push for more paint-heavy designs in the future. I also decided to include some personal flair in this design in the form of a decorative front piece to hide the footlights, and three giant flats with an Italian street painted on them to frame the set. I wanted the audience to feel like they were being transported to an Italian street in the renaissance period, seeing a Commedia show during its peak. The director requested that I include powerlines in the backdrop flats in order to tie the show back to the modern era, creating an unclear time period and making the show more applicable to the audience. We agreed that we wanted to avoid the fourth wall that historical plays such as Shakespeare's work tend to create between the audience and the characters. I find that old plays tend to be polarizing because not everyone in the audience understands the language and dynamic of the time period. Solinas and the design team aimed to blend the historical significance of this show with small elements of modern flair to fully capture the audience for the full duration of the show.
Color Research
The director had a color scheme in mind when I asked him if he had any elements in mind he would like to see. He wanted to see rich, dark, warm tones in the set. I ended up taking inspiration from Italian renaissance painters such as Caravaggio and Artemisia. I pulled colors directly from paintings using the eyedrop tool in Procreate. I decided to focus on colors like dark yellowish green, blood red, gold, and warm browns. I also made a note that black and white were used very sparingly in these paintings. Instead, they used light tans and very dark browns. I made sure my use of black and white was minimal. I also wanted to use metallic gold in my design. After seeing the costume renderings at the design presentation, I decided to soften and lighten my colors slightly in order to avoid clashing. I also added a soft sky blue to my color palette to tie in the pastel color palette of the young lovers' costumes.
Sketches and Renderings
Final Rendering
Model
Since I was learning Vectorworks in a class at the same time I was designing this show, I was unable to provide Vectorworks renderings or groundplans by the deadlines set in place. In order to remedy this, I ended up making a scale model with measurements on sticky notes attached to the model. The model was in 1/4 inch scale. Ideally, I would have liked to provide the carpentry team with both a model and a CAD rendering/groundplan, but we did the best we could with the resources we had. Unfortunately, this led to a couple of hiccups along the way. Lucky for me, I was in the shop every day and could catch things before it was too late. Due to the staff we had on hand and how closely I was able to work with the carpentry crew, there were also no drafts for the carpenters. This was in part as a result of the company not having a properly trained TD at the time. This meant my model had to be 100% to scale.
Setting Up the Stage
The design of this set called for some rigging, which was new to me at the time. We rigged up the center piece to the appropriate fly rail, and then raised it into place. The side pieces had to be pulled up manually in order to not break them. We did so by looping a rope around the panel and over the fly rail we wanted to attach it to. We then used the fly rail to pull the panel upwards. Once the panel was standing, a team in our scissor lift would hold the rope and rig the piece in place, while the ground support team held the panel on the floor. The decorative gold pieces on the front of the stage were made out of foam, using a method that I am very familiar with. We started by printing the design to scale on our plotter. We then taped the design in place and used sewing pins to poke holes in the foam where we would need to use the hot knife. We the removed the paper and cut out the pieces. I sanded each piece with several different grits of sandpaper in order to smooth out the edges, and I painted the pieces in metallic gold paint. They were then attached to luan pieces that matched the sides of the main platform.
My Process (Paint)
Process
This set was fairly paint-heavy, which my department had not seen in a few years. Most of the paint work was focused on the three backdrop flats, which I wanted to give a sort of dreamlike illusion by applying a treatment that resembled a watercolor painting. I achieved this by watering down all of my paints and having all of my brushstrokes follow a vertical grain, so from far away the backdrop looked more like a painting than a realistic image. I designed the backdrop by heavily referencing a painting I found while researching for this play. I separated the subject of the image into three parts, and added power lines per the director's request in order to create an unclear time period for the show. We wanted to achieve the feeling of a modern audience looking through a lens into the past. With all of my scenic painting endeavors, I like to unify my color palette. I unified this particular color palette with a mixture of yellow ochre and a medium brown. The cartooning process was achieved by using a grid method. We created a grid on both the cartooning reference and the flats themselves and were able to replicate the drawing from there. This is a tedious process, but the results are always worth it in my opinion. Since the tech crew hadn't worked on a show that involved painting like this before, I wanted to break down the process in as simple terms as possible. I decided to go with a paint-by-number approach to the backdrop. It might be unorthodox, but it actually worked quite well. I recruited more detail-oriented folks from my group to help with the black details, and the flats were complete. The floor of the main platform was given a simple wood grain treatment. My team and I created a lining tool to help draw in the boards, and I taught the group how to apply a wood grain treatment. The sides of the platform were given a simple flat coat of a darker brown, and then dry brushed with lighter and darker shades to simulate old painted wood. The poles holding up the curtains were painted by dipping towels in paint and rubbing them across the poles.
My Process (Props)
Removable Cast
The director envisioned a visual gag at the end of act one that would suggest the actor playing Arlecchino was injured during the show, so a "random audience member" would have to take on the role for the remainder of the show. At the end of the show, the original Arlecchino was to come out in a cast, which she could tear off before bows. To achieve a tear-away cast that could last the entirety of the show's run, I designed a plaster cast that could open and close with hinges and magnets. The end result was a bit clunkier than I had in mind, but it did its job and held up pretty well. My team and I scheduled a meeting with the first Arlecchino's actress in order to take a plaster mold of her leg. We put a ruler between the plaster and her leg so we could cut the plaster away with a knife without harming her. Once the initial mold was dry, we cut the cast into its two pieces and continued to build the shape of each piece individually, with frequent tests to make sure the pieces still fit together. For the hinges, we used simple acrylic hinges we found online. We ran into the most issues with the fasteners. The magnet idea was potentially good in theory, but the magnets we had were not strong enough to hold the structure closed over the actress's foot. We ended up going with Velcro instead, which worked great, but resulted in having to change the blocking for the tearaway in a way that would not reveal the Velcro. The gag was very effective, and the audience loved it every time.
"Backpack" Trunk
Originally, the director wanted Arlecchino to enter carrying a comically large trunk on his back with some sort of strap. We ended up landing on a backpack-like design that could snap out of the way with button snaps after the scene. Due to a few issues with shipping delays and the trunk being too heavy for the glue we had on hand, the backpack strap idea was scrapped.
Miscellaneous Props I Designed/Created
The chicken leg was created by simply modifying a preexisting paper mache turkey leg from our props storage. I used liquid latex to give it a more realistic appearance. The Fiasco bottle is a donated empty Chianti bottle filled with dyed water. The napkin was hand painted by one of my props artisans, and it included a simple magnet closure in the back to fit around the actor's neck. The closure ended up being unnecessary, though, as the actor preferred to tuck the napkin into his costume collar. The stacks of dirty plates were particularly fun to make. They are stacks of plastic plates with pieces of folded paper glued between each plate. this allowed the plates to move and tip over in a cartoonish way without falling onto the floor. The "slop" on the plates is made of sawdust and paint. The creme brulee is simply a piece of foam in a plastic cup.
