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i will still be whole (when you rip me in half)

Conceptual Set and Costume Design

For Chapter Arts Centre Studio,

Black Box studio

By Ava Wong Davies

Director: George Nichols

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My Concept

A young Chinese mother in London picks up her bag and walks out of the front door, abandoning her daughter and husband. As an adult, the daughter drifts through her life as a young queer woman, living with her father. Finally, decades later, mother and daughter reconnect.

Through the use of sliding fabric panels in my design, the characters pass each other by, but always have a barrier between them. The characters, Joy and EJ, reveal more about their relationship as the play progresses. The fluidity of my design allows for the audience to picture what the characters tell them about in their very descriptive monologues. Lots of different locations and past times are discussed, so, visually, the set needs to be adaptive and allow the mind to fill in the blanks. As one of the main themes is memory and recollection, the fabrics have an almost dream like effect.

Process
Design Concept Collage
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Initial Response Boards
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Windows and watching

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People watching and wandering

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Fabrics in the city

Set Design - Fabrics and Tapestries
Fabric as a literal interpretation of the title: ripped in half
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Fabric as flesh 
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The text has numerous references to peaches, flesh and skin, and some violent imagery is described. The fabric is able to be interacted with in a way which conveys this.

Fabric as hiding and revelation
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Experimentation with different opacities 

Fabric patterns and tapestries 
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Exploring what different fabrics mean and represent

Set Design - Seating and traverse staging
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As the studio space is very long and thin, I explored the idea of creating an abstracted street in the space. As the final scene, where EJ and Joy meet in a cafe, is a significant point in the story, I further explored the idea of cafe seating and people watching.

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Cafe Scene Seating Concept

Design Development - Sketch model and sketches
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Initial sketch model exploring how the fabrics could work

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Initial sketch

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Plan view of the space, mapping out movement of the fabric panels throughout the play

Diagram of sliding panel rails 

White Card Model showing moments and the movements of fabric panels
Costume Design - Character Development
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Reference Images - PXSSY PALACE London. A space celebrating black, indigenous and people of colour who are women, queer, intersex, trans or non-binary.

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Reference Images - Shepherd's Bush 

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EJ

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Joy

Final Costume Designs

© 2024 Ysabelle Clason-Morgan

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